Science Fiction and Star Trek, with Zachary Quinto

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Neil deGrasse Tyson explores Star Trek and science fiction with Zachary Quinto (Spock), comic co-host Chuck Nice, and astrophysicist and StarTalk geek-in-chief Charles Liu, PhD.

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.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And I've got with me Chuck Nice, co-hosting.

• 0:21Chuck Nice?

  That's right, sir.

• 0:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, and tweeting at ChuckNiceComic.

• 0:24Chuck Nice?

  Thank you.

• 0:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I follow you.

• 0:25Chuck Nice?

  I follow you too.

• 0:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 0:27Chuck Nice?

  To the ends of the earth and beyond, to the gates of hell.

• 0:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the trenches.

• 0:33Chuck Nice?

  I will follow you.

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I've got Chuck Lou. I can't call you Chuck because he's Chuck. Charles Liu.

• 0:42Charles Liu?

  You can call me whatever you want.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm not calling, I just said I'm not.

• 0:44Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 0:45Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles Liu. Professor of astronomy and physics at College of Staten Island.

• 0:51Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  City University of New York.

• 0:53Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 0:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And our fanbase knows that if you are my guest on a show.

• 0:59Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 0:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna get geek.

• 1:01Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 1:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna roll out some geek on you.

• 1:03Charles Liu?

  Talk to some good geek.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get your geek on.

• 1:05Charles Liu?

  Get your geek on. I count with you.

• 1:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. We're featuring my interview with actor Zachary Quinto. You know Zachary Quinto?

• 1:13Charles Liu?

  Yes, that's Mr. Spock.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's Mr. Spock.

• 1:16Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's like the next generation rendering of the iconic hyper-rational character from the original Star Trek series.

• 1:24Charles Liu?

  He is the actor with the highest scoring name in Scrabble.

• 1:30Chuck Nice?

  Wow, okay. Why do you know?

• 1:37Charles Liu?

  Well, so he got a Z and you got the Q.

• 1:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got a Z.

• 1:39Charles Liu?

  Put it on the triple word score, you are all set.

• 1:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean if you spell his whole name out.

• 1:43Charles Liu?

  You spell his whole name out.

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A Z and a Q and a... Okay, he's got some As in there, they're not worth much.

• 1:49Charles Liu?

  The C is three, the H is four, and the Y is four. The rest of them are ones.

• 1:54Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 1:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Idiot, you didn't.

• 1:58Chuck Nice?

  There you have it.

• 2:01Charles Liu?

  No, Zachary's been my hero in part because of that extremely, extremely.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would bet he would want to be your hero for reasons beyond that.

• 2:11Charles Liu?

  Oh, and he is too.

• 2:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're gonna explore the science of, science fiction.

• 2:17Charles Liu?

  Excellent.

• 2:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're using him as an, him as a excuse to do that.

• 2:21Charles Liu?

  Excellent.

• 2:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's no better excuse for that, cuz he's a hyper logical alien.

• 2:26Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 2:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's a Vulcan.

• 2:29Charles Liu?

  Fascinating.

• 2:30Chuck Nice?

  A half hyper logical alien.

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's right, cuz he's got a.

• 2:33Chuck Nice?

  He's half human.

• 2:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mammy.

• 2:34Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 2:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He got a.

• 2:35Chuck Nice?

  His mommy is a.

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He got a human mammy.

• 2:37Chuck Nice?

  Right. Dad couldn't resist it.

• 2:41Chuck Nice?

  The lure of those earth women, cuz earth girls are easy.

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was, what's his face, um.

• 2:50Charles Liu?

  No, it was Downtown Julie Brown. No, not Downtown Julie.

• 2:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, earth girls are easy.

• 2:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's, um.

• 2:56Charles Liu?

  It was, was it Weird Al Yankovic?

• 2:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 2:59Chuck Nice?

  You know, I'm, I'm the fly, I'm the.

• 3:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That guy, the fly.

• 3:02Chuck Nice?

  Jeff Goldblum.

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jeff Goldblum was in the movie Earth Girls Are Easy.

• 3:05Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 3:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 3:06Charles Liu?

  But the song Earth Girls Are Easy.

• 3:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, then I.

• 3:08Charles Liu?

  Formed by someone named Julie Brown, who also did, um, Trapped in the Body of a White Girl and Everybody Run, The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun.

• 3:16Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Nice. I mean, I don't know anything you just said.

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But he said it with confidence.

• 3:24Charles Liu?

  Everybody run, you know?

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dang.

• 3:26Charles Liu?

  Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun, no?

• 3:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I don't know this song.

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I kinda remember that, from the eighties?

• 3:32Chuck Nice?

  I did it for Johnny.

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it from the eighties?

• 3:35Charles Liu?

  It's from the eighties.

• 3:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 3:36Chuck Nice?

  No, got me, man.

• 3:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, all right.

• 3:38Chuck Nice?

  It sounded like George in the jungle.

• 3:39Charles Liu?

  Who's Johnny? Are you Johnny?

• 3:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he's got, uh, you know, as all good actors do, they, they have an acting pedigree.

• 3:45Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 3:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, that extends back. Uh, he's trained in classical theater.

• 3:49Charles Liu?

  Excellent.

• 3:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I asked him about the transition from these formal background into science fiction in both film and television, so let's check it out.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  I mean, there is something inherently theatrical about science fiction, which I find interesting. You know, the world of Star Trek, I think, is is Shakespearean in a way, if you really break it down. And the canon of stories and the lineage that overlaps itself, I think, is really theatrical. And so much is happening on television now that the landscape is entirely different than it was even five years ago.

• 4:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's amazing, we can all agree, it's a golden age of television.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the challenge now, I think, is really, you know, grabbing people's attention and then holding people's attention, because as there are more and more

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What are you talking about?

• 4:38Speaker 03

  There are more and more platforms. You know, it's just like that. How do we, how do we get people and direct them in the right way? It's interesting. It's an interesting double-edged sword in a way.

• 4:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Charles, explain what he means by Star Trek being Shakespearean, because I followed a little bit, but I think you would have a deeper insight.

• 4:58Charles Liu?

  How is Star Trek like Shakespeare? Let me count the ways. Oh, the world's a stage.

• 5:06Charles Liu?

  Let me just Merely players.

• 5:09Charles Liu?

  Well done. Look. Let me just quote Christopher Plummer in Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country, playing General Chang the Klingon. "To be or not to be."

• 5:26Charles Liu?

  The Klingons

• 5:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In Klingons.

• 5:27Charles Liu?

  Yes, in Klingons. The Klingons all thought that Shakespeare was written originally in their language.

• 5:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those idiots. No, because of the rhythms or the

• 5:39Charles Liu?

  The rhythms, the, the human Klingon condition. The whole point of Shakespeare is that his body of work demonstrates all the different highs and lows and in-betweens. Comedies and tragedies of the human condition, of life, of society, of individuals interacting with the whole. And so, there's a universal truth to it that transcends any culture. If it's properly translated, Klingons, Romulans, humans.

• 6:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And for the first time, you've used the phrase "universal truth" in a literal meaning.

• 6:14Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 6:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Most people, when they say "universe," they're talking about Earth. Like Miss Universe, it's just Miss Earth. Right? You know, we didn't compare it with Miss Mars. No, that ain't how that happened. Yeah, Mr. Alpha Centauri wasn't here.

• 6:28Charles Liu?

  Shakespeare appears over and over again throughout Star Trek, on purpose and sort of accidentally, just as it does on just about every other major science fiction, space opera type.

• 6:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But wait a minute. Shakespeare wrote about practically everything.

• 6:44Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 6:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In many different ways. So for it to have a story, it's Shakespearean, can't you say that about every story?

• 6:51Charles Liu?

  As long as-

• 6:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tom and Jerry is Shakespearean. That's what I'm saying.

• 6:56Charles Liu?

  Maybe. But the, what we're talking about-

• 6:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because if it fits everything, then it fits nothing.

• 7:01Charles Liu?

  Oh, if it fits everything, it fits everything. It also fits nothing. The point is-

• 7:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want that one?

• 7:11Charles Liu?

  Yeah, I'm like, okay. Shakespeare really told the story of Tom and Jerry better.

• 7:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that the difference?

• 7:19Charles Liu?

  That's why Shakespeare is so involved. Just even Star Trek VI, the movie I just quoted, the subtitle is "The Undiscovered Country."

• 7:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 7:27Charles Liu?

  Which is Hamlet, right? As is to be or not to be. Now, in the movie, the Chancellor of the Klingons said that the undiscovered country was the future. But of course, in Hamlet's soliloquy, the undiscovered country was death. And so, that became a theme in that movie where-

• 7:48Charles Liu?

  Do Klingons really fear death? Or do they fear the unknown, the future?

• 7:53Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna go with, I'm gonna go with the unknown.

• 7:55Charles Liu?

  Exactly.

• 7:55Chuck Nice?

  Because they definitely want to die. A glorious death in battle.

• 8:00Charles Liu?

  Exactly, which is what caused a, a, a central tension in that movie and the plot and so forth. And then the evil, well, I don't wanna say evil, but the General Chang to which I referred, as in the, as he was fighting the final battle against Kirk, he was quoting Shakespeare over and over again. "Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war," from Julius Caesar.

• 8:22Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 8:22Charles Liu?

  You know, all these other kinds of fighting things and then.

• 8:25Chuck Nice?

  And that's why he lost. That's why he lost the battle.

• 8:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I actually saw Christopher Plummer on Broadway with Lynne Redgrave in Hamlet. I'm not, not, and, and, um, not, not Hamlet, um.

• 8:35Charles Liu?

  Macbeth?

• 8:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Macbeth.

• 8:36Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 8:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:37Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 8:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Macbeth.

• 8:38Charles Liu?

  So he, imagine the joy that the actor Christopher Plummer must have had in full Klingon armor, fighting a space battle, saying as his final words before his ship explodes, "To be or not to be."

• 8:53Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 8:53Charles Liu?

  Shakespeare in Star Trek.

• 8:56Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that was quite the trek in itself, man.

• 8:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, dude.

• 9:00Chuck Nice?

  Wow, Chuck, God.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stop calling Chuck, cuz I don't know who you're talking to.

• 9:05Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can be talking to yourself.

• 9:06Charles Liu?

  Charles. Please, feel free call me Chuck, Charles.

• 9:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I, thank you for that recitation.

• 9:11Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For that soliloquy.

• 9:14Charles Liu?

  Just one piece of it.

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See what I did there? You see what I did there?

• 9:17Charles Liu?

  Alas, poor Neil, I knew him well, Horatio. A host of infinite jest.

• 9:25Chuck Nice?

  I'm not quoting Shakespeare, I'm done.

• 9:30Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The fault,

• 9:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  dear Charles, is not in your stars, but in yourself.

• 9:39Chuck Nice?

  All right then.

• 9:40Charles Liu?

  Nice job.

• 9:41Chuck Nice?

  I'll outbrief Kendall, and by that I mean this conversation. No.

• 9:46Charles Liu?

  Life's but a walking shadow, or poor player that struts and frets his hour on the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by.

• 9:56Chuck Nice?

  An idiot.

• 9:56Charles Liu?

  Full of.

• 9:58Chuck Nice?

  Sound and fury.

• 9:59Charles Liu?

  Signifying.

• 10:00Chuck Nice?

  Nothing.

• 10:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa, whoa, holy. People did not know this, that Chuck Nice is also classically trained.

• 10:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, let's not, let's not go there.

• 10:12Chuck Nice?

  We don't want people knowing that kind of stuff about Chuck Nice.

• 10:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm unworthy. So am I. Man. So am I. I don't know how you get back, how I can get back in this conversation.

• 10:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I gotta quote a Shakespeare thing, just to hang with you two. Let me think, um, so I'm sorry, I don't have Shakespeare just sitting in my head. But I have quoted him before, and I will quote him now, but I gotta read what I wrote on it. This is my second book ever, okay? In the chapter called Celestial Winding. Here it is. And it's a segment from All's Well That Ends Well. Helena displays a sharpness of wit as she comments on the valor of Perolies. Here it is, Helena. Monsieur Perolies, you were born under a most charitable star. Perolies, under Mars, I...

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Helena, I especially think, under Mars. Perolies, why under Mars? She replies, the wars hath so kept you under, that you must needs be born under Mars. Perolies, when he was predominant?

• 11:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When he was retrograde, I think.

• 11:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, and Perolies says, why think you so? Helena replies, you go so much backwards when you think. That's great. That's just a Shakespeare astro burn. Oh my god. Shakespeare, this is my second book, I quoted Shakespeare there. Just to hang with you two, because you were all, like, having a love, love duel, duel there. And I, I was just sitting there on the outside.

• 11:49Chuck Nice?

  Sweet, that's cool though.

• 11:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a, that's a burn.

• 11:52Chuck Nice?

  That's a burn.

• 11:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 11:53Chuck Nice?

  That's probably the most eloquent way to call somebody a coward ever.

• 11:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well done.

• 11:58Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 11:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so, uh, before Zachary Quinto was Spock, he was Cylar. Yes, on Heroes. On the supervillain in ABC's hit sci-fi series, Heroes. Yes. That's the one that no one understood, correct? Oh, it was great for the first season, then it jumped the shark. Oh, really, jumped the shark? That early, you're not supposed to jump the shark that early. Well, they kept, they kept, like, changing everything. Let's see what he says about it. Yeah. Zachary Quinto on Heroes, check it out.

• 12:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You had the power to take people's powers.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. Yeah, I stole.

• 12:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's badass.

• 12:30Speaker 03

  I stole people's powers. I was sort of omnipPowerful.

• 12:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's badass.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  But I had to murder them viciously in order to get those powers.

• 12:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, okay.

• 12:37Speaker 03

  So there was that, that little caveat.

• 12:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, uh, remind me, did you have a, a Achilles heel?

• 12:42Speaker 03

  Base power?

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  Oh, an Achilles heel?

• 12:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  Interestingly, I did have an Achilles heel. But, but they kept changing it. Like, I was invincible unless they killed me in this one way. And then, as the show went on and they wanted to keep the character around, they kept changing it. So, part of the deflation of the role, and I think ultimately the series, was they had, you know, they had to keep changing their own rules. And so audiences felt a little bit like they didn't know what to invest in. And that's the nature of having to keep a successful show going for so long, you know? So that show went four seasons. So it's like a hundred episodes of just trying to sustain these characters, many of whom probably should have died last season for the, in order to keep the story going. But it was also a different era.

• 13:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the other characters should have needed to die.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  My characters should have too, I think. It was like a, it was like a, um, it was a trap of the success of that show. Because it was a different era still, and it was a network show. So it was really working to kind of keep up that pace. I think things are entirely different now.

• 13:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I must confess, uh, my original urge to watch it was because the O in Heroes was a total disorder.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  An eclipse, I get it.

• 13:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that was my, the only reason why I first watched the show.

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, why is it important to not break rules when you're storytelling?

• 14:02Charles Liu?

  Any narrative has to be within a context, at least the literary.

• 14:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you mean it has to be?

• 14:09Charles Liu?

  If you.

• 14:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just because they have been, doesn't mean it has to be.

• 14:11Charles Liu?

  You can do postmodern literature where the rules keep getting broken all the time. But then you know that the rule is that the rules are meant to be broken.

• 14:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 14:18Charles Liu?

  When you're telling a narrative, an epic, an opera, a story, or something like that. If you are invested in a character or storyline and then it no longer has significance, that's not cool. Like if you love a character and the character dies, has significance. But then if you find out that any character can be risen from the dead merely by giving an injection of somebody's blood.

• 14:41Chuck Nice?

  And death means nothing.

• 14:43Charles Liu?

  Death means nothing and then what you cared about isn't important anymore. If you knew at the very beginning of the story that anyone who dies can come back to life, fine. But if you find that out in season two. So what you're saying is they're kind of making this stuff up as they go along.

• 14:57Chuck Nice?

  I don't think they expected it to go past one season.

• 15:00Charles Liu?

  But it was a great story in part because of great actors like Zachary. He played this, this watchmaker. Okay, Siler wasn't even his real name. Siler was the name of a watch that he was working on when his power manifested. And he was really what you could, you could call, you know, Hannah Rent's idea of the banality of evil. Somebody who you wouldn't think is like vicious and likely to kill anybody, but just presented with a circumstance. He was a watchmaker. He cared about details. And then all of a sudden he opened up somebody's brain and figured out that person's superpower. And then went on and on and on until it became this addiction where he needed everything.

• 15:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, because he was a psychopath. That's really the deal.

• 15:41Charles Liu?

  There's a word for that. That's right. You know, and, and one of the things that was borne out in the show was, was he a psychopath and then this power showed up? Or did he become a psychopath because of his powers? There was an alternate. Interesting. There was an alternate. Duality. Yes, exactly. There was an alternate timeline in that show where it showed Siler not calling himself Siler, but Gabriel. He had adopted a young person and actually had become a hero, been a good person. But then was not able to sustain that because of the pressures. Okay, so what shows have kept to their own rules best, would you say? Well, Star Trek does pretty well.

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Although, although.

• 16:22Charles Liu?

  Although.

• 16:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Although, which episode in the original season where Spock did something where he almost died or went blind, but then there was an extra eyelid that prevented him from going blind? And, and, and Bones said, "I should have, I should have known you'd come up with something like that." So, so they even knew in the script that they had to sort of say something about that. Cause you didn't know in advance that he had a special eyelid that prevented him from going blind.

• 16:47Charles Liu?

  The concept of retconning, retroactive continuity, is allowable when you have these huge kind of sprawling stories, but you still have to every time explain what was going on. Star Wars, for example, not so good. The Kessel Run.

• 17:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't get me started on the Kessel Run.

• 17:04Charles Liu?

  Yeah, I know, I know.

• 17:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Skip that.

• 17:06Charles Liu?

  We're on the same page.

• 17:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause I will, I will blow a gasket, okay?

• 17:08Charles Liu?

  I know, I know. And then they had to retro-

• 17:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, for people to know, when he says the Millennium Falcon did the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs.

• 17:16Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 17:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's like saying, you know, if I say, Chuck, how much do you weigh? So I weigh $3.50.

• 17:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How fast are you driving the car? 72 degrees Fahrenheit.

• 17:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Different units. It's complete idiocy.

• 17:33Charles Liu?

  But in the movie Solo.

• 17:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, they doubled down on it, I don't want to hear about it.

• 17:37Charles Liu?

  They doubled down by retconning the whole process.

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They retroactively-

• 17:41Charles Liu?

  And that messed up a lot of people, it makes people unhappy.

• 17:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, like me.

• 17:44Charles Liu?

  Right. And that's why you can't go back and mess things up.

• 17:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he went from supervillain to, I don't want to call him superhero, but super alien Spock.

• 17:55Charles Liu?

  Spock.

• 17:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the Star Trek, the reboot of the Star Trek films.

• 17:58Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's just get a snippet of him reflecting on becoming Spock, check it out.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  It's one of the most recognizable characters in the world. I mean, up there with Mickey Mouse and Jesus. I mean, it's, in, in terms of like the iconography of Spock and the, um, the visual familiarity that people have with that character and his ears and his gestures and all of that. So I guess there was that kind of floating around me and I didn't allow myself to get swept away in any of the things that are attached to that role.

• 18:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 18:35Speaker 03

  Because it would have

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To protect himself.

• 18:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I couldn't have done my job, I think, if I had allowed myself to go with the magnitude of who that character is and what he represents to so many people for so long. I just had to focus on what was right in front of me.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  You know, Leonard was involved at that time.

• 18:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 18:54Speaker 03

  And I got to... I mean, Leonard and I became incredibly close through that process. So it was a creative and professional gift, but also a tremendous personal gift to become so close with Leonard as well.

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Leonard who?

• 19:10Charles Liu?

  Leonard Nimoy.

• 19:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Leonard Nimoy. So the original actor portraying Spock was his mentor, it sounded like, in this bit. So, can you, Charles, explain why Spock was such an iconic character?

• 19:25Charles Liu?

  Well, first of all,

• 19:28Charles Liu?

  Spock as a character was the first alien that really had a prominent role in any television or movie show that lasted and showed that it had characterization. So he was fascinating because he was other and yet similar to us. But more important, in my opinion, it was the brilliant acting of Leonard Nimoy that made Spock so iconic.

• 19:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fascinating.

• 19:50Charles Liu?

  He reacted to the script and the ideas that made it happen. There are television critics, historians, for example, who will talk about Kirk, played by William Shatner, becoming increasingly emotional, increasingly melodramatic as the series went on.

• 20:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 20:06Charles Liu?

  And what Spock, Leonard Nimoy, did was simply become that foil, become even more less emotional, even more detached, even more logical.

• 20:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then they cancel the show.

• 20:16Charles Liu?

  It created that balance, which then led to that rich idea of yin and yang equilibrium, you know, Kirk and Spock becoming that.

• 20:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Seat of the pants versus total logic.

• 20:26Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then they play chess.

• 20:27Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 20:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Kirk wins every time because he's not making logical moves. Right, which I never got. No, no, totally. If, yeah, no, I once played, the first time I beat a computer at chess, I only was able to do that fooling it into thinking I was making one move relative to another. And it would organize all of its piece strategies, thinking, "I'm gonna make a move," and I don't, and then it came in the backside. Ah, gotcha.

• 20:48Charles Liu?

  But that's how we play chess anyway. We always try to fool our opponent. Right, whether it's a computer or a human being.

• 20:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay, so I, okay, thank you.

• 20:56Charles Liu?

  Good job, though.

• 20:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, thank you.

• 20:57Charles Liu?

  Well done.

• 20:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 20:58Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 20:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those are old days.

• 20:59Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 21:00Chuck Nice?

  The first time I beat a computer is in the future.

• 21:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of another timeline in another universe.

• 21:06Chuck Nice?

  There you go, exactly.

• 21:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we gotta take a break and we will talk more about emotion versus logic in the next segment. When StarTalk returns.

• 21:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk, featuring my interview with Zachary Pinto, actor.

• 21:43Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 21:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Modern day is best known for playing young Spock.

• 21:47Chuck Nice?

  Young Spock.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He looked just like what Spock would look like.

• 21:51Chuck Nice?

  He really does, that's what kinda helped him.

• 21:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's some serious casting they did there for that.

• 21:55Chuck Nice?

  It's not even young Spock, it's different timeline Spock, really.

• 21:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's right, that's right.

• 22:00Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 22:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Think about that. And so, I had to ask him about Spock's notorious reliance on logic over emotion.

• 22:14Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 22:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just as, it'd be interesting to get an actor's take on that, let's check it out.

• 22:20Speaker 03

  There's these two parts of Spock.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  His human essence and his Vulcan essence, and I think that I can relate to that. I process things in an intellectual way personally, and emotion is always underneath that, right? So I feel like, I don't, I don't, I don't always go to intellect first, but I definitely lean toward intellect. And then emotion is surrounding it and under it.

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so it's not in the center of it?

• 22:51Speaker 03

  No, I don't think so.

• 22:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That means you make rational decisions in times when-

• 22:55Speaker 03

  I think I'm pretty rational.

• 22:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Other people make emotional decisions.

• 22:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I definitely have an ability to separate my emotional response from my rational or intellectual response. A little bit, yeah.

• 23:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 23:11Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 23:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he's feeling the character.

• 23:14Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, yeah, he thinks he's Spock.

• 23:18Chuck Nice?

  Zachary Quinto.

• 23:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. He just got out of therapy before he had that. So, Charlie, tell me about your irrational and emotional minds.

• 23:25Charles Liu?

  I believe that my emotional reactions and my logical reactions are knit together as tightly as a tapestry, a flannel pattern. I can't separate the two of them very well at all.

• 23:37Chuck Nice?

  So you're very logically emotional.

• 23:40Charles Liu?

  Or emotionally logical.

• 23:41Chuck Nice?

  Or emotionally logical.

• 23:42Charles Liu?

  So I can reason out things, but I'm always informed by my own feelings. And I can always feel about something, but I always think about, wait, why am I feeling this? How am I feeling this? And it's all knit together. And I actually don't want to separate them. I think that's what makes me like the geek that I am. Possibly human, yes, right. Which is one of the things that was explored in the Star Trek universe. Vulcans actually have very strong emotions. But society compels them to suppress emotion and only exhibit logic.

• 24:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:14Charles Liu?

  And this is what makes it very difficult for them. Tremendously powerful, but also an Achilles' heel.

• 24:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, Star Trek Spock, his logical approach to life is almost always at odds with Captain Kirk's.

• 24:27Charles Liu?

  Yes, of course.

• 24:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I asked Zachary about that dynamic on screen. Let's check it out.

• 24:35Speaker 03

  Kirk and Spock are probably one of the most iconic duos in popular culture history.

• 24:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who would you rather be?

• 24:43Speaker 03

  Obviously Spock. Obviously.

• 24:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're still playing the roles.

• 24:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, come on now.

• 24:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can tell.

• 24:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No one will know except the million people that have.

• 24:54Speaker 03

  I definitely feel like they are inextricably connected on a spiritual level. They're two sides of the same coin, I think, as Roddenberry envisioned these characters. They represent an exploration, an examination of what it means to be human and what it means to be alien and how those two parts of ourselves as people, you know, are often in proximity and often in conflict. Spock and Kirk function very differently, but I don't think either would function as effectively without the other one.

• 25:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, who would you rather be? Kirk or Spock?

• 25:35Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's a really hard question. And here's why. Mr. Spock, so logical, so methodical, so meticulous, and so knowledgeable. I mean, you know, the Vulcan brain is like, you know, he is a human computer, um, able to calculate.

• 25:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you out of your Vulcan mind?

• 25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's the lines?

• 25:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I love it. But, um, so for all those reasons, I want to be Spock. However, Kirk, I want to sleep with a green woman, man.

• 26:06Chuck Nice?

  That's all right. I'm just not gonna lie.

• 26:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, so Spock's not getting any intergalactic.

• 26:11Chuck Nice?

  Spock does not, except for like, once every 10 years, he has to go kali fi, kali fa, or some old crap where he gets.

• 26:17Charles Liu?

  Pon far.

• 26:18Chuck Nice?

  He goes in the heat, then he goes in the Vulcan heat. And, you know, and then he still doesn't get any. You know? It's like, you know, I don't know.

• 26:26Charles Liu?

  They touch fingertips, remember?

• 26:27Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 26:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it's gonna be Kirk?

• 26:29Chuck Nice?

  I'm going with Kirk.

• 26:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm going with Kirk. So.

• 26:35Chuck Nice?

  Get your green butt in the bed.

• 26:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, this thing about yin and yang.

• 26:37Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 26:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And comment on that.

• 26:40Charles Liu?

  Well, obviously, life is an equilibrium. You and I, we are all here and doing what we're doing today because there's a balance between the energy that's going through our bodies and coming out of them, and whatever is being put into them, like food or metabolism and so on and so forth.

• 26:57Chuck Nice?

  Also, there are three evil versions of ourself in another universe.

• 27:01Charles Liu?

  We'll get to that in a moment.

• 27:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And one of them, there's a Chuck in another universe with a goatee. Wait, you have a goatee here.

• 27:08Charles Liu?

  You're the evil Chuck.

• 27:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 27:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got the evil Chuck.

• 27:11Charles Liu?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 27:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, give us the good Chuck.

• 27:12Chuck Nice?

  You've called me evil Chuck before, and somebody on Twitter said, "From now on, you're Chuck Rude."

• 27:20Charles Liu?

  Anyway, my point is that if we are to explore life itself, then we are thinking both spiritually and physically, psychologically, about balance, about an extreme that needs to be balanced. And so things moving forward and around is what causes us to have all these different cool things happen. Fiction is fundamentally about society.

• 27:43Charles Liu?

  Coming out of balance and what happens to bring it back?

• 27:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, but balance implies that it's teetering on falling in one direction or another. Whereas you can have balance without that. A marble on a flat surface is balanced.

• 27:56Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, but you wouldn't say there's a yin and yang operating on it.

• 27:59Charles Liu?

  Yeah, because it's a metastability, right? That we call that as physicists, you know that. So imagine instead the marble in a dip, in a valley. And then, once in a while, something pushes the marble up the hill.

• 28:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and a force where there's restoring force.

• 28:14Charles Liu?

  It's a restoring force that brings it back down into the equilibrium point down below. When you have something that's metastable, like a table, and you're rolling the marble, it keeps going and then it falls off the table, that's not life. That becomes something more extreme which can be studied, but it's not.

• 28:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be the end of life. One example.

• 28:32Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 28:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting, okay.

• 28:34Charles Liu?

  That was a little philosophical.

• 28:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I liked it, yeah, I still like. No, I would quibble with something you said.

• 28:40Charles Liu?

  Oh dear.

• 28:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Life by its very nature are centers of highly disequilibrium phenomenon.

• 28:49Charles Liu?

  I see what you're saying, yes, because we are examples of the local thermodynamic equilibrium being violated.

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Violated, correct.

• 28:57Charles Liu?

  Because we are forced to.

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your body temperature is ninety-eight degrees and it's seventy-two degrees. You are out of frickin' equilibrium, dude.

• 29:04Charles Liu?

  But I am out of equilibrium with my surroundings.

• 29:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes!

• 29:08Charles Liu?

  Within myself, I have to be ninety-eight point six plus or minus a degree or two at all times, or I stop living, so.

• 29:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the therapy told me that, within myself.

• 29:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I am at peace with myself. Even though I'm disequilibrium with the rest of the universe.

• 29:25Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 29:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Another disequilibrium part is, we inhale oxygen, it oxygenates the iron. The iron then goes through and it deposits the oxygen in our muscles and comes back without oxygen.

• 29:36Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 29:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in our same body, we have reduced and oxygenated iron, living in the same vessel. And in nature, you don't see that. Either all the iron is oxidized or all the iron is not oxidized.

• 29:50Charles Liu?

  But that's because of an equilibrium process.

• 29:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we're not in equilibrium, that's all I'm saying.

• 29:54Charles Liu?

  That we are able to maintain that.

• 29:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all I'm saying.

• 29:56Charles Liu?

  Very cool.

• 29:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all I'm saying.

• 29:58Charles Liu?

  Well said.

• 29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Well, so when, when. I can't believe we just got there from frickin' Spock. Okay, right. That was amazing! So when the Star Trek, the original Star Trek franchise was rebooted? What was it, 2009? So they kept all the same characters?

• 30:15Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they sent them in a different direction.

• 30:20Charles Liu?

  Yes, they did.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's figure out how that went down with Zachary.

• 30:26Speaker 03

  They created an alternate timeline in our first film in 2009.

• 30:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was that just to, because they backed into that?

• 30:33Speaker 03

  I mean, I think it was to open up the narrative possibilities of our universe, to set us apart from the original series.

• 30:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's very producer of you.

• 30:40Speaker 03

  Just very producer of them. There was definitely some...

• 30:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're an actor, Jim, not a producer. Give me an actor answer.

• 30:49Speaker 03

  There's a bit of backlash, I will say, from the fans. But I feel like it really reset the clock, so to speak. And it gave us a new point of departure and a new springboard into a whole other landscape of stories. Part of the joy of Star Trek is the infinite possibilities of storytelling, you know? And so I feel grateful to be a part of that because we weren't hindered by anything that happened before. And it was a powerful new direction that it allowed us to go in. So we'll see where it takes us from here, you know?

• 31:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, what's the difference between an alternate universe and an alternate timeline?

• 31:29Charles Liu?

  Uh, just semantics.

• 31:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's what I thought.

• 31:31Charles Liu?

  Usually when you think of alternate timelines, they kind of converge back. So you can have something separate, but then you returns. But really, it could be an alternate universe that goes off in its own direction, whatever. If that makes sense. So, for example...

• 31:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not really, but okay.

• 31:47Charles Liu?

  The mirror universe, for example, is an alternate timeline, right? Where you have people that can interact with our timeline and they come back and forth. Alternate universe is something that's so different that there's no interaction. Sometimes that's...

• 31:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but if you're splitting into that, that means you had access to it.

• 32:00Charles Liu?

  Well, there's the many worlds hypothesis of quantum mechanics, which suggests that you can split into that and then no longer have the possibility to interact.

• 32:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So do you think there are other versions of us in another timeline?

• 32:10Charles Liu?

  Well, if we think that the many worlds hypothesis of quantum mechanics works, that there are an infinite number, or nearly infinite number, of each of us in a completely different timeline.

• 32:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's an evil Charles Liu.

• 32:20Charles Liu?

  And there's a great Charles Liu.

• 32:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which one did we get? Which one do you want?

• 32:25Charles Liu?

  I hope you got someone in the middle.

• 32:28Chuck Nice?

  That's cool. That's, uh, that's very Rick and Morty.

• 32:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, I know. When we come back, uh, third and final segment of my interview with Zachary Kinko on StarTalk.

• 32:52Chuck Nice?

  Hey, we'd like to give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons. Pat Mallon and Kyle Rhodes. Guys, thanks so much for all of your support. We couldn't make this trip through the cosmos without you. And for those of you listening who would like your own Patreon shout out, go to patreon.com/startalkradio and support us.

• 33:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk, featuring my interview with Zachary Kinko, the actor who portrays Star Trek.

• 33:31Chuck Nice?

  The entire series, as acted by Zachary Kinko.

• 33:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plays Spock on Star Trek.

• 33:38Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 33:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, uh, you know, I had to ask him about sort of storytelling, right? And, but I had an issue with this sort of reboot of the Star Trek series. And I had him there, so why not, why don't I?

• 33:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Why not give him a smackdown?

• 34:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get up in his face. Let's see what went down. One of my regrets was the original Star Trek, most of the time, two thirds of the time, they were morality tales. And I didn't see that as a mission, as a storytelling mission, carried forward.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  Oh, in our films?

• 34:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, just it's, it's more sort of a big screen action entertainment.

• 34:28Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 34:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, which sells.

• 34:31Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it'll put people in a seat, but I wanted more of the, the, oh, that's holy, wow, that's a mirror to our own culture or our own civilization.

• 34:40Speaker 03

  Right. I think, you know, I think our culture is a little bit less inclined toward morality tales these days. We want to escape.

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can fully accept that I'm just an old film.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  A little bit more.

• 34:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got, I'm okay with that.

• 34:53Chuck Nice?

  That was pretty great. You totally, you threw him a little bit, man.

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think I did.

• 35:00Chuck Nice?

  You did. He was a little offended. If you listen to that, he was like, uh-oh.

• 35:06Charles Liu?

  I thought it was a very kind, no, it was a kind acknowledging, uh-huh. But the point was, Neil, where you are is you're comparing a TV show with dozens of episodes, right? The ability to take many bites at the apple and feature films which get one shot at entertaining and putting people in the seats. So you said two thirds of the show where morality plays. That means one third of them was pure escapism.

• 35:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, pretty much, yeah.

• 35:31Charles Liu?

  So you didn't give the feature film enough credit.

• 35:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He sounded like, like, like.

• 35:37Chuck Nice?

  He sounded like Zachary, like, no, no. He sounded like he's actually informed Zachary on his answer.

• 35:42Charles Liu?

  Well, no, Zachary's answer was right. We, these days, may want more escapism in our entertainment than morality plays. But in Roddenberry's day, in the 60s, if you watch shows like Bonanza or, you know, Wagon Train, they were all one after another, one morality play after another, two thirds of the time. And then one third of the time was just escapism with guns firing and horses running.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what should be the balance?

• 36:05Charles Liu?

  Depends on the medium you're working with. With a feature film, it might.

• 36:09Chuck Nice?

  I gotta go with, I, I, I think Roddenberry would have figured out a way to take the morality play and put it in the, the, the modern day Star Trek feature film.

• 36:20Charles Liu?

  It's possible. I'm not sure.

• 36:22Chuck Nice?

  And, and not to be heavy handed, but I mean, like, for instance, what's his name that does the blue people with the tails?

• 36:27Charles Liu?

  James Cameron.

• 36:28Chuck Nice?

  James Cameron.

• 36:31Charles Liu?

  The guy who got Corona Borealis messed up.

• 36:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the USB ponytail.

• 36:39Chuck Nice?

  Avatar, yes.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Avatar.

• 36:41Chuck Nice?

  But if you look at that, there is, there are several overarching morality, um, messages that are inculcated in that film. You know, one of which being that we only get one planet, okay, and we should take care of it. Another being like, hey, man, it's not, imperialism is not all that cool. You know, there's several, I mean.

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it so wrong that I want to have a better world?

• 37:02Chuck Nice?

  I don't think he's super heavy handed with it either, even though some people would say he was.

• 37:06Charles Liu?

  He was. He whacked me over the head with a slice hammer.

• 37:09Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's because you're a smart person, but you know, for, for, for somebody who's not.

• 37:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For like regular people?

• 37:14Charles Liu?

  I. I do not ascribe to that distinction between quote, "regular consumers" and quote,

• 37:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's my point.

• 37:22Chuck Nice?

  See, that's the problem. No, I'm sorry, I gotta push back on this. See, you're the problem. You're the reason why we're in the mess that we're in as this country, because we don't believe that there are stupid people. There's stupid people, damn it. There are stupid people.

• 37:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why Chuck is, Charles Lu is to blame for this. Cause he doesn't recognize.

• 37:41Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly.

• 37:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That everyone else is stupider than he is.

• 37:43Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it's just.

• 37:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's his fault.

• 37:45Chuck Nice?

  It's just smart people like Chuck Lu, who will not acknowledge that there are a bunch of dumbasses out there that, that makes it very difficult for us to progress as a nation.

• 37:54Charles Liu?

  I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.

• 37:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So where was, I don't even know where, where I was going there.

• 38:03Chuck Nice?

  No, no.

• 38:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um.

• 38:05Chuck Nice?

  I derailed this. I'm, I apologize.

• 38:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So here's my pushback. You push back on it, I'll push back too.

• 38:11Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 38:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The pushback is.

• 38:13Chuck Nice?

  Ugh.

• 38:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, I think if you're creative enough, you can fold a dose, you can apply a dose of morality tale in your escapism and end up accomplishing both.

• 38:28Charles Liu?

  Or if you do two of them, you get dose, doses of morality tale.

• 38:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, he needs more lessons from you. Bring him to your.

• 38:37Charles Liu?

  You know, you, you, yes, the best movies can do that.

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can do that.

• 38:41Charles Liu?

  But those are not common. And you gotta give the, the feature film genre a little bit of credit in trying to do what it can do, the best it can.

• 38:49Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Zach, so he also not only rebooted Spock.

• 38:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 38:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He also rebooted the series In Search Of.

• 38:56Chuck Nice?

  Oh, did he?

• 38:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, he did. Wait, Leonard Nimoy's In Search Of?

• 39:01Charles Liu?

  Yeah. You know what the Loch Ness Monster and stuff?

• 39:03Chuck Nice?

  I remember.

• 39:03Charles Liu?

  Is that the one?

• 39:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Leonard Nimoy first did that.

• 39:05Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 39:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And so now he, so he's following the ghost of Leonard Nimoy.

• 39:09Charles Liu?

  Wow.

• 39:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He is the reboot of the science series In Search Of. I asked him about it. Check it out.

• 39:13Charles Liu?

  Wow.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  In Search Of was a show that Leonard hosted in the late 70s and early 80s. Excuse me, you're on first-name basis. Yeah, well. I have to say Leonard Demoyne. No, you can say Leonard. I give you permission. I am now, by proxy, give you permission.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  But, um, but, uh, he hosted this show in the late 70s, early 80s called In Search Of, and the original episodes were like In Search of Bigfoot, or The Loch Ness Monster, or, uh, The Bermuda Triangle, you know. So they approached me about redoing the show, and hosting it, and also producing it. Um, so, we're keeping some of the hallmarks, like we did an episode on aliens, uh, one on monsters of the deep, but then we're veering off into territory that I find really compelling and interesting, like artificial intelligence, life after death, and mind control. Um, and so it's been a real adventure. I've been all over the place. I got to go to CERN in Geneva, hang out with your people. It's the biggest machine ever built. Ever built by man on the planet. I mean, it's amazing. And to be in the presence

• 40:11Speaker 03

  of it, and to know that they had to build something so gargantuan to look at things that are so infinitesimally small, I found that paradox very humbling. And, uh, talking to them was really interesting. And, uh, got to go to the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. It's my people. They are your people, man. So we've had a good time, and, uh... I got good people. You have great people. And really inspiring, because, you know, the thing that I've found with the show, and I know you can relate to this, is the idea of people who are devoting the entirety of their vocational lives to the exploration and discovery of things that they may never arrive at themselves. And yet, the magnitude of it in service of

• 40:52Speaker 03

  humanity in generations to come is what motivates them and drives them. And there's something so moving about it, actually. And to meet these people who have been working at the Green Bank Observatory for 30 years, and know that they probably will never find the thing they're looking for.

• 41:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he got into what my people do.

• 41:12Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 41:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's the quest. You have to, at some level, learn to love the questions themselves.

• 41:19Charles Liu?

  Yes, right.

• 41:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Learn to embrace the search, because it's the search that is the task. The discovery is what the press talks about.

• 41:27Charles Liu?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Once every fifty experiments that are conducted. A quick thing about the Green Bank Telescope.

• 41:33Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 41:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That zone is a radio-free zone.

• 41:36Charles Liu?

  Correct. Because it's a radio telescope. They don't want, like, signals to be messing up their signal.

• 41:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what do people use, Dixie cups, to talk to each other?

• 41:43Charles Liu?

  Landlines.

• 41:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Huh?

• 41:44Charles Liu?

  Landlines.

• 41:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, just ringing the landlines?

• 41:46Charles Liu?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I forgot that.

• 41:47Chuck Nice?

  So how far away do you have to be for, I mean, what is the buffer zone?

• 41:51Charles Liu?

  I don't remember the exact number of kilometers, but it's miles.

• 41:54Chuck Nice?

  But it's miles.

• 41:55Charles Liu?

  Yeah, you gotta go quite a ways. Yeah, I mean, the Green Bank Telescope itself, right? Imagine a piece of metal.

• 42:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Green Bank, West Virginia.

• 42:01Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 42:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a town, and the telescope's named after the town.

• 42:04Charles Liu?

  And this telescope, named after Senator William Byrd, actually. Named after Senator Robert Byrd.

• 42:10Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:12Charles Liu?

  Imagine a piece of metal mesh that's the size of a football field, that you can move around and aim at any spot in the sky.

• 42:20Chuck Nice?

  That's cool.

• 42:21Charles Liu?

  To listen to signals as if you were right there, you know, trying to understand anything from.

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're loosely using the word "listen to."

• 42:29Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 42:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's still electromagnetic energy.

• 42:31Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 42:31Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 42:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you can turn it into an audio signal on the other end, but it's not sound coming through space.

• 42:35Charles Liu?

  It's not sound.

• 42:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just want to make that clear.

• 42:37Chuck Nice?

  It's a signal coming through.

• 42:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Signal that you detect.

• 42:39Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 42:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you can convert it into something you can hear if you choose.

• 42:41Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or you can make a visual map of it. Yeah, and it's a picture.

• 42:44Charles Liu?

  Right, yeah. And imagine using that technique to listen to anything, from the pulsing of a spinning star to the signals from an alien intelligence. All kinds of amazing.

• 42:55Chuck Nice?

  So now, is that more effective or less effective? Or does it make a difference of an array like SETI?

• 43:02Charles Liu?

  They do different things.

• 43:03Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 43:03Charles Liu?

  Yeah, they all have different strong points and weaknesses. But this single.

• 43:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the arrays of multiple telescopes all moved in synchrony?

• 43:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:11Charles Liu?

  But the single sturbo dish is a very, very cool thing.

• 43:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A single steerable disc can detect a weaker signal than an array can.

• 43:18Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha. There's the difference.

• 43:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The point of the array is to pretend you have a much bigger telescope than you do.

• 43:23Chuck Nice?

  Do, right.

• 43:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so it's a clever backdoor way because you're not gonna have a telescope that large that's steerable.

• 43:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's part of the

• 43:31Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

• 43:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Part of the engineering.

• 43:33Chuck Nice?

  So one's a net, the other's a giant hook.

• 43:37Charles Liu?

  Well said.

• 43:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 43:38Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 43:39Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 43:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, Chuck.

• 43:40Chuck Nice?

  Every once in a while, I

• 43:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck with the metaphors.

• 43:42Charles Liu?

  We need this guy in our

• 43:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, do you have a favorite example of what like a physicist might be looking for? Because they found the Higgs boson. What's left?

• 43:52Charles Liu?

  Wow. Dark matter and dark energy.

• 43:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, dark matter, dark energy.

• 43:55Charles Liu?

  Ninety-five percent of the universe, we don't know anything about, except how it behaves on the largest scales.

• 44:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 44:02Charles Liu?

  There's all kinds of neat stuff.

• 44:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we're pretty ignorant about that.

• 44:05Chuck Nice?

  What is the most effective means of studying such a phenomenon?

• 44:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What effect they have on other things that we can detect.

• 44:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 44:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and you keep doing this until you, you, or does this in that condition? Let's write that down. And there's a boundary to it. Does this in that situation? Write that down.

• 44:23Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 44:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You keep doing this, and eventually, the elephant takes shape.

• 44:28Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 44:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And maybe you have an elephant there, but you don't know that if you're only looking at little bits of it. So all the creativity in our field right now is finding out other experiments that you might conduct on space probes, on telescopes, to try to characterize dark matter and dark energy as much as you can.

• 44:44Chuck Nice?

  As something else.

• 44:45Charles Liu?

  Yes, and then eventually you head in the other direction. Zachary mentioned CERN, right, this big machine. What you do is

• 44:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The European Centre for Nuclear Research.

• 44:55Charles Liu?

  Right. Once you find enough barriers or boundaries to the thing like the Higgs boson or something, then you take your machine and you look in that space where you think it's bounded, to see if a particle like the Higgs boson exists, and sure enough, after years, it was found.

• 45:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're saying is, you look at all this, hey, something's happening over here. Now focus down on that. Well, something's interesting, then focus down on that. Because you wouldn't know to do that coming out of the box. You've got to work your way there.

• 45:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So science is way more arduous than is ever captured in newspaper articles that only report on discoveries.

• 45:28Charles Liu?

  Yes, and yet, it is so much fun, isn't it?

• 45:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 45:30Charles Liu?

  Don't you think?

• 45:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:31Charles Liu?

  I mean, as scientists, we just

• 45:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why we do it. Oh, yeah.

• 45:34Charles Liu?

  It's the journey. It really is.

• 45:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if we get paid to do it, that's a bonus.

• 45:37Chuck Nice?

  That's even better. Right.

• 45:39Charles Liu?

  Oh, it's more than bonus. It's whether or not I eat and sleep indoors.

• 45:41Chuck Nice?

  Would you be a scientist for free?

• 45:44Charles Liu?

  Yes, but I'd much rather be a scientist for free.

• 45:46Chuck Nice?

  Like, I'm saying like a citizen scientist, like, back in the day, nobody paid anybody to be a scientist.

• 45:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but back in the day.

• 45:50Chuck Nice?

  They did something else, and they did their science on the side.

• 45:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's not how that worked. Back in the day, in almost every case, the people who had the luxury of being a scientist were wealthy.

• 45:57Chuck Nice?

  They were rich.

• 45:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're wealthy anyway.

• 45:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 45:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if I were wealthy, I would still be a scientist.

• 46:01Charles Liu?

  Or if they were monks, they were provided for on a daily basis, didn't have much else to do. Like Gregor Mendel, for example, who figured out some genetics.

• 46:09Chuck Nice?

  So you're saying that most of the scientists back in the day were just bored?

• 46:14Charles Liu?

  I would have been back then, with something cool to study.

• 46:17Chuck Nice?

  Right, it's right.

• 46:17Charles Liu?

  Think about it. It's great. No.

• 46:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so it's quite a commitment. It's a devotion, really, is probably the best way to say it.

• 46:24Charles Liu?

  Yeah, right.

• 46:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let me give you some, we gotta land this plane. So what kind of final thoughts do you have, Chuck?

• 46:30Chuck Nice?

  Ah, you know, I'm-

• 46:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just reflecting on, you know, on storytelling, aliens, any part of what we just went through in these three segments.

• 46:36Chuck Nice?

  You know, I just think that the power of what we call science fiction is ever-growing in its influence on society. And I just hope that it continues to inspire people to be more involved in science, because that's the great power that it possesses.

• 46:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 46:55Chuck Nice?

  And I don't think it's appreciated as much as it should be.

• 46:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think we got the good Chuck.

• 46:59Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 46:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck is in the other universe.

• 47:00Charles Liu?

  Most assured.

• 47:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay, wait, now let me, let me give you evil Chuck. Now here's evil Chuck. Man, I love smoking weed.

• 47:09Chuck Nice?

  And watching Star Trek.

• 47:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's the, that's the deadbeat Chuck.

• 47:16Chuck Nice?

  That's deadhead Chuck.

• 47:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Charles, what do you have?

• 47:19Charles Liu?

  Zachary is yet another example of a classically trained thespian, an actor who knew Shakespeare. Then takes it to the next level, to science, to science fiction, aliens, but in the end, he is still illuminating the human condition for us all. Bravo to Zachary.

• 47:38Chuck Nice?

  Hmm. Okay.

• 47:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm. I would say it's the job of any- Fictional storytelling to illuminate the human condition or aspects of it. Mm-hmm. What I like in particular about science fiction is that you get to set storytelling on a stage that you might think is over there, but in fact, it's right beneath your own feet. Hmm. So I think science fiction gives you wider berth to tell stories that reflect back on your own condition. Mm-hmm. Think of how many people wouldn't do it if it was a lesson against them. Yeah.

• 48:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Telling them they're misbehaving, or telling them that their ways are misguided. Nobody likes being lectured to. That's right. Okay, but if you said it on another channel, "Oh, that's it, those are aliens doing that," or that's it, and then one day you wake up and said, "Ooh." They were talking about me the whole time! Damn Eugene Roddenberry!

• 48:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I think, uh, I think science fiction is an important dimension, not only for us to figure out who we are, but also to give us a vision of a future that we might one day embrace. And I will end with a quote from Gene Roddenberry. Ooh. A paraphrase, who, having written stories about apocalyptic futures, was once confronted by a woman who said, "Why do you write about such a dismal futures? Is this because that's the world you think we will have?" And he said, "No, madam. I write about apocalyptic futures so you know you need to avoid them." Ooh. Ray, Barry. Charles Luke, Chuck Nice. Yes, sir. Thanks for being in the house. Thank you, thank you.

• 49:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for watching, possibly listening to this episode of StarTalk. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.