Science and Journalism, with Christiane Amanpour

Neil deGrasse Tyson explores the intersectionality of science and journalism with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Eugene Mirman, reporter Azmat Khan, conflict journalism expert Judith Matloff, Bill Nye, Sarah Rose Siskind, Natalia Reagan, and Brian Sack. Thanks to this week’s Patrons for supporting us: Paul Sikes, Stephanie Judd, Michael McBride, François Fraser, Dan Yoder, John Ward NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons and All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Photo Credit: Brandon Royal

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and beaming out across all of space and time, this is Star Trek: Where Science and Pop Culture Collide.

• 0:16Neil 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 celebrated international news correspondent, Christiane Amanpour. So let's do this!

• 0:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, my co-host tonight, comedian Eugene Mirman. Eugene!

• 0:41Eugene Mirman?

  Hello!

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You voiced the prank-loving, middle-child Gene on the animated series Bob's Burgers on Comedy Central. You've been doing that from the get-go?

• 0:50Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, thanks for coming back. Also joining us for this topic, we've got investigative journalist, Azmat Khan. Azmat, welcome!

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a visiting professor on First Amendment issues at Columbia University. You're also a contributor to the New York Times Magazine and PBS Frontline. Christiane Amanpour, she's a chief international anchor for CNN, and she's host of "Amanpour and Company" on PBS. And she's covered news and conflict around the world for more than 30 years.

• 1:22Eugene Mirman?

  That's a lot of conflict.

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Christiane stopped by my office recently, and I asked her if learning math and science might have influenced her approach as a journalist. So let's check it out.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  I'm quite an ordered person. And I do think that if you understand maths and science, and you understand the order of that kind of scientific endeavor, it sort of helps. I think I need order to situate myself in the world of chaos that somehow I found myself in, whether it's in my own particular life of living through an Iranian revolution. I mean, that was my first major chaotic disruptive event. And whether it's... Being a war correspondent in the midst of all sorts of other people's chaos and violence and disorder and disruption, whether it's in today's political environment, which is chaotic and disruptive. I crave order and I think science, to an extent anyway, the way I interpret it,

• 2:23Speaker 02

  is quite orderly. There are formulas, there are procedures, there's evidence, there's fact. And again, for me, jumping all the way forward, the fact and the evidence and the science is especially important today when everything that we see and hear and touch and feel is in question. I mean, people want to question the color of the sky. So evidence has always been something incredibly important for me. But I hope that what I've also learned to do along the way is do that thing where you mix humanity with science. Because it's not just facts, it's also, I mean, it is, that's the, that's the, you know, the construct around what we're doing. But then you put people's humanity into it and you put people's emotions and you put,

• 3:06Speaker 02

  you know, the real stories of what individuals are going through in these stories that you're telling and these reports that you are, you know, being able to broadcast and communicate. And that's what makes the whole.

• 3:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Asma, have you reported from conflict zones?

• 3:23Speaker 03

  Yes, from Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how do you make order out of that kind of chaos? Or does order matter to you?

• 3:31Speaker 03

  It does. I think it's about getting local. So even before I hit the ground, I try to learn as much as I can about a place, its context, its history, the language if possible, and...

• 3:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would think that's what any journalist should do, but I don't think they do. When you say you learn the language, meaning?

• 3:47Speaker 03

  I try my best to learn as much of it as possible. I mean, I studied abroad when I was young. I, when I moved to Pakistan, I, even though I grew up speaking Urdu, I hired a tutor to make sure that I was learning, you know, I knew how to say "oil rig" or whatever obscure bizarre thing I wasn't maybe used to saying or knowing or wouldn't understand otherwise.

• 4:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that would make others who you talk to more comfortable around you?

• 4:09Speaker 03

  It makes, it also is...

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're less far into them.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  You're more also aware of your surroundings. You're not necessarily always relying on a translator, which, which is okay. But you try to do as much as you can to get local. And in that, you start to see that order and you start to distill the facts and information you're learning in a way that can really resonate with the public.

• 4:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So do you agree that sort of science or its methods and tools, or at least the principles, can help bring order to that world?

• 4:36Speaker 03

  Absolutely. In fact, most investigative reporters rely on similar scientific methodologies, even if we maybe coat them in a narrative or a story or use something that might be a little bit more accessible to the public, but we're relying on similar methods of inquiry.

• 4:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jean, you think science brings order?

• 4:54Eugene Mirman?

  Well, it does to everything but your desk, Neil.

• 4:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, that is my desk, but I know where everything is in that desk. So just because it looks like it's disorder to you, it is order to me.

• 5:07Eugene Mirman?

  I don't believe you.

• 5:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so here's my question. Let's get back to the First Amendment. That has several things. The journalists can do their thing, free speech. So isn't saying the sky is not blue free speech? So why should any of us care?

• 5:24Speaker 03

  It's free speech. And of course, curiosity is one of the greatest traits, not just of journalists, but of people as a whole in any kind of democratic society. But that said, questioning when it's genuine, right? When it's an effort to learn the truth, whatever that truth might be, is very different from setting out on a journey in which you already know where you want to end, right? There's a difference between curiosity and being ideologically driven.

• 5:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One is genuine curiosity to find an actual truth. Another one is disregard for what is true because you think you have the truth and whatever else is going out there doesn't matter. You will stitch together whatever thread so that it agrees with you.

• 6:07Speaker 03

  Right, when you have an end in mind and you're not really looking at the facts in front of you.

• 6:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't that what most people in the world do?

• 6:14Speaker 03

  I think we're increasingly living in a world of confirmation bias, of echo chamber, in which we're following people we agree with, we're paying attention to news sources we agree with. It's an incredible danger.

• 6:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Christiane says that that good journalism is not just the facts, but brings humanity to the facts. So how would you do that as an investigative journalist?

• 6:37Speaker 03

  It's often narrative, right? So I'll have...

• 6:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you at risk of me thinking you are putting too much emotional layering onto it? And I'm gonna say, just give me the facts? What's the risk of that?

• 6:50Speaker 03

  Very few people want just the facts. I have to work very hard to fit those facts into a narrative that people will read. They'll wanna flip through, that they'll get to that section that might be, you know, the big, the data finding about schools in Afghanistan that the US funded, and whether and how many of them actually exist today, or whatever it might be. But you have to get them to get into character. They have to find people who come alive on that page or in that film.

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not just gathering the facts. You now have, because of the homework you do before you arrive on location, you have a context in which, you have a substrate in which you can embed the facts.

• 7:27Speaker 03

  You're always looking for drivers of that narrative that fit what the facts show you.

• 7:33Eugene Mirman?

  Maybe more people would believe in climate change, that it was real and man-made if we gave them a list of people who are going to drown from it.

• 7:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. Let's just make it more real.

• 7:43Eugene Mirman?

  Just trying to connect.

• 7:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for these helpful points here.

• 7:47Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah. I think that's what we're missing.

• 7:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Well, I asked Christiane how she deals with finding facts in any situation. Let's check it out. You're confronted with people who are making news, important people, and some of them are just completely clueless.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  Well, I try not to be judgy because I don't believe that's what journalists should be. Journalists should be based in the fact-based world, the scientific world, so to speak, the evidence-based world. And I have, in fact, spent my career, not as a pundit, or as an opinion maker, or as an anchor, but as a correspondent in the field. So I had to come back with the minute details, observing them, remembering them, recording them, repeating them. And I just, that's what I like. That's natural to me. That's the only way to do it. Because if you just... Guess and pull sort of threads from the atmosphere. I mean, I know artists and others, you know, the creativity. That's not me.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  I'm really based in fact. And that, I think, is what has stood me in quite good stead as our environment becomes less and less respectful of the facts, as science becomes less and less respected and adhered to, as people, as I say, try to question the color of the sky amidst many, many other things. I mean, let's say the idea of climate change and all those things which we're living through right now. For me, it's very frustrating to see, because I've also, because of science, never drawn a factual, a false factual equivalence between things. So I've never been the kind who believes that there's ever been this, on the one hand, on the other hand, about science, because of course they're deniers, but they are a very small minority of the scientific community.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  And I've always been staggered by how that very small minority was able to have an oversized effect on public consciousness, on politics, on all that goes around climate change. And I was just listening just recently to this tragedy of how, you know, more than 50 years ago, we could have arrested climate change. We could have started and got a grip on it if the great NASA scientist, James Hansen, and the others who were working and warning at the time, had been believed. Instead of had a group of professional deniers decided to muddy the waters, and look where we are today.

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Asma, we know from research and psychology that a person is more likely to be swayed or taken in by a story that resonates with their pre-existing bias. So you do something legit. Somebody else finds a thread that agrees with someone's bias, and rather than have the evidence matter. And so, what do you, how do you, how do we resolve this? Not only as a consumer of journalism, but journalists themselves. How do you address the fact that there are other journalists presenting disinformation and people as well? Journalists and people.

• 10:56Eugene Mirman?

  Journalisty people?

• 10:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Journalists and journalist-y people.

• 11:00Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Trying to put disinformation about climate change as an example.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  Right. So in this case, I think that it often comes down to finding characters that they might, that might resonate with them. So depending on who the sort of, if you were to look at the demographics of deniers, and to understand maybe some of the communities they come from, right? And you're looking at a climate challenge, or looking at whether it's a weather phenomenon, or something else, and some kind of a problem, whether that's a flood, or something else, and really telling a story well about what happened to an individual person. And that, that is one way to do it. Another is to speak in their terms, right? Use language that doesn't necessarily completely veer them away from what you're doing, because it rings of, you know, what they associate with people who

• 11:49Speaker 03

  are climate pushers.

• 11:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're, not to put words in your mouth, but are you suggesting that in the case of the disinformation people, you should study them the way you would study any other culture?

• 12:00Speaker 03

  I think you should.

• 12:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How to get in and to be able to communicate.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  Well, I think journalists in that case should actually be, should actually be doing, doing stories on climate deniers. They should actually try to investigate the lobby in place, understand how they put out that disinformation. And the PBS series Frontline did a great film called Climate of Denial that did just that, looking at these deniers. Now, the question is, how do you get people to pay attention to that? And that's really where narrative and good storytelling come into play.

• 12:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's an antidote to bad journalism, basically?

• 12:33Speaker 03

  It's true.

• 12:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Eugene.

• 12:35Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah?

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you seen bad journalism out there?

• 12:37Eugene Mirman?

  I've, I've seen it, and I thought I'd actually create a test for our expert, and to watch this clip and see how many examples

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A test, okay, okay, sure.

• 12:44Eugene Mirman?

  of bad journalism she can see in this clip.

• 12:47Speaker 04

  Breaking news, this just in. We are hearing reports that Russia is planning on launching a missile at the United States. We go to Brian Fingerbottom on the scene. Brian, how likely is Russia to follow through with these attacks?

• 13:00Speaker 05

  Well, I'm not going to speculate, Sarah, but it's 32.2% likely. Here's a graph showing a correlation in the decrease of Russian missile attacks and an increase in graphs on TV.

• 13:12Speaker 04

  And where are you getting these numbers from, Brian?

• 13:14Speaker 05

  We got most of our numbers from India sometime around the 5th century. But my anonymous source, Vlad Kasparov of the secret Russian Missile Attack Agency, tells me that this whole thing is just a big misunderstanding and that we should absolutely not worry about our seven most populated cities.

• 13:31Speaker 04

  I see. Do you have any other experts we could consult on this very urgent matter?

• 13:36Speaker 05

  I do. Let's go to Natalia Reagan. Natalia, you're a primatologist, so what can you tell us about ballistic missile launch trajectories? I study monkeys. Thank you, Natalia. Natalia clearly confirming that there will not be a missile launch. There is some activity going on here, but what it is, we won't be able to determine for some time. But no need for alarm, as any launched missile would burn up in the atmosphere because mercury is in retrograde.

• 14:05Speaker 04

  That is reassuring, Brian.

• 14:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Asma, you are now tasked with listing what was wrong with the journalism in that report.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  I don't think we have enough time, but I'll do my best. Well, let's start with the very first thing she said. "We're hearing reports of..."

• 14:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 14:24Speaker 03

  "No source, no effort to try to verify that." She tosses it off to the reporter. The reporter, who in this case immediately says he doesn't want to speculate, proceeds to with a very specific statistic that he does not cite the source of, proceeds to show us graphs in which he confuses correlation and causation.

• 14:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good.

• 14:46Speaker 03

  And then went on to consult an expert who said that they had no expertise in the subject. He then manipulated her words to fit his narrative, contradicted what was behind him. It could go on and on and on.

• 14:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So Krishan Amanpour, she's known for her journalistic integrity. And she also voiced the character of Enheduanna in a science series that I knew something about called Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.

• 15:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So I asked her about her her interest in science and where that where she might trace those origins. Because it's, I would just like no one because I'm a science geek. And if there's a little bit of geek in somebody, I want to get to the bottom of it. I try to right here. Check it out.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  One of my earliest heroes, without me really understanding what a hero was at that time, was when I was woken up at the crack of dawn. I don't even really remember what time it was because I was in England and Neil Armstrong was on the moon. I can't remember what time, you know, GMT that was. But I do remember my mother and my grandfather waking me up and sitting me down beside the television, black and white, to watch that. And I remember, you know, even today, it kind of brings almost tears to my eyes to imagine that humankind was able to break those barriers and breach those frontiers. And, and somebody, a human being, was actually walking on the moon and planting a flag and, and that whole, you know, one small, you know, step, one giant leap. I've never forgotten it.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  I've never forgotten that moment, ever, ever, ever. And it is still, you know, it gives my imagination these flights of fancy. For a moment there, I thought I wanted to be the first woman to walk on the moon. But of course, that never happened because it just didn't, obviously. But I really did.

• 16:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, up, up next, we will discuss the risks of reporting from a war zone when StarTalk returns.

• 17:05Speaker 06

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

• 17:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to Start Off from the American Museum of Natural History. We're featuring my interview with longtime war correspondent Christiane Amanpour. And I asked her about the dangers of reporting from the front lines. Check it out. Going in the middle of war zones, what is the... How much are you risking your life, your health, your well-being?

• 17:46Speaker 02

  Everything, everything. All of those things are at risk, but we do it knowingly. Most of us know what we're putting ourselves on the line for.

• 17:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I went to the News Museum in DC and there's a whole memorial to dead journalists.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Well, yes, because there are a lot of us. And I tell you one thing.

• 18:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Journalists died in the line of duty.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  Indeed, and hearing the President of the United States call us fake news enables those malevolent actors out there who want to kill us and who want to shut down The Messenger to do precisely that. That's why I'm so upset about the President and his view on news and independent and free journalism. But going into the field is something that we understand comes with a very profound danger and more and more danger, more and more sophisticated danger, more and more sophisticated and brutal ways of doing away with us. As we've seen ISIS, you know, with the throat cutting and all the rest of it. No longer are we just caught in the crossfire. Now we are deliberately targeted. So that's very, very dangerous.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  And that's why we find it so important. And, you know, if you're not going out there to be serious, don't go out there because it could cost you your life. And so that's why I'm so, so serious and attached to the mandate, which is to seek the truth and to seek the facts. Because we put our lives at risk and on the line in order to go there, which is why I then hate being called the enemy of the people because we are actually serving the people, those people who cannot get up for whatever reason of their own free will and accord to go to wherever, the war zones. We're their eyes and ears. We are their eyes and ears. And we perform that vital function, I think. But I do also think that one of the flip sides

• 19:28Speaker 02

  to all this violence and conflict and war is that I have seen shine through, and this is what keeps me going, the indomitable nature of the human spirit, the incredibly inspirational reality of people even at war.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Who can manage somehow, maybe their family members, maybe their friends or whatever, somehow manage to understand the story of the other, to still want to build the bridges, to not want to live in endless conflict, and who even throughout the worst, worst moments of their wars are dreaming and thinking about the possibility of how to one day again live together. I find that war forces you, if you have half a brain and half a heart, to really focus on the story of the other. And that's what we don't get enough of in today's politics. You must be willing to hear and absorb the story of the other. You must have some kind of sympathy and empathy. Otherwise, if it's all about you, it's a zero-sum game.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  I win, you lose. That's not a negotiation. That's not a recipe for peace. It's a recipe for continued conflict.

• 20:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, okay. Joining us now to discuss reporting from war zones is conflict journalism expert Judith Matloff. Judith, welcome to StarTalk. You're a professor at Columbia School, Graduate School of Journalism, and you develop safety training for journalists around the world. And you have a recent book about conflict called No Friends But the Mountains, and it's subtitled Dispatches From the World's Violent Highlands. So you train journalistic safety. That's just... So how has the landscape shifted from covering the war in Vietnam, which we all saw, well, I'm old enough to remember seeing it on TV,

• 21:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  to journalists in Syria today? And are those risks the same? Are they different?

• 21:32Speaker 07

  Well, I think there is some very big differences. I mean, the big risk is always you might be killed or you might be arrested or you might be tortured or you might be maimed or you might be blown up in a landmine. Those are still there. Those are the constants. One major thing which is very different is the rise of freelancers. Because as major news organizations have either collapsed or they've contracted their foreign reporting bureaus, more freelancers have filled the vacuum. And it's very, very dangerous for them because they don't have the institutional backing.

• 22:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just so I hear, so a freelancer is not someone who's a rogue journalistic element. They're someone who sells you their stories. Because they went someplace that your bureau didn't send anybody.

• 22:16Speaker 07

  Right, and oftentimes, they do it on spec, which means that they're pushing the boundaries of safety. They will go into a very dangerous situation and a news organization will say, "Come back and show me what you have." So they will take incredible risks to get that story.

• 22:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uncompensated risks at the time they take the risk.

• 22:33Speaker 07

  Exactly, exactly.

• 22:35Eugene Mirman?

  That's a terrible business model.

• 22:38Eugene Mirman?

  But I understand why it exists.

• 22:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, so that's one major difference. Another major one is the rise of digital and mobile communications. Because this too puts us in much more dangerous situations because it increases the surveillance of ourselves, even of our movements. People can find out where we are at a given time.

• 22:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rogue elements.

• 22:59Speaker 07

  Rogue elements, or governments. For instance, the Russian government or the Chinese government. They know where you are oftentimes and where you're operating.

• 23:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But someone has to view you as some kind of an enemy rather than as someone who could tell their story.

• 23:14Speaker 07

  Right, like our president.

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, okay.

• 23:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so Ahmad, you reported recently on the war against ISIS in Iraq, both in Iraq and in Syria. So what precisely were you investigating?

• 23:30Speaker 03

  I was looking at civilians who were dying in US-led coalition airstrikes. And so, over the last two, almost three years now, I've been visiting the sites of airstrikes in Iraq. And for a particular New York Times Magazine investigation, I went to the sites of 103 airstrikes in three areas formerly held by ISIS, just to understand who was dying in them. And what I found was that... Civilians were dying at a rate, at least in these areas, which is likely an undercount of civilian death, at a rate that's 31 times higher than what the US military claims when it puts out its statistics about its airstrikes being the most precise in the history of aerial warfare.

• 24:14Eugene Mirman?

  Did you say they're 31 times wrong?

• 24:17Speaker 03

  31 times higher than what the US government claims, and it's likely an undercount for many reasons.

• 24:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At any time, did you fear for your life? Or is this post-attacks? And so you're there rummaging in the rubble with others?

• 24:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I often am afraid while I'm doing my reporting. And I actually think that being fearful is what can help keep me safe, to always feel that way at different moments makes me more observant.

• 24:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Biologically natural to not want to die, yeah.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  Yes, no, it's a strong feeling that grips me. But, you know, I can think of moments where I did fear. There was an area that was recently retaken from ISIS. It was the last ISIS stronghold in Iraq. It's called Hawija. And I had been obsessed with Hawija for years. Plot, wanted to get there, it wasn't safe to go. It still wasn't, I wasn't sure how safe it would be. I made these plans and I was terrified. This was a place that had been, played such a historic role in the rise of ISIS. And honestly, it was the easiest trip I'd taken in all of my reporting in Iraq. It wound up, I just flew through checkpoint. I have no idea why, but I think the more fearful I am, oftentimes, the more precautions and preparation I do.

• 25:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jude, what can journalists do to handle these kinds of situations?

• 25:35Speaker 07

  Well, first of all, you can avoid them.

• 25:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, sure, number one, stay home, yeah.

• 25:39Speaker 07

  But that's not our job.

• 25:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stay home, yeah.

• 25:42Speaker 07

  You do your preparation beforehand, you do your research. So you do what we call a risk assessment. You speak to as many people as you can who've been there or who are looking at the situation. And you identify what the biggest dangers are. And then you work backwards from the worst-case scenario and try to mitigate that risk. Well, let's say your biggest risk is, as what happened to me in Dagestan, in a Muslim Republic of Russia. The biggest risk at that point was being arrested by the government. So I had to think about how I was going to avoid that. And that's where the surveillance comes in.

• 26:19Eugene Mirman?

  How do you avoid being arrested?

• 26:20Speaker 07

  Well, I was arrested, so I didn't.

• 26:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would fail.

• 26:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, that was a risk analysis that kind of didn't go the right way. The other big risk.

• 26:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So your risk assessment was accurate? Yes.

• 26:31Speaker 07

  The risk assessment was accurate, the steps I took didn't necessarily mitigate it, but I did my research. Then another big risk was at that time, the extremists were blowing up establishments that sold alcohol. So you look at the risks and you try to work backwards. Another thing you do is you try to figure out what your escape routes are gonna be. You try not to go into one place where there's only like one way to get out.

• 26:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just the backdoor plan.

• 26:58Speaker 07

  The backdoor plan, yeah, Plan B. Always want a Plan B.

• 27:01Eugene Mirman?

  So that and stay at places with speakeasies.

• 27:05Eugene Mirman?

  Got it?

• 27:05Speaker 07

  Right, yeah. Not too many in Dagestan, but note to south.

• 27:09Eugene Mirman?

  That you know of?

• 27:10Speaker 07

  That I know of, that's true.

• 27:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So right now, it's time for Cosmic Queries, yes?

• 27:15Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 27:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got questions about the science of reporting from the frontlines. So I've got the two of you here to help us answer these questions, because I'll be helpless in this part.

• 27:27Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 27:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hit it.

• 27:29Eugene Mirman?

  JJZ112 asks, "What precautions do you take for cellphone use?" Do you take any?

• 27:37Speaker 07

  I don't want to give too much information, because I don't want my secrets to be given up here, but you would encrypt your communications.

• 27:45Eugene Mirman?

  Do you want to give us more details? Just kidding.

• 27:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So get a burner phone or something?

• 27:50Speaker 07

  You would get a burner phone that you would throw away, or you would limit your cell communications.

• 27:55Eugene Mirman?

  You're also really set up to sell drugs.

• 27:59Eugene Mirman?

  J. Clark from Virginia asks, "How much protection does a bulletproof vest and helmet actually give you?" And I-

• 28:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've always wondered about that.

• 28:09Eugene Mirman?

  Well, I can show you.

• 28:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you got a helmet?

• 28:10Eugene Mirman?

  I brought it with me.

• 28:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 28:12Eugene Mirman?

  From my yoga instructing in the war zone.

• 28:16Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, so I'm assuming people shoot from the top. And no one ever tries to go for the face, so that's nice of people.

• 28:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so Judith, come on, your face is exposed. So what is this, this is heavy.

• 28:31Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, but once they see that it says press on you, wow, this is really heavy.

• 28:34Speaker 07

  That's very heavy.

• 28:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so I never understood, okay, so this protects your vital

• 28:41Speaker 07

  It protects.

• 28:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chest organs, but not your face, which I count as a vital organ. So is this really just to protect against debris rather than a bullet?

• 28:50Speaker 07

  And bullets as well. And the flak jackets have different degrees of strength. So some of them will protect against certain weaponry and others not. You know, it's heavy, you have to actually train to walk and run in those. But I have had friends that have died with a helmet because a bullet. It was slightly freaky, but a bullet went up there. And I have had friends who've died because the bullets went in the side. They're not, they won't protect every part of your body, but they'll obviously protect you from a lot.

• 29:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So your alternative is just not go at all, as you said earlier, just stay home. And then no one learns about anything.

• 29:24Speaker 07

  Or you go, you know, you can also do long distance reporting. For instance, there were quite a lot of revelations about Russian troops being in Ukraine that were, well, it's done purely off of social media.

• 29:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know what you mean.

• 29:38Speaker 07

  I mean, you can actually do quite a lot of investigative work at a distance.

• 29:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got this. The journalist drones.

• 29:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this command central, and you put drones anywhere in the world. And you put them in and they become your eyes and ears as journalists.

• 29:52Eugene Mirman?

  We'll call them satellites and we'll put them in space.

• 30:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Judith, thank you for joining us tonight on StarTalk.

• 30:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Up next, Christiane Amanpour shares how she convinced a member of the Taliban to sit down for an interview when StarTalk returns.

• 30:18Speaker 06

  This is StarTalk.

• 30:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back. StarTalk. American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. We're featuring my interview with international news correspondent Christiane Amanpour. And I asked about some of the cultural challenges that she faced around the world. Let's check it out.

• 30:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We know there are men out there, especially men in power, who run stuff. In other cultures, occasionally in our culture, but especially in other cultures, where why is a woman interviewing me? I need a man who... I don't care what her credentials are, she's a woman. You know there are cultures where this is the attitude.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  I've been there.

• 31:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, how do you get through that?

• 31:09Speaker 02

  By not taking that nonsense and not dealing with it, you know? I'm just like, "Excuse me, what? No, I'm the interviewer, we're gonna do it." I'll give you a perfect example. Afghanistan, at the beginning of the Taliban. So, there is nothing more patriarchal and religious and a little whacked out than the Taliban when it comes to women.

• 31:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  But because of their interpretation of religion, they decided that A, they didn't want to be interviewed because they don't believe in television. Remember, they don't believe in television. And certainly, they didn't believe in a woman engaging with them. But I convinced them. I convinced this leader in this particular town where they had just stormed up from Pakistan and were beginning to take over Afghanistan. This is 1996. And so, how we negotiated this interview was that, you know, here I was, but the camera was... They insisted that the camera be focused not on the gentleman's face, but on... The vase of plastic flowers on the glass table that was, you know, at his knees.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  So we did that, and then we broadened it a little bit, the shot, to see his hands and things like that. But it became a very memorable interview, very memorable because of the complete weirdness of the unscientific evolution of this person's brain, and who did not want to have anything to do with my gender or the technology that is television. That too was verboten for the Taliban.

• 32:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's surreal.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, and I had two whammies against me, right? I was a woman and I was a television journalist, but we got it.

• 32:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Asma, have you experienced things like what she described with the Taliban? I mean, with anybody?

• 32:56Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I mean, I've interviewed warlords, clerics, mullahs, people who were ISIS, but I didn't realize it at the time until I did a little bit more digging.

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is the goal to get the interview no matter what it takes?

• 33:08Speaker 03

  No, I mean, your safety comes first. I do believe that, you know, not taking no for an answer has been critical to a lot of my work. But of course, I mean, if your safety is at risk, that's when, you know, you may have to let go.

• 33:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Christiane, she's famous for scoring interviews that nobody else can get. I have to ask her what her secret is. Check it out.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  I think the secret is authenticity and that they know me. I've been doing this in their backyard.

• 33:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got a rep?

• 33:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically, and I like it. I like the rep. That I've been doing this since the first Gulf War. My career essentially, you know, became public.

• 33:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  First Gulf War in 1991.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, 90 to 91. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, and in 91, the war against him started.

• 33:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's where CNN really...

• 33:59Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 34:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really...

• 34:00Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 34:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Made a presence.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, sort of exploded into the American, you know, living room, but also around the world. It's where CNN truly went global.

• 34:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did the president at the time say, ask, "Well, how did you learn this?" "Well, I saw it on CNN."

• 34:12Speaker 02

  Yes, we had plenty of ads that quoted all these leaders. And again, it was the first.

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  There was no Al Jazeera, there was no BBC World Television, there was no Fox News, there was no MSNBC, there was CNN, period, end of story.

• 34:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Asma, can you reflect on the importance of CNN's presence in that first Gulf War as a moment on the journalism timeline?

• 34:41Speaker 03

  It was a game changer for people to be able to watch war unfold in real time and to come from an authority that was first at the scene, before your government, before others, before intelligence agencies.

• 34:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because in the Vietnam coverage, it wasn't in real time. We saw the footage, but it was delayed. And so that's an important difference that you're saying.

• 35:01Speaker 03

  Absolutely. There was an urgency to it. And I would almost liken it to the way in which, in terms of being a game changer, to the sort of contemporary instance in which people are sharing via smartphones, you know, as bombs are dropping in Syria in real time. We actually have more access to what's happening on the ground than we ever have in the past.

• 35:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, up next, we discuss how technology shapes the landscape of news when StarTalk returns.

• 35:39Speaker 08

  Hey, we'd like to give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons: Francois Fraser, Dan Yoder, and John Ward. Thanks, guys, for helping us make our trek through the cosmos. And if you would like to get a Patreon shout out, go to patreon.com and support us.

• 35:58Speaker 06

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

• 36:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. We're featuring my interview with international news icon Christiane Amanpour. And Christiane has covered events around the world since the 1980s. And I asked how important technology has been across all that time. Let's check it out.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  Technology is fundamental. From the very beginning, where we used to go out with these massive cases, you know, 20, 30 cases, full of huge satellite equipment. Of course, it all collapsed down and got smaller and smaller, and more and more mobile and manageable. So it is what has allowed us to keep broadcasting in, you know, ever further distances, where you can tell stories now from places that you could never get to before.

• 36:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that worried me, that maybe parts of the world, things were happening, either good or bad, and no one knew about it.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You couldn't get a journalist in there to report.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  I mean, that's true. So I think, in one way, we have managed to have an impact on the world, because, as we say in this sort of cliché, we've shone the light into the dark corners. Oxygen is the antiseptic, right, of all the evils and horrible things that go on in the world. But on the other side, I think also, technology has had a limiting impact in that it's made things come at you so fast, and at such warp speed, and so quickly. And the cycle moves on and moves on.

• 37:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Warp speed, I caught that, that's good.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, there you go, warp speed.

• 37:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're good.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Got it.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  Light years.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  That you don't have time

• 37:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Overload.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  to digest and to stay with something that we need to do. We can't solve all these dreadful issues, or really understand what's going on, whether it's politics, or whether it's grave violations of, you know, international law and order. You can't do it unless you're ready to think in complex ways, to think that you can spend time trying to work it out.

• 38:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Eugene, you think smartphones are feeding us too much news?

• 38:16Eugene Mirman?

  Mostly social media, because it's all just upsetting loops. Regular news is fine, it's a little upsetting.

• 38:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I think the next generation, they've only ever known smartphones, so they don't think it's going too fast.

• 38:26Eugene Mirman?

  They don't know that they're... Yeah, but they're all upset. There was just a thing today that all people under some age are all upset.

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and anxious.

• 38:33Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, and anxious. Like 90% of millennials are anxious. So maybe they kind of know that it's a problem.

• 38:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Osmat, what's your take on news being shaped by technology?

• 38:44Speaker 03

  So, I mean, it has its strengths and it has its weaknesses in so many ways. Like the smartphone technology I mentioned earlier. We're getting pictures and portraits from the ground. I don't think we would have the lens on police violence or allegations of police abuse that we have today if it were not for ordinary citizens, you know, using their phones to share that information quickly. At the same time, we are now living in a world in which there are echo chambers, in which you're bombarded with pieces of information every minute, every second. And it's very easy to lose the big picture, to understand these systems and these long-term structures that underlie fundamental problems of our society.

• 39:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I asked Christian about the rise of social media as a force on journalism. Let's check it out.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Suddenly, the dialogue has been taken over by this thing called social media. We don't even know really who these people are, but there's corners of outrage. There's professional destroyers on social media. There are people who, you know, shut down a debate or exacerbate a debate. So, you know, for every good aspect of social media, there are probably about, maybe 10 negative aspects?

• 39:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  10 to 1. That's bad. So...

• 40:01Speaker 02

  What do you think?

• 40:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, but does that mean everyone with social media and everyone has a video camera, does that dilute the potency of a professional journalist?

• 40:12Speaker 02

  In a way, yes, but in a way, no. In a way, yes, because of the obvious nature of everyone. Having something, it makes it, you know, less special and less unique. But on the other hand, on the other hand, people, I think, I observe right now in this era that we live in of maximum political dysfunction, of populism, of partisanship, of poisonous...

• 40:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tribalism.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  Tribalism and the inability to have dialogue and the inability to get out of your own echo chamber. So, in a way, right now, people are looking to the established...

• 40:48Speaker 02

  You know, established media, whether it's the New York Times, whether it's CNN, whether it's all the others that are doing incredibly well right now, rising to the occasion, understanding that we stand between, you know, them and the deluge, essentially.

• 41:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  We are a vital pillar of civil society, and I'm not being arrogant about it. That is what makes a democracy. The difference between a democracy and dictatorship is the difference between truth and lies, the difference between a free and independent press and a propaganda machine.

• 41:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll just end the show right there. I don't know what we can add to that. Well, up next, I asked journalist Christiane Amanpour how she would have handled an interview with Adolf Hitler when StarTalk returns.

• 41:40Speaker 06

  This is StarTalk.

• 41:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. We're featuring my interview with international news correspondent, Christiane Amanpour. And I asked how the press should present the atrocities of war. For example, how would she have handled an interview with Adolf Hitler? Check it out.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  First and foremost, we are not megaphones, and we are not platforms, and we don't give free advertising to anybody. We're not anybody's paid political consultants. We're not their campaign managers. We're not their advertising agency. We are people who have learnt a lot, studied a lot, been around a lot, hopefully, who understand the complexity, who don't reduce everything to simple lowest common denominator. And it is absolutely up to us to understand what we are engaged in. If something of that horror and of that evil is sitting in front of any one of us, we have to know what we're dealing with. It's not just another point of view. In fact, I was criticised very heavily by many of my own colleagues

• 42:53Speaker 02

  during the Bosnia war. That was my... Signal career making coverage, covering the Bosnia war. Bosnia. Remind me, within the nineties? Bosnia was, was what, racked Europe apart during the nineteen nineties? Nineties, right. Where the former Yugoslavia split up and the strongest group wanted to survive alone and strongest. That was the, the Serbs in general. When it came to Bosnia, they waged a campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the other ethnic groups, most of whom were Muslim. So you had these white Christians ethnically cleansing and committing human rights abuses,

• 43:32Speaker 02

  violating international humanitarian law, genocide against Muslims in order to pursue their political agenda and their territorial cleansing. They wanted to get the territory and they. And purify the territory. Correct. I told the truth in this war, which was that. I never said that, that each had, you know, an equal but opposite point of view. I never, ever drew a false moral equivalence. But it was only when I was criticized for taking sides that I understood what I was doing and what I was there to do. And that was to report the truth. And the truth is, is, is right in front of you.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  And reporting the truth does not mean creating neutrality, a false neutrality. It's not either or. It's not. We have to be cognizant and aware of what it is that we're confronted with. So to your question about Hitler, I asked my critics, I said, so if I was reporting during World War Two and I had gone to a concentration camp or I had sat in front of Hitler and heard what you just said, would I have said, oh yeah, I must give this Adolf guy his say, you know, he's got a point? Well, now we hear the other side's point. No, that's, that's danger. That's real danger.

• 44:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Asma, what do you teach your students about truth and neutrality in journalism?

• 45:04Speaker 03

  You know, you're not here to make false equivalence. You're not here to give two opposing views equal weight. It's your job as a journalist to take every piece of information that you can and try to understand what is truth and what is not, and to convey that accordingly.

• 45:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, my buddy, Bill Nye the Science Guy, sent in his own dispatch on the power of journalism in a world at war. Let's check it out.

• 45:31Bill Nye?

  Since humans first walked the earth, there has been conflict. Neighbor against neighbor, tribe against tribe, country against country.

• 45:42Bill Nye?

  We've applied enormous intellect and treasure to build deadly machines of war. But I claim that even the most powerful mechanized cavalry will be ultimately brought down by good journalism. The pen is mightier than the sword. Good journalists and their crews go into war zones as warplanes streak overhead and the rattle of gunfire can be heard in the distance so that you can learn what they've learned about the struggles of our time. So to the journalists and their crews, I say, "Thank you, and be safe out there."

• 46:18Bill Nye?

  Back to you, Neil.

• 46:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think at the heart of this is, what do we do about truth? Who establishes it? Who reports it? Who consumes it? And I've thought a lot about this concept of truth.

• 46:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what I've done is I've divided sort of the world of truth into three regimes. One of them is a personal truth. This is something that you feel is true, and you don't care what anybody else says about it. So what kinds of truths are those? These would include religious truths. So if Jesus is your savior in this country, no one will take that away from you. That's a personal truth. If Muhammad is your last prophet on earth, that is your personal truth. Okay, we have laws that protect that.

• 47:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What other kind of truths might there be? Oh, there's, let me call it a political truth. This is a truth that becomes true in your head because of how many times it has been repeated. This is particularly potent in politics. That's how people get you to vote for them. They repeat something endlessly.

• 47:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's another kind of truth, however,

• 47:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  an objective truth. The entire enterprise of science is conceived and designed to establish objective truths. These are things that are true whether or not you believe in them.

• 48:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They are true no matter the state of your sensory system. They're true no matter how you feel about it.

• 48:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So journalism, if it's reporting on people and places and things, yes, it should know about people's personal truths. Yes, yes. But if your personal truth now infringes on someone else's personal truth and there's conflict there, somebody should call that out. You're taking your personal truth and imparting it on someone else's personal truth.

• 48:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a different kind of report from saying this person is right and that person is wrong.

• 48:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because really, at the end of the day,

• 48:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the methods and tools of science are uniquely conceived to know what is right and what is wrong.

• 48:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything else becomes opinion.

• 49:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And diversity of opinion is diversity of culture. We want that. We need that.

• 49:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you hate someone because their opinion differs from yours, that's a problem. And what we heard tonight, I greatly value. I cherish the idea that you're after truth. You're not after balance. Two things aren't balanced if one of them is objectively false.

• 49:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Someone says Earth is flat. You don't say, "Well, I gotta give them half the column inches" in the article because they have a different view. We live in a time when people don't understand the differences among these truths.

• 49:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And scientists, we do our little part. But at the end of the day, it's on the backs of the journalists to fix their house.

• 49:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And understand what it is to report, and what is and is not true in this world. That is a cosmic perspective.

• 49:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been watching StarTalk.

• 50:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. And as always, I bid you to keep looking up.