Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Fighting, Philosophy, and the Primal Mind, with Joe Rogan About this episode Neil deGrasse Tyson gets inside the cage with Joe Rogan to explore the physics of fighting, mental and physical health, and the mysteries of the universe. Featuring comic co-host Sasheer Zamata, author and scholar Jonathan Gottschall, comedian Chuck Nice, and sport psychologist Dr. Leah Lagos.
NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/fighting-philosophy-and-the-primal-mind-with-joe-rogan/
Photo Credit: Brandon Royal
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:15 Neil 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 mixed martial artist commentator, Joe Rogan. We're going to explore the science of fighting and the primal mind. So let's do this.
0:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I've got my comedian co-host, Sasheer Zamedis. Sasheer, welcome back.
0:43 Speaker 01 Hi.
0:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're like old timer on the show now.
0:47 Speaker 01 I know, I'm a vet.
0:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh my gosh, thank you. And welcome, you're tweeting at thesheertruth.
0:52 Speaker 01 Yes.
0:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Great Twitter handle right there. And also joining us is professor and author Jonathan Gottschall. Jonathan, welcome. Hi, brother. Welcome back to the show. I'm a veteran too. And your latest book, Professor, I love this. Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch. Joe Rogan blurbed your book. That's right. So he says here, "A fascinating story, a great fucking book."
1:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Joe Rogan, UFC and common hate. I thought he had more vocabulary available to him. That's one of his favorite words.
1:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So we'll be tapping your perspective and expertise tonight as we explore my interview. And I've been on his podcast a few times. And what intrigues me is, given all the rest of what he is in his profile, he has a deep curiosity about the universe. So I asked Joe if any science teachers early on in his life may have helped kindle his cosmic curiosity. Let's check it out.
1:59 Speaker 02 I had one science teacher when I was in seventh grade that probably changed my life.
2:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Really?
2:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, one science teacher.
2:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? For the better.
2:07 Speaker 02 For the better, yes, yeah, we have to say that.
2:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The vector correct here, alright.
2:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, he talked about the nature of the size of the universe. And I remember one class where he said, "If you want your brain to hurt, just think about something that has no end. Think about the idea that you cannot see the end of space. You look above, look up into the sky, this goes on forever. And you think you can rationalize or you can conceptualize forever, but just think about that." And I remember thinking about that so much after that, I would think about it years later.
2:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Years?
2:54 Speaker 02 Years later, because he was an intense guy.
2:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because everything we do, we're in a room, it's this big, that tall, that wide.
3:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's a map, I'm driving to San Diego, that's a distance, everything. So much of our lives is contained by a measurement.
3:09 Speaker 02 Yes, yeah, and he, in my small little mind at the time, he planted a seed. And that that seed was this this concept that we take so often for granted, the idea that above you is forever. And that that notion, it's above and below, it's everywhere. And we're in this, I don't have to tell you. But this this concept is, it's it's so hard for us to wrap our minds around, yet so ever-present, and we ignore it. We ignore it, and it's become a big part of my act, I've had several bits.
3:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait, is it that we that we ignore it, or we don't even know to recognize it?
3:49 Speaker 02 Maybe it's so overwhelming that we choose to somehow or another, put it in the back of our mind. People concentrate on weird things about life. And there's so many weird things about life. But the weirdest thing by far is that we're in space, and it's almost never discussed. You go throughout your day.
4:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're just floating, there's nothing around the earth.
4:14 Speaker 02 Above us is a thin layer of gas that protects us from rocks. They periodically slam into the planet and kill everything.
4:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know how thin that layer is? It is to earth what the skin of an apple is to the apple.
4:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just to, just to put punctuation on your usage of the word thin. Continue.
4:34 Speaker 02 I say, there's a fireball floating in the sky. It's a million times bigger than earth. If you stared at it, you'll go blind. It's trying to give you cancer and if it's not there, you get sad. Like, we're in a dream.
4:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Jonathan, you teach storytelling as a science. And what do you think of his seventh grade teacher telling him this story? About our place in the universe. Why, why do you think it resonated? Was it because it was a story? In a story form or because just the facts were so mind blowing?
5:10 Speaker 03 Uh, my feeling about that is that, you know, hopefully we've all had an experience of like this where, where a teacher has sort of cracked us open like that, right? Sort of suddenly, almost violently to the whole wonder and magic of a subject area. That seems like what happened to Joe there. You know, he had this experience where he saw that science is kind of magical, kind of stirs the soul, right? Sort of like great art does or like a great, you know, poem does. Uh, fills you with that sense of wonder and it fills you with a sense of odd humility about your place, you know, in the universe.
5:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And a good poem or a good other source of art, you can think about it years later, just as he thought about the universe.
5:51 Speaker 03 Right, it sticks with you.
5:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Years later. Well, in his teens, uh, he was national taekwondo champion.
5:58 Speaker 03 Yes.
5:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And he then transitioned to a career as a stand-up comedian, which continues to this day. And then he hosted, of all things, the, the TV reality show Fear Factor.
6:11 Speaker 03 Correct.
6:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And what was it? It was on NBC, I think. That's where you stick your head inside of worms and stuff. It was like. Ooh.
6:18 Speaker 02 You eat horse penises too.
6:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Really?
6:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That was a thing?
6:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you remembered that?
6:24 Speaker 02 Oh, yes, you remember that.
6:26 Speaker 03 If you see something like that, you don't forget.
6:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You don't forget that. Um, and now he's host of one of the top ten podcasts in the world called The Joe Rogan Experience. And he discusses his experience in MMA fighting, philosophy, overall physical and mental wellness. And I asked him what stirred him, what motivated him to be so intense in such a diversity of topics? So let's check it out.
6:56 Speaker 02 I think it really started out with martial arts, like martial arts is what really started me thinking. It's really, really got me into psychology because I was very concerned with why I was so nervous and is there a way to combat that? Is there a way to calm myself down before fights?
7:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is this middle school, high school?
7:14 Speaker 02 Yes, this was high school. Yeah, I started fighting when I was fifteen. And I did that pretty much every day of my life until I was twenty-one, twenty-two. And then I started doing stand-up comedy at twenty-one. And I realized at twenty, I realized I couldn't do both things. And I realized I didn't really want to fight anymore. So very concerned about brain damage. I was very concerned about, I, I knew a bunch of people, especially with kickboxing, a bunch of people that were starting to show the effects, slurring words and just absent mind. It's very scary, very scary stuff. It's a ride, you have to know when to get off. And you have to be really cautious about it.
7:54 Speaker 02 And, uh, so, but martial arts being such a dangerous thing and an exciting thing in, um, in, in so many different ways, psychologically, physically demanding, um, it, it demands so much of your discipline. It's so much of a, a management issue, like managing the way my brain worked. I think that's really where I got mo-most of my curiosity from.
8:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it was discipline and structure.
8:24 Speaker 02 Yes. And some philosophy, like uh the Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi, I used to read a lot of ancient samurai work because they dealt with the most stressful thing possible, a one-on-one swordfight with a person. So I felt like his philosophy in particular was uh very relevant.
8:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And one-on-one swordfight, it's eye contact.
8:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's pretty intense.
8:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's not, you're not behind a ridge line, shooting a bullet three hundred yards.
8:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, and Musashi killed, I think it was like sixty men in combat and one-on-one combat with swords. Sometimes he got bored, he didn't use a sword anymore, he used an oar from a boat. Yeah, he was a maniac.
9:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So these are your heroes?
9:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Musashi, how, how many people are your heroes killed?
9:17 Speaker 01 Well, what killed me was your face after he mentioned his heroes killing people.
9:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, that's just weird.
9:23 Speaker 01 Can we see that picture? You're like, what?
9:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who am I, who am I interviewing here?
9:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Jonathan, you actually joined a cage fighting gym. So, let me ask you, is this from what you've experienced in the culture, looking from the outside and the inside? Is, is fighting like a guy thing? Is it primal? Is it evolutionary?
9:50 Speaker 03 Uh, yes, to all, I think, yes to all. Uh, women do fight. Um, they're, they're a distinct minority though, it's still an overwhelmingly male thing. It's a male thing when it comes to, when it comes to sports fighting, it's a male thing when it comes to fist fighting in a bar. It's a male thing when it comes to murdering somebody, it's a male thing when it comes to genocidal warfare.
10:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. So what's this I've heard about the, the, the riddle of the duel, what is that?
10:16 Speaker 03 Uh, the duel, the riddle of the duel is my, my question about, you know.
10:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's in your book.
10:20 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's a, the, the question we have, when you read about somebody like Alexander Hamilton, one of the smartest Americans who ever was, who got himself killed in a really stupid duel over nothing. The riddle of the duel is, why would these really smart guys get themselves killed over nothing? Um, and uh, the answer is, they weren't really fighting over nothing. They were fighting over something really important. They were fighting over honor, uh, we call it respect. And back then, this really had a lot of social currency. Uh, honor was precious coin, bought the best stuff in life.
10:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So this thing where the man is this symbol of strength and con- and conquest, that that's a little creepy to me that we stuck with this evolutionary baggage. And Joe Rogan, his heroes are combinations of philosophers and samurai warriors. And he's got some strong feelings about the way the public idolizes celebrities instead of other roles that people have in society. Let's check it out.
11:24 Speaker 02 It's a hijacking of our human reward system.
11:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
11:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, and that's why we treat actors as if they're anything other than just entertainers.
11:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
11:32 Speaker 02 I mean, they're just entertaining. It's fun. You go to the movies, it's great. You know, the guy's piloting a starship, he's shooting at the bad guys, yay! But all it is is entertaining, but they get duped by it themselves and they start talking like as if their opinion is like something of like extreme significance because of who they are, because of their stature that they've achieved by pretending to be somebody. It's very strange, really. I mean, there's very few positions in life that are less relevant in terms of like the real world than someone who's completely faking being someone.
12:16 Speaker 02 Like, you're not doing anything heroic, you're faking it. Uh, you're, everyone knows, you're wearing makeup, there's a green screen behind you, it's all bullshit. And yet, people are treating it like it is one of the most important things they've ever seen. Everyone wears suits and ties with little bow ties and they go to this award show to see who is the best at bullshitting. Who pretended the most effectively? You had me convinced you were Abraham Lincoln, sir! That was amazing! And that's all it is. I mean, it's very, very strange that that is treated as such an important part of our
12:54 Speaker 02 culture, whereas teachers are treated so insignificantly and so flippantly dismissed, and the wages they get in comparison, if you look at actors.
13:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The fact of a thousand, yeah.
13:09 Speaker 02 It's crazy. The impact that a teacher could have on your life, that should be one of the most valued and cherished positions in our culture.
13:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Jonathan, would you agree that there's some hijacking of this primal reward system?
13:28 Speaker 02 I would.
13:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then if you're big up on a screen, you are the person who brought home the food, but really you're not, but...
13:34 Speaker 02 I would, I would strongly disagree.
13:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Really?
13:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think that, I think the reward system is responding appropriately the way it was designed to be.
13:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, we want to value our teachers.
13:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Highly, but we don't. So, is that disconnect purely that teachers are not as good as storytellers as Hollywood?
13:53 Speaker 02 There is something catastrophic and something very sad about the way that society undervalues these teachers.
14:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, Shisei, what, what do you think we could do to give, like, teacher roles more value?
14:08 Speaker 01 I think we could, uh, give them awards.
14:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Awards?
14:11 Speaker 01 Everyone pays attention to award shows.
14:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, we do.
14:13 Speaker 01 And I just created one.
14:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You got one?
14:15 Speaker 01 It's called the Teachees, and I have little trophies that we can give, so I want...
14:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, there's apples on top?
14:21 Speaker 01 Isn't that cute?
14:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, that's cute.
14:23 Speaker 01 I made them.
14:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, you were lying. No, that is really cute.
14:28 Speaker 01 So, I want each of us to talk about the teacher we would give a teachee to.
14:32 Speaker 02 Ah.
14:33 Speaker 01 Do you have an idea?
14:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'd probably give it to an English teacher I had in college named David Pollard, who made me want to be, not only an English teacher, but an intellectual.
14:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
14:44 Speaker 02 I wanted to be a scholar when I grew up after seeing him in class.
14:47 Speaker 01 That's great.
14:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's beautiful.
14:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's beautiful.
14:50 Speaker 01 I would give my teachee to Professor Teresa Davis, because she always had candy in her office, and that was great, but also...
14:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? She had candy in her office?
15:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, for like herself, but also for the students. But also, she like, really pushed me as a performer and made me really want to actually pursue this as a career.
15:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Cool.
15:10 Speaker 01 And then, you can give yours.
15:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I didn't have a single teacher in my life. It was an amalgam. Multiple teachers, bits and pieces, some here, some there. And some, and they weren't really teachers. They were people I met in life. Educators, for sure, scientists, but they, I was not accountable to them the way a student is accountable to a teacher. So, but nonetheless, they had expertise I valued and respected. And I'm not done.
15:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I would make my role models à la carte. And I'd staple them together and there's a combination of the... And so that's how... Hey, thank you.
16:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome back. StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. Featuring my interview with Taekwondo champion and UFC commentator, Joe Rogan. And I asked Joe about the philosophy of the different teaching forms of martial arts. Let's check it out.
16:44 Speaker 02 When you're teaching people martial arts, if you establish that sort of relationship between the master and the student, people believe all kinds of nonsense. And so, there's a lot of people out there teaching and demonstrating nonsense, like death touches and stunning people with sandals, having them fall over.
17:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And there's like three feet behind them.
17:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, and they believe it.
17:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Falls back from the spirit energy that got sent in their way.
17:09 Speaker 02 That's the most extreme example of it. But Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu has bypassed that. And Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is... Way more open-minded. And, and if you came in and you were a white belt, but you had an idea, and you said, "Okay, why don't I just try it this way?" To the instructor, they would go, "Let me see. Try that out. Let me see it. Do it." And, okay, try, and then the person you're doing it to, can you resist? And then they would look at it. They'd look at it as a science.
17:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's an impossible exchange.
17:37 Speaker 02 Yes. In Taekwondo, it would be impossible. You would never do that. You would never say, "Why don't I do it this way?"
17:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's test it.
17:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, they know how to do it. They're gonna show you how to do it. You need to learn the techniques properly, and you need to listen. And then you say, "Yes, sir," and that's it. That's the end of it. In Jiu-Jitsu, they're gonna teach you the technique, but if you have some... You never know. You know, I mean, Jiu-Jitsu is such a broad language. And I talk about it as a language, because I think what martial arts really are is a way people exchange, and, and very much like a conversation. And someone who has a larger vocabulary, who understands what they're saying more, and who, uh, has a, a broader grasp of the concept as a whole, will do better in a conversation than someone who has a limited grasp of the language,
18:27 Speaker 02 only knows a few words. So it's very similar. And Jiu-Jitsu is a much, much broader conversation than any of the other martial arts. Much more science-based, like, what, what is effective, what is not? When it's not effective, chuck it aside. Don't keep trying the death touch. It doesn't work.
18:47 Speaker 01 Okay, Neil, if there's no such thing as the death touch...
18:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No such thing as the death touch.
18:51 Speaker 01 Explain this.
19:04 Speaker 01 It's pretty good, isn't it?
19:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's what happened after the interview.
19:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We did our death touch.
19:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Jonathan, do you agree when he said jiu-jitsu is the most sort of scientific form of martial arts? In the sense that it can respond to experimental?
19:23 Speaker 03 I do, I absolutely do. And I think I would extend it to the MMA gym in general, and I think Joe would too. An MMA gym really is a sort of a science lab devoted to the con-
19:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? MMA gym?
19:36 Speaker 03 Yeah. To the constant testing, the constant refinement of these martial arts hypotheses. And it works because it's a combat science, whereas, as Joe was suggesting, traditional forms of the martial arts are closer to combat religions. They have all these sort of dogmatic articles of faith that they abide by.
19:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Whoa. So if you just walk in there as a novice, people know not to kill you?
20:01 Speaker 03 They know not to kill you, absolutely.
20:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's a good thing.
20:03 Speaker 03 There's no glory in killing the new guy, or the big guy in killing the little guy. It's actually a fairly civilized environment, and the rules are pretty clear. There's rules and codes of behavior.
20:14 Speaker 01 So if I walked in as a novice, people would be like, "Oh, let's take it easy on her, because she doesn't know anything yet."
20:19 Speaker 03 Absolutely.
20:20 Speaker 01 And then I would trick you, because I know everything, and I would take you all down.
20:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, so in comedy, what have you, walk in as a novice? Like, Monday night, open mic, whatever, right?
20:30 Speaker 01 I mean, you kind of have to. There's no way to- Yeah, if you can't approach the stage already an expert, like, people could get scared and be like, "Oh, I need to write this perfectly before I even get on stage." But you don't know if it's good or not until you get on stage and actually put it in front of an audience. So you kind of do need to, like, fall in headfirst.
20:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's battle-tested.
20:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, when I think of fighting, it's all about physics, and force, and leverage, and mechanical advantage. And so I asked Joe Rogan how much he thinks about physics during the fight, while he's fighting. Just check it out.
21:07 Speaker 02 In the fight, you're not thinking much about anything. In the fight, you have to be as zen as possible. Yeah, but in training, it's very, very important. It's all about physics. It's all about how you, the right way to get leverage into a technique. If you do a technique from this position, is it less effective than you do it from this position and why? Oh, your weight is lower. You're pushing off the back leg in this position, you get that extra thrust off the back leg. You're turning your hip into it, accentuates the power.
21:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But I bet many are not thinking about it in terms of physics. They're just thinking, I guess this works better, let me do it this way. So they have to do more experimenting to find the sweet spot. But if you're thinking physics, you could bypass some of that testing because you know what the fulcrum is and the weight, especially the center of mass, all of this. So I'm just curious if more MMA people should be taking physics classes.
22:08 Speaker 02 I think anything where you would be more aware of how to generate power or how to avoid, avoid the impact of something, that's also a big factor. I think that would most certainly help. But I think in terms of, especially with jiu-jitsu, jiu-jitsu is filled with nerds. Like if you go to a jiu-jitsu class, yeah, you would think it's going to be a bunch of thugs and big neck guys. No, it's mostly nerd assassins. Yeah, well, they have pretty thick necks because they're, you know, you're constantly using your neck as a muscle and you have to strengthen it. But they're mostly nerd assassins.
22:51 Speaker 02 The best guys are very, very intelligent.
22:56 Speaker 01 Nerd assassin.
22:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Nerd assassin, that's quite a, that's a phrase right there.
23:01 Speaker 01 It sounds like a great movie I would go watch.
23:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Jonathan, let's explore some of the physics of fighting, okay? You call the fist a messenger.
23:12 Speaker 03 Yeah.
23:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's very literary of you. So what do you mean when you think of that?
23:18 Speaker 03 Well, that came from my cage fighting professor, Professor Mark Schrader. That was actually his face. He called the fist a messenger. And the idea is that the body is generating a tremendous amount of force as you step into the punch, as you turn your hips, as you twist your shoulders. And if you're a big, strong fellow, as a lot of these guys in the gym are, a lot of energy, a huge amount of energy is being delivered and focused into the knuckles of that hand.
23:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because they have a body behind the punch.
23:45 Speaker 03 Body and all that motion behind that hand.
23:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it's not only the body, but generally in most sports, speed matters. So if you can throw a fast punch, I mean, the physics of it that I would think of is the higher kinetic energy.
23:59 Speaker 03 Right.
24:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you want to impart kinetic energy from your fist into the target. It could be your ribs or your face or whatever else, right? So that tells me that you can't, you know, you have to ask, where is your fist moving its fastest? Is it like here? Is it at the end? It's probably somewhere in the middle. So it's probably an uncomfortable distance you'd have to be to have maximal sort of kinetic energy transfer. That's just thinking off my feet right now.
24:27 Speaker 03 Uncomfortable in terms of the danger you're in?
24:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
24:29 Speaker 03 Absolutely. Yeah, to be in punching range is a very dangerous place to be.
24:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
24:34 Speaker 03 Kicking range feels a little safer, but punching range is very dangerous because in order for you to land, the other guy is going to be in range too.
24:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly, exactly.
24:41 Speaker 03 Quite the head movement and so forth.
24:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the military, they say, because there's some weaponry that if you're shooting at night, there's a visible phosphor.
24:50 Speaker 03 Tracers.
24:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Tracers.
24:51 Speaker 03 Yeah.
24:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so that's where you can know what you're hitting. But for every... Phosphor tracer that comes out, the enemy knows exactly where you're gonna.
25:00 Speaker 03 Right.
25:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, so even though it helps you target.
25:02 Speaker 03 They can trace it back to you.
25:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They can trace it back to you, so it's not always, doesn't always work in your favor. And tell me about the gloves, no gloves debate.
25:10 Speaker 03 Um.
25:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In other words, big fluffy pillow boxing gloves?
25:14 Speaker 03 Right, right.
25:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? For like the old days.
25:16 Speaker 03 Well, gloves were added in the 19th century in an honest effort to make this sport more humane. And it backfired catastrophically. Most people think gloves make the sport safer, and they do make it safer, they make it safer for the hand. But they make it catastrophically more dangerous for the brain. Because once you armor that fist, you make it basically invulnerable to damage. And you turn it into a brutal club that men can throw around with wild abandon.
25:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? With no consequences.
25:45 Speaker 03 With no consequences.
25:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To their hand at all.
25:47 Speaker 03 Otherwise, you'd just be breaking your fist to pieces against people's skulls. Skulls are heavy and strong.
25:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They're probably stronger than the bones of your hand.
25:54 Speaker 03 Much, much more. And so what the glove allows you to do is to bypass the brain's very formidable defenses, the skull. Um, and so it's been a real catastrophe.
26:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When we dig up fossils, you always find the skull, you don't find the little bones of the hand.
26:11 Speaker 03 Right.
26:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Skull makes it all the way.
26:14 Speaker 03 These are little tiny fine bones, yeah.
26:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So compare now the effectiveness of a punch and a kick. I would kind of rather be punched than kicked, natively I think this.
26:25 Speaker 03 The one reason you might rather be kicked is I'm more likely to miss. You're over six feet tall, my kick, my foot has to travel probably nine feet to get to your head. So kicks are worse if they land, but punches are easier to land. So the last time, there's actual data on this, and the last time I looked a few years ago, about 85% of KOs and TKOs in professional cage fighting.
26:51 Speaker 01 Those are knockouts?
26:52 Speaker 03 Yes.
26:53 Speaker 01 Okay.
26:53 Speaker 03 Came not, so the most, so the most serious head trauma came not from the elbows, not from the knees, not from the feet, but from the hands. The most dangerous weapon in this sport is still the armored hand.
27:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because it's most accessible to you.
27:07 Speaker 03 It's close and it's fast, hands are fast.
27:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But when a. When a kick lands, the person's down.
27:13 Speaker 03 It can be real bad. It can be real bad.
27:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The person's down.
27:15 Speaker 03 But they're very hard to land.
27:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because I'm looking at the mass of the thigh. I mean, the mass of a leg relative to the arm.
27:21 Speaker 03 Yeah.
27:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's no contest here.
27:23 Speaker 03 It's so much more powerful. And you're usually hitting them with the shin. And the shin is one of the biggest, densest bones in the body.
27:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So have you ever gotten knocked out cold?
27:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, once I did.
27:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What did that feel like? I've never been knocked out cold.
27:36 Speaker 03 Uh, I was sparring this big heavyweight named Clark Young. Um, and Clark always took it easy on me, but he was so big and strong that it didn't really matter. And one day, uh, you know, I, I, he knocked me out. And, uh, I just went away for a minute and I came right back. I didn't even know that I had been gone. And I got up and kept trying to spar. Uh, and he just kind of grabbed me and hugged me and said, "Oh, man, you, you went to sleep there for a minute."
28:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, okay.
28:04 Speaker 03 And so it was very confusing.
28:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So gentle giant.
28:07 Speaker 03 He's a nice guy, yeah.
28:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
28:08 Speaker 03 I just kind of, he hugged me and I kind of buried my head in his cleavage and, and, uh, he kind of pet in my head.
28:14 Speaker 01 That's how I like to fight, with hugs.
28:17 Speaker 03 Well, there's a lot of hugging in fighting.
28:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:19 Speaker 03 It's a very affectionate thing between guys, actually. It's kind of weird. It's all this kind of violence and aggression, trying to kill each other. At the end of the fight, it just dissolves into these very heartfelt hugs and congratulations.
28:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, they're not a sworn enemy.
28:31 Speaker 03 No, no, they've actually become friends. They've actually fallen in love a little bit by the end of that fight.
28:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, we sent our StarTalk Senior Science Sidewalk correspondent, you know, we have one of these.
28:41 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
28:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. Chuck Nice, uh, to an MMA gym here in New York City. Just to find out a little bit more about the physics of fighting. Check out his dispatch.
28:52 Chuck Nice? What's up, Leo? I'm here at JKDC NYC School of Mixed Martial Arts, and I'm standing here with Chris Moran, who is a master of the physics of fighting. All right, Chris, before we get into this, I want to let you know that I got some skills. So maybe I should show you what I got, okay? Show me what you got. But I'm gonna come at you for real, okay? That's okay. You cool with that? I'm good. Wait, I'm gonna warm up first. Here we go, hold on.
29:21 Chuck Nice? Alright, that's a joke.
29:22 Speaker 05 You're good?
29:23 Chuck Nice? Alright. Alright, here we go. Yo, we not playing pancakes, man. What's this? Come on, you ready?
29:27 Speaker 05 I'm good, I'm ready to go.
29:28 Chuck Nice? You sure?
29:29 Speaker 05 Yeah, let's go.
29:29 Chuck Nice? Here you go, ready?
29:30 Speaker 05 Let's go.
29:35 Chuck Nice? Damn it! Alright, you know what, maybe? Maybe you should show me a few things.
29:40 Speaker 05 Yeah, let me show you a couple things.
29:41 Chuck Nice? Okay, please.
29:42 Speaker 05 Let's go.
29:43 Chuck Nice? So, what happened?
29:44 Speaker 05 Alright, so I had my hands up and while you were attacking me, I defended and put a solid structure into your hand.
29:49 Chuck Nice? Okay.
29:50 Speaker 05 Now I'm gonna come in with overwhelming force. Now as I take control of your neck, I'm gonna bring you down using gravity and my body weight. So now, I'll put you in a submission.
30:04 Chuck Nice? Oh my god. Alright Neil, there you go. Getting choked out in the name of science.
30:15 Chuck Nice? Welcome back to StarTalk.
30:18 Chuck Nice? Featuring my interview with comedian Joe Rogan. His podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, plumbs the depths of his favorite topics. And they include hunting. Let's check it out.
30:31 Speaker 02 I got into hunting because I had seen too many of these factory farming videos. And I decided that I was either going to become a vegetarian or I was going to be a hunter. And so, that's how I get all my food now. I go on three or four hunts a year.
30:48 Chuck Nice? Pretty impact, freeze it?
30:49 Speaker 02 Yes.
30:50 Chuck Nice? Hack it out of the freezer.
30:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's why I like elk. Because elk is like 400 pounds of meat, so basically I could eat it for a year. Then, I got into archery. And I realized this is an even more difficult way to do it. Because I literally have to get inside of, you know, 40, 50 yards. I can't, you know, I can't, I can't, I'm not that accurate outside of 50, 60 yards. I've shot a deer at 60 yards. The longest I've ever shot anything with a bow and arrow. With a rifle, that's easy. With a rifle, 100 yards is nothing. 200 yards is pretty easy. But with a bow and arrow requires much more discipline. Much more work. Much more practice. I practice every day. And to me, it is also a moving meditation.
31:32 Speaker 02 When I'm concentrating on a target and I'm just drawing back and looking at a target in my yard, that is all that is on my mind. I'm just thinking about my shot process, concentrating on the target. And in doing that, I find that it just sort of slowly eases me down, relaxes me from stress and pressure. So it's very much a discipline, a martial art, a meditation, and it's a way I get my food. So there's a lot of things to that. There's a lot of... And when I eat that food, like if I cook an elk steak, or I cooked an elk steak last night, that's... I have a deep attachment to that. There was a screaming giant forest horse with trees growing out of its head,
32:18 Speaker 02 running up a hill, and I shot it with an arrow. And it's hard to do. It's very difficult to do. So I... In my mind, I earned it. And there's a, like, an intense connection to my food that way.
32:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Jonathan, you've written about how human evolution affects our behavior today. So is Joe tapping into this deep evolutionary primal urge by hunting his own food in modern times?
32:49 Speaker 02 I guess he must be. I mean, this is a, this is a, I don't know, sort of the deepest, oldest male occupation, I guess, being a hunter. I am so not a hunter that I'm not really qualified to comment on it, though.
33:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, so if hunting and fighting is sort of manly, then Joe Rogan is the man's man's man.
33:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, he's sort of a cartoon almost.
33:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I asked him about the manliness of hunting and fighting and being the man's man. Let's check it out. You, you do man things.
33:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are you just a caveman manifested in modern day?
33:33 Speaker 02 There's definitely some savages in my past, for sure. But, uh, for me, those are just, uh, the, I'm interested in all these things. I find martial arts to be exhilarating and I'm fascinated by it and I find them to be extremely rewarding.
33:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, translation, he has an academic interest in kicking people's ass.
33:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, but getting my ass kicked too, that's a big part of it too. The, the humility that comes from that, it's very important.
34:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very important.
34:04 Speaker 02 One of the things that you get from jujitsu is you get strangled a lot and you get humbled a lot. You know, there's, uh, there's a lot of people that I could call up right now and I'd say, hey, you wanna go train? And I'll just go and get my ass kicked and it's gonna happen a hundred percent of the time. There's people that I'm gonna kick their ass a hundred percent of the time that I know and I can call them up too if I feel bad.
34:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Need a little ego boost?
34:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, but I know plenty of people that could fuck me up every day of the week. I could wake them up at three o'clock in the morning and they could choke me unconscious. It's just the way it is. It's, there's no getting around that. And I think, um, that, that gives you a, a more honest understanding of where you fit in, in the food chain. Um, uh, hunting, I'm interested in that. I mean, archery, I'm interested in that. I, all these things that I pursue, I don't look at them and go, oh, that's a manly thing. I wanna be manly. Let me go learn how to do some manly shit. No, it's just entirely what I, I'm interested in.
35:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, up next, we'll have more of my interview with comedian and podcast host, Joe Rogan, when StarTalk returns.
35:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome back to StarTalk.
35:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The American Museum of Natural History. Featuring my interview with Joe Rogan. And Joe hosts a podcast that explores mental and physical wellness. And I asked him about sort of the health fad of sensory deprivation. Let's check it out.
35:44 Speaker 02 I'm a big proponent of the sensory deprivation tank. I have one in my studio now. I have my new studio.
35:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And your studio?
35:52 Speaker 02 Yes. Have you done it before?
35:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no.
35:54 Speaker 02 Oh, you gotta do it.
35:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I have nothing in principle against it. I just.
35:57 Speaker 02 You gotta do it.
35:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I just like making weird faces about it because.
36:02 Speaker 02 Well, it's an odd thing.
36:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's odd.
36:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I like my senses, okay? Don't take them away from me.
36:07 Speaker 02 Well, it's not taking anything away. What it's doing is there's a large tank and it's filled up with water that's heated to 94 degrees, which is roughly the temperature of your skin. And then there's 1,000 pounds of Epsom salts in there. So you float. And you're half your body, like if you sectioned your body in half, half of it is underwater, half of it is above because of the density of the salt in the water.
36:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you need that because you have very low fat content and your muscles would sink otherwise.
36:35 Speaker 02 That, but most people are gonna sink. You know, unless you're in an ocean. I mean, if you really, if you can float in the ocean without anything, go to a doctor and get on a diet.
36:48 Speaker 02 There's way too much fat in your body. Um, but yeah, I'll sink like a rock. So this tank with this warm water that's filled with salt, when you lay in it, you can't tell where the water is and where the air is because it's all the same. So once you relax, and once you settle in, you're completely floating, you're breathing, your eyes are closed. But even if you open your eyes, you're in total darkness, your ears are.
37:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because there's a coffin lid that goes over you.
37:14 Speaker 02 There's a big, mine is like a meat locker. Shut this big giant door. It's a really big tank. Um, and you lie down in this thing. And in the absence of sensory input, because you're hearing nothing, you're seeing nothing.
37:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Feeling nothing.
37:29 Speaker 02 You're feeling nothing.
37:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're not eating anything.
37:30 Speaker 02 No, your brain is like supercharged because you have access to so many more resources.
37:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What's the difference between that and someone who meditates to achieve similar internal?
37:42 Speaker 02 Well, I meditate in there, and I think it accentuates meditation. I think that, like, if we were having this conversation...
37:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, not only do you go sensory deprived, you meditate on top of that.
37:55 Speaker 02 Yes, yeah.
37:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, have you been to the surface of Mars in your mind while you've been in this tank?
38:02 Speaker 02 Oh, I've had crazy experiences in the tank. Well, your brain produces psychedelic experiences on its own in the absence of sensory input over long periods of time if you relax enough. It's like layers of the onion. It peels back and peels back. The beautiful thing about that is that people that are curious about psychedelic experiences but don't want to just try mushrooms, you can have a psychedelic experience that's completely natural, and it ends instantaneously when you open the door. It's like, this is too freaky. You open the door, you get out, and it's just normal life. Yeah, your brain, in the absence of sensory input, completely alone, in the dark, your brain starts, you start tripping, you start dreaming. It gets very weird.
38:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, joining us for our discussion of technology and mental wellness is clinical psychologist Leah Logos. Leah, welcome to Startalk. This is your first time on Startalk. Welcome. Thanks for joining us. So, you use techniques like, like technology, biofeedback, to help patients sort of train and focus their minds. Is that a fair characterization of what you do? So, are there proven mental health benefits to a sensory deprivation tank? Or is it kind of a fad thing?
39:20 Speaker 06 There's mixed and anecdotal evidence. And certainly, we're moving to this world of psychophysiology, where we're addressing the mind and body simultaneously. So, the idea of shifting the physiology to shifting the psychology is emerging in technical devices like sensory deprivation tanks.
39:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, these are tools to organize senses?
39:42 Speaker 06 That's right.
39:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that you can isolate, or enhance, or suppress?
39:46 Speaker 06 Exactly. We're reducing the noise to amplify the signal. And the signal can be different depending on what type of performer you are in life. Whether you're a neurosurgeon and you need to have a clear mind for operating, you're an MMA fighter and need to have a clear mind so you can access muscle memory. It serves, the signal can serve different functions.
40:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you, you treat athletes as well as others who are highly specialized in their talents. So what's going on in the brain?
40:12 Speaker 06 Lots of times ruminations of the past and the future and not being very focused on the present, so.
40:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But is that chemical? I mean, what, what's happening chemically?
40:22 Speaker 06 Well, what often happens is called beta waves in the brain. I call them squirrels. And they're running around and running around and, and keeping the brain very active as opposed to being in more of a meditative or alpha-like state, which is what the sensory deprivation tanks do.
40:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so these would be distractions.
40:40 Speaker 06 Correct. But learning to control pieces of the physiology, heart rate variability, for instance, allows you to gain control over your cognitions, your decision-making. The vagus nerve connects from the heart to the brain, so actually gaining control of your heart rhythms affects how your brain functions.
40:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, up next. Joe had a question for me about the universe. Check it out.
41:07 Speaker 02 My number one question that I've always had about the universe is, do we think of the beginning of the universe and then the potential end of the universe? Do we think of it that way because of our own biological limitations of birth and death?
41:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No.
41:24 Speaker 02 No.
41:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'll tell you why.
41:26 Speaker 02 Why?
41:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right. If you look at, I have a, a collection of books, uh, school textbooks, they go back two and a half centuries. So you look at the astronomy books and the mix of topics changes as we learn more about the universe, but none of the books talked about the universe as a thing that had a beginning, middle, or an end. It just wasn't even there.
41:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then relativity comes up and Hubble discovers the expanding universe. Wait, we're expanding. That means yesterday we were smaller than we are today. And the day before that, we were even smaller. Let's run that clock back. Holy shit, there's a day when the whole universe was in one place. There was a day when it had a beginning. Nobody thought about a beginning before that, other than biblical beginnings. Nobody scientifically thought about a beginning. So there was no urge. There was no human urge to wrap the universe in a tidy box with a beginning and an end.
42:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Sorry, maybe there is such an urge. But we never even had the occasion to think about the universe in that way.
42:46 Speaker 02 It was just the data.
42:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Once the data came in, there it is. It's got a beginning and right now, as far as it looks like, there is, there will be no end. No, no, no discreet end. We will expand forever.
43:00 Speaker 02 What about the idea that it all will eventually contract back down?
43:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, that's what I'm saying.
43:05 Speaker 02 It's impossible?
43:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's Einstein's relativity allows that as one of the solutions to his equation. But solutions to equations of the universe don't have to be what the actual universe is about. You want to look at the parameters that control the actual universe. And when you do so, we don't have enough mass to recollaps the universe. So, so in other words, I can talk, I can toss a, uh, give me your shoe for a minute.
43:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Converse All Stars, very nice. Grew up on these. Uh, so if I toss this up, you know, it comes back.
43:44 Speaker 02 Okay.
43:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right. That's a universe that has enough mass so that even though it's expanding, is slowing down, one day stopping and, and recollapsing. But there's a speed with which I can toss this. So that it will never come back. That's the escape velocity of Earth. That's seven miles per second. If I throw it at seven miles per second, Earth will keep trying to tug on it. And it'll still get slower, but it will get to infinity before Earth slows us down to zero.
44:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The universe is expanding at its escape velocity. It's never coming back.
44:20 Speaker 02 Ah.
44:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thank you for your shoe.
44:22 Speaker 02 Damn.
44:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Joe, in addition to all the other things that intrigue him, he's just thought deeply about the connection between wellness and our place in the universe. And I'm wondering, Leah, do your patients, are they in search of something bigger than themselves? If not religion, then some spiritual connectivity? Or they just need a simple fix to get through their day?
44:53 Speaker 06 Connection is one of the most important and frequent desires that I hear amongst all age groups, from this big to this big.
45:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Really? Connect to what?
45:07 Speaker 06 People, as well as emotions. So there's a type of emotional relating that's restricted, and I see it often, where people who can't let go then operate from a subset of frequencies when they have this beautiful, radiant, emotional range. And so by being able to cultivate the ability to let go through alternative techniques that we've been talking about, physiologically mediated, sensory deprivation, biofeedback, meditation.
45:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You let them out of the box?
45:37 Speaker 06 Yeah.
45:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The emotional box.
45:39 Speaker 06 And they're able to feel the world more deeply, feel emotions, perceive other people's emotions, and connect in a richer way.
45:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, in this last clip, I asked Joe Rogan for his thoughts about the connection between sort of physical and mental health, just to try to tie a bow on the conversation that we've been having. Check it out.
46:00 Speaker 02 A poor physical state will affect your mental state. It grinds on you. If your body is uncomfortable, if you feel sick. Everybody really appreciates health and wellness when they get sick.
46:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So wellness is the combination of the mind and body?
46:17 Speaker 02 Yes, yeah, I think so.
46:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
46:20 Speaker 02 It's a combination of vitality and a clean mind, you know, or a healthy mind.
46:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And how much of that do you get from supplements versus diet versus any kind of things you do just for mental peace?
46:35 Speaker 02 I think it's all combined into one big mandala of effects. And it's always been very unfortunate that people have associated...
46:47 Speaker 02 Fitness and exercise with morons and meatheads. Because it it's made people averse to exercise.
46:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a dumb jock.
46:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, you don't wanna be that guy, so you don't wanna go to the gym, you don't wanna be around those people. Those are the people that picked on you in high school.
47:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, shoved, gave you the wedgie, shoved you in the locker, yeah.
47:06 Speaker 02 So people have this association.
47:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Physically accosting.
47:09 Speaker 02 Right.
47:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, now it's a way broader.
47:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, back when I was in high school, you get the shit kicked out of you. Like, when I got bullied, it was violent.
47:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
47:16 Speaker 02 Wasn't, it wasn't like today.
47:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right.
47:19 Speaker 02 But, yeah, so the I, the idea that any of those things are separate, I think, i- is, that's an illusion. They're all connected. And even brilliant people, um, who don't exercise, I think, could benefit from it. I think the the greatest minds that we have that don't exercise are doing themselves a disservice. I really believe that. It's a mental and physical thing.
47:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When I was in college, I wrestled. And it was a two-hour workout each day from four to six.
47:51 Speaker 02 Dude, you were a stud when you were young. I saw some pictures of you. You were a jack.
47:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the day.
47:57 Speaker 02 You were a jack. You look at those pictures and just go, man, I gotta get back to the gym.
48:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, it's a lot in tonight's episode and and I will recognize, confess, that there's something primal to this element of combat. But I see primal things in other expressions of what it is to be human. Do you know anyone who doesn't enjoy a beautiful sunset? We all do. Why? The sun is going away. It's gonna get cold in a few minutes. It's, but somehow we all participate in a communal, beautiful moment. Why don't we say that that's primal?
48:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Why don't we say that taking a stroll in the park, holding someone's hand, is primal?
48:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I think of a future, not of one where we're all watching fights. I think of a future where our species comes together in ways where we find what we have in common and celebrate that, rather than, under a microscope, try to find what is different and fight each other because of it. And that is a cosmic perspective. You've been watching Stark Talk. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.
Previous Food, Science, and Culture, with Anthony Bourdain Next Inside The Big Bang Theory, with Simon Helberg and Bill Prady Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
