A Conversation with Dan Aykroyd (Part 1)

Neil deGrasse Tyson chats with Dan Aykroyd on topics as varied as the science of humor, Earth’s molten core and the birth of the Blues, with a little help from Chuck Nice and astrophysicist Charles Liu.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson and I'm here with my co-host Chuck Nice.

• 0:27Chuck Nice?

  Hey Neil.

• 0:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you've been here like a zillion times in like the last month.

• 0:31Chuck Nice?

  You know.

• 0:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 0:32Chuck Nice?

  I'm not complaining, are you?

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And whenever we have like an interesting subject where we need like a man about town who knows everything about everything, I bring in my friend and colleague astrophysicist Charles Liu. Yes.

• 0:44Charles Liu?

  It is a pleasure Neil.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuckie baby.

• 0:46Charles Liu?

  Hey Chuck, good to see you.

• 0:47Chuck Nice?

  Hey Chuck, how are you buddy?

• 0:48Charles Liu?

  I'm well.

• 0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so what we've got here for this show is it's a conversation with Dan Aykroyd.

• 0:54Chuck Nice?

  Oh yes.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Dan Ayk... there's only one, Dan Aykroyd.

• 0:57Chuck Nice?

  Dan Aykroyd.

• 0:58Charles Liu?

  The Blues Brother.

• 0:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Blues Brother, a Blues Brother, a founding member of the Not Ready for Primetime Players.

• 1:05Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Saturday Night Live, been in all kinds of movies. So he came to my office, visited me, I whipped out the mic and I said, "I'm not letting this go by."

• 1:13Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "We're gonna talk and I'll go put it on StarTalk." So, I just, just to remind you, he's, what are some of his other movies you remember?

• 1:21Charles Liu?

  Let's see, how about Spies Like Us?

• 1:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it just goes on.

• 1:24Charles Liu?

  How about My Stepmother is an Alien?

• 1:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And who's gonna forget Trading Places?

• 1:28Chuck Nice?

  Trading Places.

• 1:29Charles Liu?

  And...

• 1:29Chuck Nice?

  Mortimer? Feeling good. Feeling good Mortimer?

• 1:33Charles Liu?

  And Driving Miss Daisy, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.

• 1:38Chuck Nice?

  He was the son, he was the son in Driving Miss Daisy.

• 1:40Charles Liu?

  Hired Morgan Freeman.

• 1:42Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's go to my first clip in my interview with him, because in that clip I just talked about the anatomy of a Saturday Night Live sketch, right? Cause it hadn't quite, you know, before then you had vaudeville and things, well what is the anatomy of that and how do, how do they make it work? Let's see.

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you say that there's a science of sketch comedy? Or is it from your gut?

• 2:06Speaker 03

  I think if you want to look at structure in comedy, where you're gonna find structure and science is more in the sitcom realm, because it's setup, delivery, punch, setup, delivery, punch. It's formulaic. In sketch comedy, it's less formulaic. It's more absurdist. You're never really sure of an ending, so you're not so conscious of bringing the scene to a peak, and then coming out of an anticlimax, and then finishing it on a climax. It's more where the writing and collaboration takes you. So it's less scientific and less formulaic, really. Sketch comedy is much more ephemeral.

• 2:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I also noticed that so much of it is in the setup, the humor in just the construct. Is that fair to say?

• 2:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, the concept of where you're starting out from would hopefully lead you in an organic sense. I think sketch comedy is much more organic than, say, structured film comedy.

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which I've done both.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. The sketch comedy, the improv is the purest. And the purest form is, of course, Second City.

• 2:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your roots.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  Yes. Second City is mercury rolling across the table and splitting up into little balls. And sitcom or film is more of a structured molecular picture where you're actually designing and confining things. There is no confinement in improv, and there's no confinement in sketch comedy. Sometimes we do scenes at SNL where there really was no ending. We could just keep going and going, and, you know, we'd decide, well, we gotta end it because in three minutes, they'd hit the applause button to end the thing. So it's much more open and free-form, and I would say, organic.

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how many comedians get to actually make that transition? Because it's not obvious that the improv is gonna sit down and write a whole movie.

• 3:33Speaker 03

  Again, you know, when you're doing structured television and film, you've gotta have some discipline there, and that means actually structuring and confining it. The only place where it's really free is in the improv stage at Second City, and that's where you can really, really soar. I was happy to be a part of that, and I'm happy to join people like Betty Thomas, Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Harold Ramis, who were hyphenates. They wrote, they performed, and then went on to take their skills and do great movies like Animal House and Groundhog Day and projects like that, where he took the best of the improvisational world and then confined it and structured it in the world of film, so that there was a beginning, middle, and end.

• 4:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there any coincidence that one of the most popular children's programs of all time, Sesame Street, is basically structured like SNL?

• 4:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's sketches.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  It's sketches, but yeah.

• 4:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no plot, there's no, it's just, let's have fun for three minutes.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, and don't demand too much, you know, you've got children there watching. You don't demand too much of them and you more try to entertain them, purely entertain them. And that's what the value of Sesame Street is, edutainment. But the value of SNL is pure entertainment, where you know, you're not really looking to sell a lesson, like a movie or a sitcom, for instance, or any hour TV show, those are the three major forms, an hour drama, a half hour sitcom, or a movie. There's always some kind of moral lesson that they're trying to put across. You're sort of in the end, you have to come out with some kind of view that, oh, these people are all right, or they weren't, you have to make a moral judgment. With sketch comedy, there may be lessons in Sesame Street, there were none in Saturday Night Live.

• 5:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got some important lessons from Saturday Night Live as a kid.

• 5:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles Liu, oh, that was your Sesame Street, is that right? I am who I am today because of that show, what can I say?

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Not bad.

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, you're the, you're the professional in the room here, so.

• 5:20Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 5:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Would you agree there's a science to comedy?

• 5:23Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As he was saying?

• 5:24Chuck Nice?

  Uh, without a doubt.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was, he was just deconstructing it all.

• 5:27Chuck Nice?

  He really did, I mean, uh, the one thing I will take issue with is the fact that he said.

• 5:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, you're taking issue with Dan Aykroyd?

• 5:33Chuck Nice?

  I, listen, sorry, Dan, I got.

• 5:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many movies you been in?

• 5:38Chuck Nice?

  Three, but that's okay.

• 5:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so go on.

• 5:42Chuck Nice?

  But the fact is that he said that, um, sketch is the purest, and I'm sorry, but stand-up is the purest. Stand-up is the purest form of comedy that there is. I'm sorry, Dan Aykroyd, because there is nothing there but you and a microphone. And you have to utilize that to create comedy. That's all you have. I'm not talking about prop comics.

• 6:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they exist too, they got a satchel.

• 6:07Chuck Nice?

  I know they exist.

• 6:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The satchel full, and, and, and who the, who's the one with the puppet, the, the? Ventriloquist.

• 6:14Chuck Nice?

  Ventriloquist, yeah, listen.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got a ventriloquist dummy?

• 6:17Chuck Nice?

  I do, I, uh, actually, no, my wife has a ventriloquist dummy. I take it back. I forget who I am sometimes. Wow. But the truth is that, no, stand-up is the purest form of comedy because all you have is you on a stage with your words, you know? And the science that he's, that he was talking about is, as you, you know, there is a science to a joke. And one of the things that, uh, that you'll find, and it's a mistake that many, uh, younger comics make, the longer the setup, the harder it is for you to get the payoff. So the shorter the setup, the bigger the payoff. That is, if it's funny. And, um...

• 6:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In other words, you can fall farther if you have a big setup and it doesn't hit.

• 6:56Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely, because you're, think of it as climbing a ladder and you gotta get to the payoff.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And ain't nothing on the other side. I'll probably be angry that I climbed the ladder.

• 7:03Charles Liu?

  Well, I can tell you something about the science of humor, not comedy, but humor.

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's that?

• 7:08Charles Liu?

  Well, a few years ago, a University of Michigan study, a scientist did some things with various malodorous chemicals and test subjects and proved that farts make everything funnier.

• 7:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 7:20Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, with farts or the sound of a fart?

• 7:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, because the actual smell of a fart actually doesn't make anything funnier.

• 7:27Charles Liu?

  That's just what the science says, folks.

• 7:29Chuck Nice?

  I think this guy was a freak who just liked, you know, mallow differer sense.

• 7:34Charles Liu?

  What can I say?

• 7:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it is true that SNL has avoided flatulent, uh, humor. It's whole, it's whole, from what I've seen.

• 7:41Chuck Nice?

  Good, because, you know, the...

• 7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you don't have to go there, even if it does work. It means you have to be clever to avoid it to still get someone to laugh.

• 7:48Charles Liu?

  Makes sense to me.

• 7:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, when we come back on our next segment of StarTalk, more of my conversation with Dan Aykroyd. In studio, check nice, Charles Lu. We'll be right back.

• 8:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Radio, featuring my in-office interview with Dan Aykroyd. And so, Chuck, I got you here with me because you're a professional comedian.

• 8:27Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 8:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I laugh at everything the man does.

• 8:30Chuck Nice?

  Uh, Dan Aykroyd or me?

• 8:34Chuck Nice?

  Both, both.

• 8:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, as I said, he's one of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live with Chevy Chase and Gilda Radner and the bunch. And he went on to star in movies like The Blues Brothers. It's one of those movies, if you're channel surfing.

• 8:49Chuck Nice?

  You have to stop.

• 8:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You stop.

• 8:51Chuck Nice?

  You have to.

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It doesn't matter what football game is on, doesn't matter, you stop.

• 8:55Chuck Nice?

  There's a law, there are laws of physics and there are laws of television watching. Coming across The Blues Brothers and stopping is a law of television watching.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a law, and not only that, Trading Places is up there with me as well. You know, you can't, can't argue with like Eddie Murphy.

• 9:09Chuck Nice?

  Once you had a man with no legs, you never go back. I love that.

• 9:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those men tried to have sex with me!

• 9:18Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I love it. I frickin' love that movie.

• 9:21Charles Liu?

  I feel like every member of Congress should see that movie at least once before they run for office, don't you think?

• 9:26Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 9:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I think members of Congress need to do much more than that.

• 9:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so we've got a clip, so Dan Aykroyd visited me in my office at the Hayden Planetarium and pulled out the mic and asked him everything I could, could come up with about comedy, about the science of comedy. And in this, in this next clip, I would just talk about the, so the timelessness of humor, just to find out, is there such a thing? And what, what can he do with it? And what can he do about it? Let's find out.

• 9:57Speaker 03

  I always operated on the premise that if I could make myself laugh, then that's one human being that could laugh.

• 10:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a start.

• 10:04Speaker 03

  You know, be it a thousand, 10,000 years ago, or now, or 20,000 years in the future, one human being laughs, maybe you can get five to laugh. And if five laugh, maybe 15, and maybe 50, and maybe 500, and maybe 5,000. So I, I always just trusted.

• 10:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a lesson in powers of 10.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just, yeah. Look, everybody has a sense of humor. Everybody, and so much so that the federal government of the United States has had to put posters in airports saying, "Do not joke about knives, or guns, or bombs. We know you, human, have a propensity to humor. We know you like to joke. Well, this is one thing you cannot joke about is a bomb, or we will pull you aside to talk about." There's a sort of a recognition right there, a federal recognition of the universality of humor.

• 10:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if I can be like fanboy here and comment on a scene in Trading Places that my wife noticed after the party, at the party in the in the townhouse.

• 11:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that Eddie Murphy hosts, was his character's name William.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  Billy Ray.

• 11:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Billy Ray, okay. Uh, after the party, and he says, get the F out.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, the very next scene is the butler's holding all the jackets. Because it's the winter, it's Christmas time. And one by one, as they exit, they pulled the top jacket off of the pile.

• 11:24Speaker 03

  Uh-huh.

• 11:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So everyone exited in jacket order.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  Ah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  The film was written by Weingrad and Harris. To my knowledge, they have never written another movie that's been made or that's been a hit. And they wrote it on the fax machine. Uh, one of them lived in LA and one of them lived in Michigan. And they basically wrote one of the greatest American comedies without seeing each other.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  This is my understanding.

• 11:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  I had nothing to do with the writing of the film at all. I did have something to do with the title. I forget what they, it wasn't called Trading Places originally. But Mike Eisner and I were sitting in a car in Manhattan trying to come up with a title for this movie. And we're going back and forth and, and I was saying, the trade. And he said, Trading Places. I said, hey, that's why you sit where you are and why I sit where I am. Everybody liked it and.

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's clean and simple.

• 12:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And Eddie Murphy, of course, great young talent at that time, uh, with his vibrancy and intelligence.

• 12:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Second movie.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  Instincts, uh, coming off SNL was, was just superb in it. There has been talk of a sequel, which I would love to pursue because if you look at where finances are in the world today, all these mechanizations and peregrinations of derivative financing that goes on.

• 12:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Science of trading.

• 12:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the bogus science of trading and all the perfidy that goes on, the malfeasance and misfeasance. You could really, really do a great expose of financial perfidy through the Trading Places filter. However, we have to interest Eddie in that and Paramount Pictures.

• 12:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  I'm interested.

• 12:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And of course, we all remember the scene in Coming to America, where you've got the Duke brothers as homeless people.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the sidewalk.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  Well, that's Landis, John Landis, the brilliant director who directed both films.

• 13:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I like what he said. He said he wants, he, he's gotta be able to laugh at his, the joke. Otherwise, he, why would he believe anyone else would?

• 13:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that presupposes that he's got some representative sort of laugh genes for, for what everybody would find funny.

• 13:19Chuck Nice?

  You're absolutely right.

• 13:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've seen comics who say jokes and nobody laughs. So clearly they thought somebody was gonna laugh.

• 13:24Chuck Nice?

  And that's exactly how it works. And this is, this is why you need an audience. This is why no one writes a joke and then gives it to somebody and says, this is a funny joke, man. Just go do this joke, cause it's funny. You need to test the joke out there. You know, there is a certain kinship to, uh, science and comedy in experimentation. Scientists find out results through experiments.

• 13:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it don't work, you change, you change the parameters.

• 13:52Chuck Nice?

  And you just described how comedy works on a, on a very base level. That's exactly all it is. You go out, man, I thought that was funny. Damn. You don't go, what's wrong with these people? That's funny. These people don't know jack crap. No.

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't know from funny.

• 14:09Chuck Nice?

  Right. They don't know from, no, it's, no, the, the, the results were not what you were looking for as, as the person conducting the experiment. And so what you do is you go back and you change the variables so that you can actually get the results that you desire, which is laughter.

• 14:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because in, in science, there are delusional scientists who keep trying to think that their experiment is gonna work.

• 14:29Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we call them alcoholics.

• 14:33Charles Liu?

  Well, we have kinder names for them too, Chuck. But really Chuck, my question is about timeless humor. Is there really such a thing? Or is all humor all about timing?

• 14:45Chuck Nice?

  It's both.

• 14:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Great, great question.

• 14:46Chuck Nice?

  That is a great question. And it is both. There is timeless humor, okay? Because there are certain mechanisms of humor that we get. Now, some of them are tied to culture, okay? For instance, it's been deemed that the best joke in the world ever written is Henny Youngman, "Take my wife, please."

• 15:04Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 15:05Chuck Nice?

  It works all the time because you, he told it.

• 15:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It worked before the Women's Lib movie.

• 15:10Chuck Nice?

  Right. But he, he told a story. He told an entire story in four words, okay? "Take my wife, please." You know everything you need to know about that marriage.

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 15:20Chuck Nice?

  And that's why it's funny. Um, you know, so there is a timelessness, but timing is everything. Without the right timing, you can't get the funny. That's all there is to it.

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you judge in the present whether something will be funny decades from now? Take for example, if you look at, I've, I've looked at the, the IM, what if somebody makes this list of IMF, the film people, they've got some app, some abbreviation, and they make the funniest films of all time.

• 15:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Some Like It Hot is on that list perennially, okay?

• 15:49Chuck Nice?

  Marilyn Monroe.

• 15:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With Marilyn Monroe and, and the two guys, um, uh, Jack, uh, who are they?

• 15:55Chuck Nice?

  Uh, it's Jack Lemmon.

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jack Lemmon, thank you.

• 15:57Chuck Nice?

  And, uh, go ahead, but yeah, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, that's the main characters.

• 16:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, and Tony Curtis, of course.

• 16:03Chuck Nice?

  That's it, Tony Curtis.

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that's always put back at the list, no matter who's making the list. Now, these aren't just people old enough to remember it, that people have seen it afresh.

• 16:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So...

• 16:11Chuck Nice?

  Well, the, the, the reason is because if you are dealing with anything that is human, human nature is timeless comedy, okay? Why do you think comedians who talk about their families and their children? Bill Cosby, one of the, one of the most beloved comics of all time.

• 16:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who never said a cuss word in his life.

• 16:31Chuck Nice?

  Never said a cuss word in his life, didn't have to because he's using subject matter that we all relate to. You know, it's, you know, "My kids, you see, my kids, I don't know what it is about the children." And my wife, Claire, I said to Claire, you know, and they came to Dad, this is great, he gave us the chocolate. It's like you get, the whole thing, you get.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You feel him.

• 16:54Chuck Nice?

  You feel it all.

• 16:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You feel it, you feel it.

• 16:56Chuck Nice?

  And anybody who's been a child, has a child, a brother or sister, an uncle, you get that. And so, human nature makes for timeless comedy.

• 17:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of my favorite lines of his, he talked about who's the stupidest person in his house is the father. Because he don't know where anything is, you ask him, he don't know where he had, he can't cook, he don't know.

• 17:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It goes down the list.

• 17:18Chuck Nice?

  It's down the list as to, and believe it or not, he gave rise to the oafish dad, which has become a sitcom stable.

• 17:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is.

• 17:25Chuck Nice?

  Where the dad is a complete and total oaf. Well, that came out of Bill Cosby going, you know, "I don't know anything, because I can't find my socks."

• 17:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, how long is Big Bang Theory gonna be funny?

• 17:37Charles Liu?

  Uh, well, I don't think it's funny anymore.

• 17:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I ended that.

• 17:41Charles Liu?

  Sorry.

• 17:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're done with that, Charles?

• 17:43Charles Liu?

  No, no, no, no, no. And, look.

• 17:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, wait, wait. In Big Bang Theory, they make something funny even if you don't know the science behind the humor. It's still funny to see the characters interact.

• 17:53Charles Liu?

  For that, I am willing to give it that, yes. But it's a little long in the tooth, don't you think? It's that whole timing timeless thing.

• 18:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except that it's number one sitcom on television. I don't know how long a tooth you're gonna describe it, if that's what you're gonna say it is.

• 18:05Charles Liu?

  Can't argue with that.

• 18:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't hate, Charles. Don't hate on it. When we come back, more of my interview with Dan Aykroyd, StarTalk on the science of humor.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Today, we're featuring my in-office interview with Dan Aykroyd. And I got in studio Chuck Nice. Hey, hey. And Charles Liu. Hey, Neil. Sometimes known as Chuck, I got two Chucks in the audience with me. Two Buck Chucks.

• 18:51Charles Liu?

  Two Chuck Buck.

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles was worth a little more than two bucks. Before we went to break, Charles, I just wanted to get your reactions on the Big Bang Theory.

• 18:58Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 18:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is the number one sitcom on television. So it caricatures geeky scientists, basically. So I want to ask you, what do you think about jokes that require that the whole, Chuck spoke earlier about the setup.

• 19:12Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 19:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you have a big setup, you gotta have a big payoff, otherwise you'll piss people off.

• 19:15Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 19:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's a lot of humor in science that I think is untapped.

• 19:19Charles Liu?

  No, it's so true.

• 19:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then you gotta prep people for it, so that they'd find out why it's funny.

• 19:23Charles Liu?

  Yeah, it's a matter of hitting close enough to home that you're sort of violating some safe zone, so it's like funny, it makes you laugh, but at the same time, you're not going too far.

• 19:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, what's your scientific safe zone?

• 19:35Charles Liu?

  Well, there was an episode of The Big Bang Theory where Stan Lee was featured in it, the comic book guy.

• 19:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The great comic book illustrator.

• 19:41Charles Liu?

  Now, it turned out that I collected comic books for a large portion of my childhood.

• 19:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then your parents threw them out when you went to college?

• 19:48Charles Liu?

  No, I have them all in my office.

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're worth a zillion dollars, right?

• 19:52Charles Liu?

  Uh, most of the stuff isn't worth the paper it's printed on anymore. But yes, there are a few. Nevertheless, I just remember watching that episode, or toward the end of that episode, and saying, "Oh, okay." But for some reason, it didn't get through my safe zone, didn't get through my comfort zone. I wasn't able to, like, say, "Hey, wow, that was something unusual," and made me laugh.

• 20:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I laugh every time, so it's just something wrong with you, I think.

• 20:15Charles Liu?

  I think so.

• 20:16Chuck Nice?

  See, I'm, this is a completely unrelated, but I have a scientific safe word, and it's Higgs boson. And that stops the beating when it gets a little out of hand.

• 20:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it sounds like the punchline of a joke.

• 20:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He thought he was a Higgs boson! Well, Dan Aykroyd's not only humor, he has a huge interest in the blues, as do I, except mine is more just, "I'll listen to stuff I like," and he's into it. And it wasn't just a passing interest with the Blues Brothers, as a Blues Brother. So let's just find out what he, just think about Aykroyd and blues. Say what he says. I love the blues, and if it comes on on the radio, now you can just go to a whole blues station on Sirius XM, of course, but in the old days, if there was a blues song that came on the radio, I'd have to pull over to the side of the road and just stop. Drink in emotion.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  My boot hits the accelerator when I hear a blues tune. If you look at what America's given the world, you can look at science, and you can look at culture, and art, and books, and movies, I think something that really connects to everybody is the roots of rock and roll and the roots of all music today, and that is blues music. Deriving directly from the slave ships coming over to the southern delta in the United States, the field haulers onto the front porches, harmonicas, cigar box, banjos.

• 21:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The anatomy of the genre.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the instrumentality of it, the wash tub, and then into church where the organ was put into it, and then back out to the juke joints where now the piano and the organ join with drums, and then the Spanish invented the electric pickup for the guitar, so you had all of a sudden now blues players plugging in, you know, the migration of black labor up through Memphis and into Chicago, and then finally sitting down in Chess Studios where you had it all coalesce together with Muddy Waters and the things he was producing where you had the Hammond B3 organ, the electric pickup, the electric harmonica, all of the things from the juke joints and from the fields coming in and being plugged in.

• 22:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's an American story.

• 22:19Speaker 03

  And it's an American story that's went out to the world, that produced British blues, Led Zeppelin, The Animals, The Beatles, The Stones, everything that's come out of Britain came out of that Chicago melting pot, that stew of blues music, and it is distinctly American. There are Norwegians who can play the blues, and I've jammed with them. There are Japanese people who can play the blues.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Norway and the blues, just those two words, I've never seen on the same sentence.

• 22:43Speaker 03

  There's a guy named Anders Osborne, he's a Swedish-born player, he lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, he is a great player. Anna Popovich is a Croatian player, and boy, can she play. But, you see, those countries where they come from, they did not originate blues music.

• 23:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they're imitating, and it's fine.

• 23:01Speaker 03

  It happened here, and it spread to the world, and it gave all of these people from Sweden and Norway and Japan a pleasure that they still live today, and that's distinctly from the American delta and from the African-American cultural experience.

• 23:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I have to tell you that when I heard James Taylor's Steamroller Blues, I couldn't feel him in that song. You know, there are moments when I love me some James Taylor, but I'm sorry, I can't turn to James Taylor for the blues.

• 23:29Speaker 03

  No, you might turn to him for other things, but you can turn to Eric Clapton for the blues, and there's a guy from Stepney, he was not a slave, and he was not a factory worker, but yet he is one of the greatest bluesmen of all time. It's in him, it's in him, and it came through his embrace of the blues culture that we get his gift today.

• 23:49Charles Liu?

  So you don't feel James Taylor's blues, Neil?

• 23:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry, what do you want?

• 23:55Charles Liu?

  It's like me in Big Bang Theory.

• 23:57Chuck Nice?

  No, no, no, no. I'd be very disappointed in Neil as a black man if he actually felt James Taylor for the blues. I'm just sorry. I hate to say it. I hate to break it down upon those lines.

• 24:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Charles, if your science isn't going straight, do you feel the blues a little? Do you feel like writing a blues song?

• 24:12Charles Liu?

  Oh, I love the blues.

• 24:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My experiment.

• 24:16Charles Liu?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Didn't work.

• 24:21Charles Liu?

  Oh, yeah, that's a common theme.

• 24:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back to StarTalk Radio, more of my interview with Dan Aykroyd. In studio, Chuck Nice and my friend and colleague, Charles Lewis will be right back.

• 24:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Radio. My interview with Dan Aykroyd. I think of him as an American icon, but of course, he's Canadian.

• 25:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just when you thought it was one of us.

• 25:06Charles Liu?

  Maybe he's an honorary Minnesotan.

• 25:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so he's into a lot of stuff. And one of them, he's like, he's a liquor distributor. He's into vodka.

• 25:16Charles Liu?

  Whoa.

• 25:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 25:17Charles Liu?

  I like him more and more.

• 25:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I love me some science of alcohol, but let's find out what he's all about here. I learned that you're responsible for this skull of liquor in every bar that I've been in in the last two years.

• 25:33Speaker 03

  Not enough bars.

• 25:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I love this. Who doesn't love a skull?

• 25:37Speaker 03

  The skull is based on the 13 crystal heads. 13 of them were supposed to have been ascribed to origins in Aboriginal culture. The Mayans, the Navajo, the Aztec were said to have had these crystal skulls, which were scrying devices. They were crystal balls they looked into to project the future of the tribe and...

• 25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of the Indiana Jones relics was a...

• 25:58Speaker 03

  Yes, it was the Mitchell Hedges skull and I know. Excuse me, had a name, excuse me. Yeah. It has a name. Yeah, Mitchell Hedges was the explorer whose granddaughter discovered the skull. Now, the woman at the Smithsonian who has two crystal heads, I believe she has a cloudy white one and a cloudy green one. She says they're all fakes, but you know, some that claim that they really are. Have Aboriginal origins and the Navajo and the Aztec and the Mayans said they came from the star children given to us. To give us guidance and in the Spielberg movie, of course, there was an extraterrestrial origin to them. What the legend did for us when serving our vodka, it helped us to underwrite. Our message of purity because many lesser expensive vodkas add the following things.

• 26:38Speaker 03

  I don't mention names, but many vodkas on the bar, if you open them up, they smell like Chanel number five and why is that? Because they add propylene glycol, which you know is a preservative and an antifreeze. They do that to produce an extra viscosity. We do not need that extra viscosity. Propylene glycol, that's like in every thick liquid you buy. You got it. In a cosmetics shop. We took that out of our vodka. The next thing they add is lemonine, which is a citrus oil, which is a bug exterminant or a caustic cleanser. They do that. To increase the sweetness. Well, we don't need that because we have peaches and creamed corn in our mash and that produces a natural sweetness. And then the other thing they add is sugar. All we have is H two O and then C two H five O six. That's it. That's the formula for crystal head. That would be water plus alcohol. Yes, and if you look. The simplest alcohol. It is simplest.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  Ethanol, ethanol. Yes, it's corn. Yes. Now, if you look. At the molecular equation for glycol, which I just mentioned and citrus oil and then sugar. You see a string that just goes way, way out to the end of the page. And I tell bartenders, why do you want that crap in there? You're making a Long Island Barcar martini. It doesn't call for citrus oil. Why not use a zero additive vodka? And that's what we have. Crystal head is cleanest vodka on the planet. It is a wellness product that has won quadruple medals. Wait, did I just hear you say, we have a wellness vodka?

• 27:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 27:55Speaker 03

  Boy, I could get in trouble for that.

• 27:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's in all the yoga spots. And of course, crystal event is the right word for it. I mean, the crystal spheres, before we understood gravity, planets were said to be orbiting in crystal spheres. And the reason why they were crystal is because they knew some were farther away than the others. And if they were embedded in a sphere, you had to be able to see through that sphere to get to the other spheres.

• 28:18Speaker 03

  Right.

• 28:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it had to be made of something transparent, hence the crystal spheres.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  Purity and clarity.

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  Now, at the heart of our planet, we know there's the mantle and there's the magma. Is there a crystal?

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no crystal.

• 28:31Speaker 03

  There's no crystal. What's there? Just a...

• 28:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  There's an iron sphere.

• 28:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's molten, but it's molten.

• 28:35Speaker 03

  It's molten, but it is a perfect iron sphere, right there in the center of our planet, right there.

• 28:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, but it's not magic that it's a sphere, because back when Earth was entirely molten, if you're heavy, you go to the middle.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're light, you float to the top. And so the heaviest stuff in town is the iron, platinum.

• 28:53Speaker 03

  But there's a symmetry, a total symmetry.

• 28:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it all goes to the center of this object. And gravity comes from every direction.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So gravity likes spheres.

• 29:02Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you're above a certain size, where the gravity is stronger than the strength of the rock, gravity will turn you into a sphere.

• 29:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's why all little things in the solar system look like Idaho potatoes. They're not big enough.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 29:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For their own gravity to turn them into a sphere.

• 29:19Speaker 03

  So at the core center of our planet, there's just that molten ball.

• 29:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's a sphere, and the moltenicity of it is what gives us our magnetic field.

• 29:25Speaker 03

  And in the center of that, there's nothing. It's just a molten.

• 29:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's just still, it's more molten.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  More, more, more, more.

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you want some diamond crystals.

• 29:32Speaker 03

  How about, we just walked into the museum today, and we saw the strybnite down in there.

• 29:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, oh yeah, isn't that, isn't that quite a thing? You want that to be down in the middle, yeah.

• 29:41Speaker 03

  And how about in Mexico, this crystal cave, where the structures are three to four to five feet across and 50 feet high.

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, because you need the empty space for the crystals to grow into.

• 29:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, right, yeah.

• 29:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so caves are great repositories of crystals. Yeah, the center of the Earth is too much weight above to think that we're gonna have empty space.

• 30:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My boy's talking about everything under the sun.

• 30:02Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here's, I just gotta say this, I gotta get it off my chest. I just love the fact that Neil kinda pointed out, when you open up a crystal head vodka, it smells just a tiny bit like BS.

• 30:14Chuck Nice?

  I couldn't help it, I'm sorry.

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you're listening to StarTalk Radio. We'll be back with my interview with Dan Aykroyd in just a moment.

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk Radio, our last segment featuring my interview with Dan Aykroyd. So Chuck, no, it wasn't BS. I mean, he's quite proud of what he does not put in his product.

• 30:51Chuck Nice?

  Hey, listen, I'm cool with that, Neil.

• 30:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're talking about Dan Aykroyd's vodka.

• 30:54Chuck Nice?

  Dan Aykroyd's vodka, but here's the thing.

• 30:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 30:56Chuck Nice?

  You were incredulous, and rightfully so. Like, are you trying to tell me you have a wellness vodka? I was like, absolutely.

• 31:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He used wellness in the same sentence as vodka. Okay.

• 31:05Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 31:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That may be a first.

• 31:06Chuck Nice?

  Come on.

• 31:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, have you tried it yet?

• 31:08Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, then, there you go.

• 31:09Charles Liu?

  Well, look, I gotta...

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I haven't tried flying, but I'm pretty sure I can do it.

• 31:14Charles Liu?

  Let me point something out also. Look, you can't have just pure ethanol and pure water, because it doesn't taste like anything.

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I called it, uh, what did I call it?

• 31:22Charles Liu?

  You said that it was the simplest alcohol. It turns out that...

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said it was methanol.

• 31:26Charles Liu?

  No. Uh, you did say it was ethanol, which is correct.

• 31:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I said it was ethanol, sorry.

• 31:29Charles Liu?

  It was correct, but then you said it was the simplest alcohol, which it is not. The simplest alcoholic molecule is called methanol.

• 31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I labeled the alcohol correctly.

• 31:38Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just didn't say that it was the simplest one.

• 31:40Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The simplest one is?

• 31:41Charles Liu?

  Methanol.

• 31:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Methanol.

• 31:42Charles Liu?

  Which if you drink, you will go blind, so don't drink it.

• 31:45Chuck Nice?

  Mmm.

• 31:46Charles Liu?

  But ethanol is the stuff we can tolerate in small amounts, because our liver can deal with it before we die.

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, I'm the old list of things that will make you go blind?

• 31:54Chuck Nice?

  Methanol.

• 31:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Methanol's on that list.

• 31:57Charles Liu?

  Oh, you're not going there, are you? Oh, come on.

• 32:01Chuck Nice?

  It's way down on that list.

• 32:02Charles Liu?

  Is that the anatomy of humor you're referring to there, Neil?

• 32:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was all implied there.

• 32:06Chuck Nice?

  But see, guess what? That's part of the science of humor.

• 32:08Charles Liu?

  Ah.

• 32:08Chuck Nice?

  We all know what makes you go blind, so if you don't mention it, it's funny. When you do mention it, now it's half.

• 32:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I'm just impressed just the breadth of the stuff I could talk about. That he's deeply curious about the world. Plus, I mean, he's got a passion for science as well.

• 32:26Charles Liu?

  Good for him.

• 32:27Chuck Nice?

  And you know what? That makes sense, though.

• 32:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I first met him, because he's in a special family membership at the American Museum of Natural History.

• 32:35Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 32:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the family members, there's a special family night, and he comes in with, he came in with this kid.

• 32:39Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Every comedian that I meet, that's good at doing this. You bring up science, and they light up, and they want to start talking to you. Every comedian I meet, I don't care who they are, what club I'm at, you bring up science, and they're like, oh, yeah. And they're almost a little embarrassed about it, but they start talking to you about it. So it makes sense.

• 33:00Charles Liu?

  Wonderful.

• 33:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I asked him, just how does he feel about the science we know, the science we don't know? Just where does he land on that landscape? Let's find out what he told me. Dan, in this interview, you've been whipping out chemical terms, geological terms, biological terms. Fess up. Come on. What are you doing in your free time? Tell me.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  Well, I'm listening to you, Professor, and always following what you have to say, and always interested in publications like Popular Science and Scientific American. And you know, my dad was a highway engineer, and so geology was a big part of his background, and physics, and tangents, and curves, and he could rip through a cosine, no problem, and tell you what.

• 33:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it. Ripping through a cosine. I love that.

• 33:42Speaker 03

  My pop built a beautiful highway in Canada called the Gatineau Parkway, and he laid out this highway and blasted through a granite mountain, and has always been interested in the geophysical world. So, you know, I kind of got a little, a little bit from him, but I'm always learning, and always want to learn, and I think that the motto of StarTalk is that science is the new rock and roll.

• 34:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, did we, did we, did we, do we bronze that or gild that statement?

• 34:12Charles Liu?

  Science.

• 34:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Producers, have we, yeah, can we, can we keep that?

• 34:16Charles Liu?

  Although, you know, science is older than rock and roll. So maybe rock and roll is the new science.

• 34:22Chuck Nice?

  That just doesn't work, though, Charles. Nobody, nobody's going for that.

• 34:28Charles Liu?

  Don, you know, Charlotte's Web author E.B. White once said, "Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Not a lot of people are interested, and the frog dies."

• 34:41Chuck Nice?

  Lost me again.

• 34:46Chuck Nice?

  I think it's a pretty safe bet to say that EB White references are never funny.

• 34:52Charles Liu?

  Chuck, I'm gonna leave the comedy to you. I'll stick with the science of humor and wonder whether I have any funny in me at all.

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, getting back to your point that the best comedians you've seen, they embrace science, even if they don't necessarily understand it, they understand that it's something to wanna know about.

• 35:08Chuck Nice?

  You know what? Because in order to be a good comedian, you have to be intellectually curious. I don't care...

• 35:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As all scientists are.

• 35:14Chuck Nice?

  Right. And that's like part of, like, like you said to me one time, all children are scientists.

• 35:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:19Chuck Nice?

  We, we just beat it out of them.

• 35:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's exactly right. Spent the first year teaching them to walk and talk, and the rest of their life telling them to shut up and sit down.

• 35:27Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. So, you know, the fact is, in order to be a good stand-up comic, you have to be intellectually curious. You, you read everything because what you're looking for is an angle. You're looking for a reference to look at things differently than others.

• 35:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need enough people to know enough science to make any reference to that at all. Otherwise, it'll fall flat.

• 35:45Chuck Nice?

  Well, see, this is the thing. Like, as, when you go out and do humor, okay, talk about reading a room. When I walk into a room, I have to be able to read that room within five to seven seconds to figure out, who am I talking to?

• 35:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not eight seconds.

• 35:58Chuck Nice?

  To whom am I talking? Not eight seconds, five to seven. This is not...

• 36:02Charles Liu?

  My college.

• 36:02Chuck Nice?

  Right. This is not seven-minute abs. This is six-minute abs.

• 36:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Six, six, six-second abs. And you can't give them a survey in advance.

• 36:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta feel them.

• 36:10Chuck Nice?

  You gotta feel that out. And if, if the crowd is a dumb crowd, you got a problem on your hands.

• 36:16Charles Liu?

  So EB White comments aside, there's actually a hope for me.

• 36:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He didn't say that.

• 36:24Charles Liu?

  I won't quit my day job, gentlemen.

• 36:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Listen, you've been listening to StarTalk Radio. Find us on the web, starTalkRadio.net. And we tweet, StarTalkRadio, of course. Chuck, you tweet, you're...

• 36:36Charles Liu?

  @ChuckLou.

• 36:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  @ChuckLou. And Chuck Nice tweets at ChuckNiceComic.

• 36:39Chuck Nice?

  @ChuckNiceComic.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I tweet too. Do you wanna hear my tweet?

• 36:42Chuck Nice?

  Your name?

• 36:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Neil Tyson.

• 36:43Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow. Exotic.

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk Radio, brought to you in part by Grant from the National Science Foundation. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, signing off, as always, by bidding you to keep looking up.