Cosmic Queries: Absolutely Puzzled with Heather Berlin and Soleil Saint-Cyr

Got a problem? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Chuck Nice explore the world of puzzles and problem-solving with neuroscientist Heather Berlin and Soleil Saint-Cyr, the youngest woman to publish a crossword puzzle in the NYT.

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. This is StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And today, we're going to talk about puzzle solving, specifically crossword puzzle solving. The kind of puzzles that show up all around the world in newspapers, magazines, and puzzle books. That's what we're going to be talking about. Chuck, you're going to help me talk about this.

• 0:37Chuck Nice?

  I was going to say, in other words, we just want people not to see this show, huh? Because... How you going to do that, Neil? How you going to start this show with like, "And today, we're talking crossword puzzles"? Click! You're supposed to say, "Today, we're talking the science of The Fast and the Furious. All nine movies, right?"

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Oh, here we go. Okay. Ready for a new...

• 1:05Chuck Nice?

  Then we trick 'em.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got this. I got a new introduction. You ready?

• 1:09Chuck Nice?

  Here we go.

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, new introduction. Okay. You ready? Okay. This is StarTalk. Today, we're talking about what goes on in the brain when you're trying to solve a problem you've never seen before. And we're going to reach in and analyze what happened. Does that a little better?

• 1:28Chuck Nice?

  That was great!

• 1:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:30Chuck Nice?

  Now I'm listening!

• 1:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now. But of course, neither of us have any expertise in that. We got to get someone who is one of the experts in the world on creating crossword puzzles and solving them. And so, we combed the world and we found a 17-year-old girl. I think... Soleil, have you turned 18 yet?

• 1:53Speaker 02

  I turned 18 in February. Yep.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In February. Okay, okay. Welcome to StarTalk, Soleil.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You are a resident crossword puzzle expert. And we chose you because, not that I had any special clairvoyance on this, but you are the youngest person to ever get a puzzle...

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Published in the New York Times? Is that correct? Did I understand that?

• 2:19Speaker 02

  Youngest woman to get one in the New York Times.

• 2:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Youngest woman ever to get one? Okay. Well, I bet the youngest guy could not have been that much younger. I'm betting. How old was the youngest guy?

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Thirteen.

• 2:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and it-

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thirteen?

• 2:30Chuck Nice?

  And guess what, Soleil? Soleil, his puzzle sucked.

• 2:35Chuck Nice?

  It was all about transformers and-

• 2:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And juice boxes.

• 2:41Chuck Nice?

  And boobies. What a, what like, I think seven across was boobies. Come on. Come on.

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So, so, so the youngest woman ever to get a crossword puzzle published in the New York Times? So, I think this brought you a lot of attention, didn't it?

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, it did. A lot of unexpected attention, definitely.

• 3:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but it was welcome, I mean, unexpected, but like, it wasn't bad, I guess, right?

• 3:10Speaker 02

  No, of course, it was not bad. It was not bad. I was just like, I only made a crossword puzzle. I didn't anticipate, you know, the Today Show to ask for that.

• 3:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, or you didn't cure cancer or something?

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, how long have you been doing crossword puzzles?

• 3:27Speaker 02

  I've been doing crossword puzzles probably since I was like 10, but not, not of the New York Times caliber. People Magazine, back with People Magazine with my mom.

• 3:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn, she just dissed People Magazine?

• 3:38Chuck Nice?

  I know, yeah. Then again, actually, she really didn't diss New York, I mean, People Magazine. People Magazine kinda dissed People Magazine by putting a crossword puzzle in People Magazine.

• 3:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What kind of reasoning are you invoking?

• 3:53Chuck Nice?

  I'm just saying, like, if you're going up against the New York Times, you shouldn't call yourself People Magazine, okay?

• 4:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so, so you, so that you got engaged in solving them, right? So, fine. All right, I can, you know, throw a, you know, throw a stick and hit 20 people who solve puzzles. But it's like another subset, another sort of, in the Venn diagram, there's that smaller subset.

• 4:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who creates the puzzle? So what possessed you to do such a thing?

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Definitely a lot of boredom. So I started wanting to be able to make them.

• 4:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But wait, you're in school. You were supposed to, you're learning in school. And now you're saying you're bored.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Well, uh, it was summer 2020, so it wasn't really like I was doing much. Um, stuck at home.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, COVID summer, COVID summer.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, got it, got it, got it, got it. Okay, go on. So you did something, so instead of binging, uh, you know, the Kardashians.

• 4:52Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You decided to.

• 4:55Chuck Nice?

  Wait a minute, and so, wait, so this was a relatively new endeavor for you?

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To create a puzzle?

• 5:01Chuck Nice?

  Which, okay, there are people who, one, puzzle competitively. And two, spend their entire fricking life trying to create a crossword puzzle. And you're saying that you got bored because you were, you were home from school? And so you, damn, okay.

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. All right, so, so I, I think many people don't realize that for many crossword puzzles, certainly the New York Times crossword puzzles, the black boxes where the clue does not land is like laterally mirror symmetric.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 5:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Across the puzzle.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  So it's rotational symmetry. You have.

• 5:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, excuse me, excuse, excuse, excuse me. Damn.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it's rotationally symmetric?

• 5:54Speaker 02

  Yes, rotationally symmetric. Um, I believe it's 180 degrees rotational symmetry. Um, you can do mirror symmetry if you'd like, but more classic is rotational.

• 6:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so this makes it even harder because it forces how long the answers must be in a, in relationship to what else is going on in the puzzle?

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 6:14Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 6:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, just, yeah, of course, yeah.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  It's a puzzle within a puzzle when you're trying to place the black squares. Just because depending on where you place the black squares, depending on what words you have in different places, different patterns arise. And so bad black square placement could lead to a terrible puzzle.

• 6:31Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Or an unsolvable puzzle.

• 6:33Chuck Nice?

  Right, right. So now, when you say that, when you talk about the placement of black squares and the puzzle within the puzzle, are you saying that to the consummate puzzler or crossword person that they can look at your formation and that will help them in the solving of the puzzles?

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Normally, no. When you're solving them, it wouldn't help. But for a constructor, that's really, that's where the brain power comes in, I think, is arranging those black squares to make sure that, one, you have a solvable puzzle, and, two, that you're creating as many opportunities possible for you to have words in those spaces.

• 7:16Chuck Nice?

  I guess.

• 7:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Plus, and New York Times, and I'm sure the London Times as well, there's often a whole storyline going on within the clues of the puzzle itself, right? A whole backstory on this clue relates to that clue, and it's the third word of a title that was in that clue.

• 7:33Chuck Nice?

  All these little Easter eggs that are hidden in the puzzle itself, or the clues themselves.

• 7:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but Soleil, doesn't that mean, like, you have to be older and wiser and have life experience to put all of this in the puzzle?

• 7:45Chuck Nice?

  He's like, no, you just have to know how to read. That's what Soleil is saying.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  I mean, I mean, kind of, you're right. I don't think that you have to be or have any sort of particular, large subset of knowledge. The way that crossword puzzle constructing works now is we have software, you put in word lists that a lot of people end up coding, and, you know, I could put in TikTok language into my crossword puzzle. Obviously, the 80-year-old won't be able to solve it, but all of my friends will. And I don't find it so bad.

• 8:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you can tune the crossword puzzle to make it hard or easy for whoever it is you want to make it hard or easy for?

• 8:29Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah.

• 8:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:31Chuck Nice?

  So now, for the New York Times, what would you say is the hardest crossword puzzle to do? On a consistent basis.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  The Saturday. The Saturday is known as the hardest puzzle.

• 8:42Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 8:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so which puzzle did you, you did which puzzle?

• 8:45Speaker 02

  I, I constructed a Monday, but the Saturday is the hardest to solve. So Monday's.

• 8:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay, so you still, you still have headroom here to grow.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 8:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so the Monday is like the entry level.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:58Chuck Nice?

  And do they get progressively hard during the week, or is it just Saturday is the hardest and that's all there is to it?

• 9:03Speaker 02

  They get progressively harder to solve throughout the week. And then Sunday, like the famous Sunday Times puzzle, it's just the largest in size. So rather than a fifteen by fifteen grid, you have a twenty-one by twenty-one grid, but it's about Wednesday difficulty, so.

• 9:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I didn't know that. So, so, so that also means you have to have a sizable vocabulary.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  You have to have a sizable, yes, vocabulary, but also word list. So throughout the days or like weeks, a lot of crossword constructors, you'll come upon a new word or you'll come upon a new phrase and you'll just add that into your word list on your computer. And that word list will automatically update the software in your, um, that it's used to construct. I think the hardest part about words and vocabulary when it comes to crossword puzzles is recognizing letter patterns. So there's obviously some letter patterns that everyone knows are more prevalent than others, like T I O N.

• 9:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Like everyone knows that's quite common, but when you're constructing a puzzle and you see like three vowels in a row or something and you have like, say like a seven letter word, you're going to be able to tell more easily which words will be able to fit. That, that's the type of pattern recognition that you have to use as a constructor.

• 10:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see. And because there are fewer words that will have that, but you have to be able to, you have to be armed and dangerous whenever time you see, because you could be handed that set of letters while you're constructing the puzzle.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you can go straight to your word for it.

• 10:32Chuck Nice?

  And, and the more you fill it in, the more the puzzle itself helps you, right?

• 10:39Speaker 02

  The more you go it in.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'd hope.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  You'd hope, yeah. Sometimes, I mean, constructing a crossword puzzle, if you get stuck in one place, you kind of have to erase the entire corner and restart.

• 10:50Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Um, it it's not really like a, because it's a domino effect. Once one word doesn't fit or one word doesn't work.

• 10:59Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Everything else doesn't work around it, so.

• 11:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Soleil, do you take pleasure in this? Is there some dopamine in your, is it? Or is it pleasure knowing that you made a puzzle that other people can't solve? Like, I guess I'm just asking why?

• 11:14Chuck Nice?

  It's just like messing with old people sitting around reading a newspaper.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  No, there there's definitely pleasure in it for me. Um, I love puzzles of all types. I do a lot of science, but I also read a lot. And I think all of those different types of endeavors are different types of puzzles. And I think that this is just a different way to stretch my brain. And then about making people frustrated and angry, I typically don't like to do that. Um, when I started solving, I was ten. And crossword puzzle, and I probably moved on to New York Times crossword when I was about thirteen. And New York Times crossword puzzles are not made for seventh and eighth graders. So most of the time, I'd finish a puzzle frustrated and having to Google everything because I had no idea how to solve it. And I don't like making people feel stupid. And that's how I felt when I solved it.

• 12:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, wow.

• 12:06Chuck Nice?

  See, you would never make.

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's noble.

• 12:08Chuck Nice?

  You'd never make a good comedian.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  You're right. You are right.

• 12:14Chuck Nice?

  That's the best feeling in the world is making somebody realize how stupid they are.

• 12:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so you're you're graduating high school, basically. So what do you, what do you want to major in?

• 12:26Speaker 02

  So.

• 12:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I I'm assuming, I assumed you're going to college.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  I'm I'm going to Harvard next year. I don't know exactly what I'm majoring in, but right now.

• 12:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, did I ask you where you were going?

• 12:35Speaker 02

  No, you weren't, and I need to.

• 12:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I did not ask you.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  I need to face that. I need to stop doing that.

• 12:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I did not ask you where you were going.

• 12:42Chuck Nice?

  Okay, wait a minute.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  But they have.

• 12:43Chuck Nice?

  Let me tell you this joke, Soleil, so that you can remember this. How do you know somebody went to Harvard?

• 12:49Speaker 02

  When they tell you they went to Harvard.

• 12:53Chuck Nice?

  Don't worry, they'll tell you.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  But I was, I was thinking about their history and science program and like doing.

• 13:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which are very prestigious, the history of science. Yeah.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  I'm really excited for that. Hopefully I do that and like philosophy maybe.

• 13:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So now I'll ask you like a few of your favorite things. So what's the, your, the best clue you ever came up with? Most clever one you're just really proud of and you'd like you put it on the wall.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Well, the one that sticks out in my head is, uh, the answer was Georgians. And it was John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock for two, and it was right after the Georgia senate elections. That, that was just timely and just like, I don't know. I, I like that. I'm not super punny or clever when it comes to my.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause I find some, some puzzles go out of their way to be punny and clever and it's almost just annoying.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  It is.

• 13:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They just wanna, they're just trying to show off that they can pun that way.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  It's sometimes annoying, but also I just genuinely cannot think that way. I, I don't know how people do it all the time. So. I mean, I, I just like the, uh, pop culture references, the, the things that are relevant to the present day.

• 14:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. That's what we do. And we try to do some pop culture on the, on this show.

• 14:03Chuck Nice?

  So now wait, let me ask you this before we go to pop culture. Um, sixty-two across. All right. Kick up to be unruly. And the answer is a fuss. Now a fuss itself is a word or a fuss as in you're making a fuss?

• 14:26Speaker 02

  As in you're making a fuss.

• 14:28Chuck Nice?

  Okay. You cheated, man.

• 14:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait. A fuss is one word?

• 14:31Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  No, but two words.

• 14:32Chuck Nice?

  But it's two words, but it's, you, you tricked me. I thought it was a word.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  It's allowed. It's, we're allowed to trick.

• 14:39Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh.

• 14:42Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's cold.

• 14:44Chuck Nice?

  Cold-blooded, man.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Well, well, two-word answers are fine.

• 14:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Two-word answers.

• 14:49Chuck Nice?

  You're right, because you can have compound words or actual just two words or a title. Or you could have a title. So you're absolutely right, but that's.

• 14:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw you were gonna play that way. You were gonna play that way.

• 15:00Chuck Nice?

  You, you. I'll tell you what you're doing. You kicked sand in my eyes.

• 15:05Chuck Nice?

  You're playing a little dirty.

• 15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Well, so this is great and I'm just, I'm delighted to have you on the show here and to showcase this. And in the next two segments, we're going to just sort of get inside the puzzle solving brain and find out what it's doing for us and why is it there at all? Because think about it, you know, do other animals solve crossword puzzles? I don't think so.

• 15:27Chuck Nice?

  I don't know, man. I was, I've seen a couple like orangutans sitting around. But they were only doing the People Magazine.

• 15:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very cool. All right. So, Lee, we got to call it quits there, but it's been a delight to have you and good luck at school. Excuse me. Good luck at Harvard and...

• 15:51Chuck Nice?

  You, sir, have the boorish manners of a yearly just now.

• 16:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. When we return, we're gonna sort of get inside the head of puzzle makers, of course, with the help of friend of StarTalk, Professor Heather Berlin, when we return.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Chris Cohen from Hallworth, New Jersey, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. Please enjoy this episode of StarTalk Radio with your and my favorite personal astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 16:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk. Cosmic Queries Puzzle Edition. What a first segment that was, Joe.

• 16:52Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just the, it gives us hope for the future.

• 16:55Chuck Nice?

  Nothing gives me hope for the future.

• 16:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nothing.

• 16:59Chuck Nice?

  Nothing.

• 17:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but.

• 17:01Chuck Nice?

  It's gotta help. But it did help. It did help.

• 17:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It did. It did help. And what we want to try to do is get to the bottom of what's going on in the mind of somebody who not only does puzzles, but even has the, has the interest and the ability to create them in the first place. Right? That's, that's a subset of everyone presumably who does puzzles. And we, we, we are delighted to always be in arms reach of our resident neuroscientist, Heather Berlin. Heather, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 17:32Heather Berlin?

  Always a pleasure.

• 17:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a psychologist and professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, right here in New York City. And it's always good to have you because you, you take us places that, you know, we think, you know, everyone likes to think they understand their own.

• 17:49Chuck Nice?

  No, they don't.

• 17:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they don't.

• 17:52Chuck Nice?

  Yes. You are, let me tell you something. You are much more stupid than your brain.

• 17:59Heather Berlin?

  You are correct. You are correct.

• 18:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 18:01Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 18:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that, yeah, yeah. So, so Heather, before we get to our listeners' questions about solving crossword puzzles, could you just set it up for us? Why, why does anyone want to solve a puzzle? How does that have any value to what it is to be?

• 18:19Heather Berlin?

  You know, it actually, it takes us back to our kind of hunter-gatherer roots, right? It's, it's about searching. It's the hunt to find something.

• 18:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, to something that you value at the end of the hunt.

• 18:34Heather Berlin?

  So you pick up clues along the way. You know, our brains evolved to try to figure out where the reward is, right? Okay, I know that if I see, you know, the branch is hanging this way, that maybe means there's an animal behind it. And so we learn how to figure out and pick up on these cues to get the reward at the end.

• 18:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If A, then B, then C, then maybe D. And D is, okay, but people are doing this. And when you finish the crossword puzzle, there isn't a biscuit that comes out.

• 19:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There isn't some, you know, where is, what is the reward? It can't just be, I solved it. That doesn't improve your survivability. Because we're feeding the dolphin when it performs for us. And, you know, you throw it at the fish and you throw it. And even the dogs at the, at the dog show, right? They're feeding them, any, any, any animal doing tricks, you feed them.

• 19:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, by the way, the New York Times just called Neil and they said, thank you.

• 19:34Chuck Nice?

  From now on, all crosswords will come with a little biscuit at the end.

• 19:40Chuck Nice?

  Somehow our crossword patronage has gone up 5,000%.

• 19:47Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, I mean, there are these, there are different kinds of rewards, right? They're primary reinforcers, we call them, which is, you know, food or water, or sex for that matter. But then we've evolved these secondary reinforcers. So the same neural system that gives us that hit of dopamine, that gives us a reward when we eat something sweet, let's say, has in a way been hijacked. So now you're getting that same reward, the same neural pathway is triggered when you solve a problem. Whether you get a sweet treat at the end or not, it becomes irrelevant because it's now a secondary reinforcer. You're reinforced just in the fact of having solved something.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, okay, so, so our, our reward system is really, use the term, what?

• 20:35Heather Berlin?

  Hijacked.

• 20:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What kind of jacked was it? Hijacked, oh, I thought it was carjacked.

• 20:39Chuck Nice?

  That's so funny. I love carjacked. Step out of the brain!

• 20:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Step out of the brain, right now.

• 20:45Chuck Nice?

  Step out of the brain right now.

• 20:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Step away from the puzzle.

• 20:50Chuck Nice?

  Drop the puzzle.

• 20:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're saying is, things that were, in some way, did serve to get us food. Food was primary, but there's secondary pleasures or rewards coming to the brain. And that's what we're feeding today because obviously there's food everywhere. Right? So that's food.

• 21:08Heather Berlin?

  And in a way, it can become addictive, just like drugs of addiction. It's that same neural pathway that you crave solving problems, which is a good thing.

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, well, let's see. Let's see what our fan base, just what questions they have about puzzles. And so we're already kind of a notch up because I think not everyone does puzzles. So maybe this might be like slightly more erudite than what we're normally doing here, but let's find out. Chuck, what do you have?

• 21:33Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's start things off with, um, this is Andrew, okay. Stoup, Stup, Stup, one or the other, or Stope, like Tope. He says, hello, Dr. Tyson, hello, Dr. Berlin and Dr. Comedy. Oh, that was very funny and very funny, Andrew.

• 21:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 21:56Chuck Nice?

  Uh, as always, Chuck, if you can pronounce my last name correctly the first time, I'll double my Patreon membership immediately.

• 22:05Heather Berlin?

  Yo, you are a man.

• 22:08Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man.

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, now he tells you after.

• 22:12Chuck Nice?

  I should have read to see. I don't get, I don't read these questions beforehand, people. And now you know for a fact that I don't read these questions beforehand because damn it.

• 22:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn, we just lost out on that one.

• 22:23Chuck Nice?

  Right. Oh, man, Andrew, brother. Okay.

• 22:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait. So Chuck, how does he spell his last name?

• 22:31Chuck Nice?

  It's S T A U P E. So Stup, Stup?

• 22:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I would say Stoup.

• 22:36Chuck Nice?

  Stup, Stup, Stup.

• 22:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, that's my guess.

• 22:39Chuck Nice?

  So Stoup, see, and like to me, I figure, cause it looks like stup, but you know, I don't think that it, I don't think anybody has like a Yiddish last names.

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right.

• 22:51Chuck Nice?

  So anyway, he says this.

• 22:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's the question?

• 22:53Chuck Nice?

  He says, uh, we all know the human brain is especially hardwired for problem solving, above and beyond many species living today. However, I'm wondering if you or other scientists have speculation on how, as to how far back in Homo sapiens history, these earlier hominids could have had these various puzzles and games that modern humans do daily. Would it be 10,000 years, 50,000 years, 100,000 years or more?

• 23:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting.

• 23:24Chuck Nice?

  So.

• 23:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But so a deeper question there is, is this a primate thing in general? Or, you know, I guess lions are solving puzzles when they want to sneak up on their antelope or whatever they're chasing, the zebra, right? That I guess they do a little bit of that. But I think we're thinking higher level problem solving, aren't we? In this exercise?

• 23:45Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, he's also talking about for pleasure, not for, not just survival.

• 23:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 23:51Heather Berlin?

  Oh, it's a good question. It depends on, on, you know, how you define games, right? Like, obviously, they're not going to have the modern types of games that we've developed now as our prefrontal cortices have evolved um over the last couple of hundred thousand years. But even, you know, five hundred thousand years ago.

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, you don't, you don't, you don't think they have Grand Theft Auto?

• 24:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Video games?

• 24:16Chuck Nice?

  Grand Theft Chariot.

• 24:21Heather Berlin?

  I mean, they were solving problems, even, you know, there's records of um very sophisticated um axes that were found that were hand carved, you know, five hundred thousand years ago. Um, and in order to do that, you really had to use a lot of problem solving skills. So you can go as far back as that. You can think about, there's a whole theory that the brain's built because of our social interactions and having to solve problems in, in relating to other people. And that goes very, very far back as well. So, you know, it's hard to say whether they were playing games for fun per se, but they certainly were developing the problem solving toolkit that is then needed to play the games

• 25:04Heather Berlin?

  that we now play for fun. Uh, whether they were getting pleasure out of the problem solving, I'm going to assume yes, they were because, or else they wouldn't keep doing it, right? They kept doing it because they were either getting rewards at the end, killing an animal, um, or social positive feedback. Uh, and over time, it became reinforcing in and of itself.

• 25:24Chuck Nice?

  Right, wow. That's pretty cool.

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 25:27Chuck Nice?

  I mean, that makes sense. Yeah, I, you know, the, the thing is that pleasure back then, I mean, when you go far enough back in our human history, pleasure is surviving.

• 25:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anything that doesn't kill you is pleasurable.

• 25:41Chuck Nice?

  You know, so the whole, the whole idea of, you know, the Sunday afternoon crossword puzzle. I don't, I don't think you had that, you know.

• 25:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like Chog, Chog, the saber tooth only bit six of my fingers off. I have four more.

• 25:59Heather Berlin?

  I mean, the whole premise is that these systems, these neural systems that evolved to help us survive and to get pleasure out of doing the things that help us survive are now, we're kind of hacking into them. By, you know, creating these games that hack into the systems, the original purpose of which was to survive.

• 26:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think that's the key point there. Yeah.

• 26:19Chuck Nice?

  Okay. All right.

• 26:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck, what else?

• 26:21Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's move on to Mike Bertuccio. And he says this, "Hi, my girlfriend loves all kinds of puzzles, jigsaws, crosswords, you name it, but hates playing board games or card games. To me, puzzles and board games offer similar challenges and engagement. Why are some people really into puzzles and not other kinds of mind challenging pastimes?"

• 26:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I'm wondering, Heather, puzzles are very solo, right? Whereas board games, you're competing against someone else. So maybe that's the difference. What do you think?

• 26:56Heather Berlin?

  Also, I mean, it's, okay, it depends on what the board game is or the card game is. But a lot of board games, and I know this because I have young children and I'm forced to play board games quite often, is that it's really a bit of luck that's involved, you know? Do you pick the right card? Do you roll the right number of dice? So it's less about problem solving, you know? And, and you don't have to really actively cognitively engage, use your memory. You know, when you're doing a crossword puzzle, you're having to engage your memory and all these associations between words and ideas. Board games don't challenge you in that same way. A lot of it is just, did you roll the right number? Did you pick the right card? Same thing with playing cards, you know, are you lucky with the hand you were dealt? And so it's more about luck than it is about actually cognitive skill in, in many cases.

• 27:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so this dude's girlfriend is smarter than he even thought. Because she, she wants to be in total control over all of what's going on. And do it with her mind and not rely on the randomness of dice.

• 27:53Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, pretty much.

• 27:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's...

• 27:55Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so you, you're putting it at a higher level.

• 27:58Heather Berlin?

  I think it's more cognitive.

• 27:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's what it sounds like, higher cognitive level.

• 28:00Heather Berlin?

  Again, depending on, you know, there are some card games or board games, yeah.

• 28:03Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, but bridge is a very, uh, is a game of strategy. And poker, uh, is really, for those who play it well. It's really about knowing the percentages of the hands. So what you're doing is extrapolating the percentage that you might win if you're a good poker player. But then also using human nature in terms of bluffing and knowing your opponent.

• 28:25Heather Berlin?

  So it's a different, I would say it's a different skill sets than the ones that are used for these problem solving kinds of, um, puzzles. Different kinds of skills. So I don't, I, I hesitate to say one is higher than the other. It's just different and some people prefer one over the other. So there'll be individual differences in terms of preferences.

• 28:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but it's, so it's sensible that there's a divide between these two kinds of

• 28:51Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  entertainment, okay.

• 28:53Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 28:53Chuck Nice?

  Wow, I never thought of it that way. Mike, uh, the real answer is your girlfriend is right.

• 29:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Period.

• 29:04Chuck Nice?

  Do you need anything else? I don't think so. Okay.

• 29:11Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is a Jocelyn, uh, uh, Salias, nope, Salas. Okay.

• 29:24Chuck Nice?

  All right. Salias, okay, there you go. Um, she says, hello, Dr. Tyson, hello, Dr. Perlin. And, okay, of course Chuck. Jesus Christ, what is up with you people? What the hell is happening?

• 29:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We love you Chuck, we love you Chuck.

• 29:40Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 29:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We love you Chuck.

• 29:42Chuck Nice?

  She says, my question is, why is it easier to solve number puzzles like Sudoku? Than it is to find that one jigsaw piece you've been searching for? That usually ends up being right in front of your face? Are our brains just hardwired for numbers? Also, why does solving puzzles have a calming effect?

• 30:05Heather Berlin?

  Hmm.

• 30:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, I like that. So Heather, is a jigsaw puzzle visual? And then Sudoku is just mathematical? Is it that simple?

• 30:14Heather Berlin?

  There are two things to say. One is, again, using different aspects of your brain and of cognition. So one is visual spatial solving puzzles. And when we look at, we can do cognitive tests or IQ tests. We find that some people are really, have a skill set where they're really good at visual spatial processing. And maybe they're not so good at working with numbers. But so they're two different skill sets. And the thing with the puzzle pieces is that there's something that's called unintentional blindness. So sometimes there are things that are in your environment that are right in front of your face. But you, your attention, you're not paying attention to them because they're kind of blending in with everything else. So there's nothing distinctive about that particular piece that's going to make it highlighted above the rest of the pieces.

• 30:59Heather Berlin?

  So in a way, you're blind to it. Uh, which, yeah.

• 31:02Chuck Nice?

  It's the nose, it's the nose blindness of your eyes.

• 31:06Heather Berlin?

  Yes, you habituate. Exactly, like if there's a really horrible smell in the room, eventually you don't smell it anymore over time. Your brain habituates. And the same thing with, you have the same environment all the time. Or like, you know, your spouse, after a while, you just don't see them. That was my.

• 31:21Chuck Nice?

  Don't see them at all. You just don't see them.

• 31:24Heather Berlin?

  That's part of the imagery.

• 31:26Chuck Nice?

  There you go. It's like, did I get a, did I get a new sofa? Oh, no, that's my wife.

• 31:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it sounds like Heather could use some counseling too at the end of the session.

• 31:38Heather Berlin?

  Don't tell my husband.

• 31:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 31:39Heather Berlin?

  Um, but the other thing I wanted to say is that, yes, puzzles can have a very calming effect. That's why people tend to go to these things like on their phones, you know, like Candy Crush or whatever. Is that it, it's a kind of repetitive, it's very internally focused. You don't need any external, you know, you can just kind of play around in your mind. And for some people, that repetitive way of thinking can be very relaxing for them.

• 32:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, in gamers I've spoken to who write these things, it's apparently very important to have a reward system built in. Where the whatever is however small the accomplishment is, you get that sort of gold star like what you had in elementary school and then that accumulates so that you're always coming back, back to it. So, but I can't claim that it's always calming when I see people getting a little, getting sort of excited or anxious about going back in for that next level.

• 32:32Heather Berlin?

  It's not like, I think, no, I think things like, like, um, making puzzles, those kinds of things where it's less about competition and where you're getting the adrenaline and the excitement and it's more about just solving, solving things, solving a puzzle, solving a, um, the crossword. And the games is a diff, it's a different kind of thing. It is more about the reward and the unexpected reward and you keep trying to go for it. It's more to do with like with gambling than it is to do with that kind of calming effect.

• 32:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it, got it. Well, guys, we got to take a quick break, but when we come back, more of Cosmic Queries Puzzle Edition with our resident neuroscientist. I like that. Heather Berlin, we'll be right back.

• 33:21Chuck Nice?

  All right, time to acknowledge our Patreon patrons by giving a Patreon shout out to Ken Abe, Oscar H, and Travis Mansfield. Hey, guys. Thanks for your support. You know, without you, just can't do this. And for anybody else listening who would like their very own Patreon shout out, please go to patreon.com/startalkradio and support us.

• 33:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. Heather Berlin, you're helping us figure out the brain and puzzle solving. And Heather, you, you have a Twitter account.

• 34:05Heather Berlin?

  Heather underscore Berlin.

• 34:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck, Chuck Nice Comic tweeting there.

• 34:09Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, sir, yes.

• 34:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so you've got Q and A for us. Let's, let's do it.

• 34:13Chuck Nice?

  Let's get right back into it. Here we go. Uh, this is Robert Weaver. And Robert says, uh, to the incredibly funny and smart Chuck Nice, thanks for taking my question. Uh, Rob.

• 34:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You were lying.

• 34:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're just trying to make up.

• 34:32Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is what Robert says. Robert says this, are we doing any studies about puzzle, puzzles solving addictions? I am at level seventy one seventy five of Candy Crush. I always seem to flip to it when I'm bored. I love Sudoku and jigsaw puzzles. Some people don't seem to care. I also like to gamble, smoke cigarettes. So is there any, uh, anything to puzzles, puzzle solving and addiction?

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Heather, what, can you see a connection there?

• 35:01Heather Berlin?

  Absolutely. So the, like we were saying before, the reward system, it's, it's when we, we have an unexpected reward that's going to hit. You're not sure when it's going to come. That causes you to keep coming back and back and back again. Um, to sort of try to find when am I going to get my hit? And so some of these games, I mean, the game makers like of Candy Crush, they studied psychology. They understand what they're doing and they've, they've created the games.

• 35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They, they hire people like you. They hire people like you to get inside our head.

• 35:29Heather Berlin?

  Exactly. And so they created the games with a reward schedule that will keep us coming back for more. So it all, and it's especially for people who already have, um, addiction issues in other domains, whether it's with drugs and alcohol or gambling, um, they're much more prone to get kind of sucked into these games and, and, um, find themselves doing it for hours and hours and not being able to stop.

• 35:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there, is there correlation between getting addicted to one thing and getting addicted to something else? I mean, is there an addiction center that has the susceptibility?

• 35:58Heather Berlin?

  I wouldn't say, um, like there's not like an addictive type of personality, but yes, we tend to see, um, addiction can cut across different domains and he, yeah, yeah, exactly. And we found actually in some studies that, that what we've done in my lab is that people who are, let's say addicted to gambling, they actually, the nucleus accumbens, the reward center of the brain that receives that hit of dopamine. Um, when you take a person without addiction and you say you're about to get a reward, they start getting activation in that area. People who have gambling problems, they have less activation. They need more stimulation to get the same high. So they're chronically under activated.

• 36:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why some people can resist it. That's why some can resist it.

• 36:37Heather Berlin?

  The others, they need that stimulation just to feel like another person might just feel naturally. Uh, so, so rather that it's a kind of under activation and they're searching for more to get to get the same high that the average person might get with something way less intense.

• 36:51Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 36:52Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 36:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, okay. So we're just sacks of chemistry, that's all you're telling us.

• 36:56Heather Berlin?

  Pretty much.

• 36:59Heather Berlin?

  Sorry, guys. Sorry to break it to you. You are your brain. Yes.

• 37:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. All right, Chuck, give me some more.

• 37:06Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is Andrew, um, Gendro, who says this.

• 37:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, they're all Patreon.

• 37:12Chuck Nice?

  Everybody is Patreon.

• 37:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what we're doing now, yeah, that we.

• 37:14Chuck Nice?

  If you're listening and you want to send us a question, uh, that we will read over the air, please, uh, sign up and support us at patreon.com/startalkradio. Uh, and, uh, cause that's where we get all of our, our inquiries from.

• 37:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's do it.

• 37:29Chuck Nice?

  So.

• 37:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, you said read it over the air, even if Earth had no air, since we use electromagnetic signals, it would still get transmitted. So.

• 37:36Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:37Heather Berlin?

  Well, good to know.

• 37:39Chuck Nice?

  Alex?

• 37:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just looking at Heather, Heather's making a note of that. The, on the air is just bullshit. It has nothing to do with the air. It has to do with the space-time continuum. I just thought I'd set that in.

• 37:50Chuck Nice?

  But if we didn't have air, no one would be here to receive the message that we're sending. So, all right, it says, uh, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Berlin, what do we know about how puzzles and challenges keep our minds sharp as we age?

• 38:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I like that. Yeah, Heather, what's up with that?

• 38:08Chuck Nice?

  If I want to keep my mind as healthy as possible, which puzzles in particular should I be doing?

• 38:14Heather Berlin?

  Yeah. So.

• 38:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And is it true at all to begin with?

• 38:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:17Heather Berlin?

  So, you know, the research is mixed. Um, some studies show that, yes, it helps stave off cognitive decline. Others show that it doesn't really make much of a difference. So it, it's been, it's been sort of controversy within the, um, literature. However, what we do know is that it has to do with novelty. So if you've been doing crossword puzzles your whole life. Your brain kind of habituates and you're not, it's not helping that much as you age. But it's about changing it up, switch to do a different kind of mental activity.

• 38:49Chuck Nice?

  Learn, learn an instrument, learn a language, do something completely foreign.

• 38:53Heather Berlin?

  Exactly, because the thing with dopamine, it's not just about a reward, it's about motivation, right? And, and the more novel something is, the more motivated you are and the more you're going to keep your brain active and healthy and excited to kind of keep learning. So it's about not just doing a puzzle itself, but about changing the cognitive task you're doing as you age. And that can help save off aging, yes.

• 39:17Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh, uh huh, alright, cool, good, keep it coming Chuck, we got time for a few more. Here we go, this is Fredrick Johansson, who says, hello Dr. Tyson, Dr. Berlin and Mr. Nice Guy. Uh, okay, I'll, I'll, I'll take that. We'll take that, we'll take that. Okay, Fredrick, he says, uh, how come it seems some puzzles, such as the Rubik's Cube, seem nearly impossible to solve when they are first released? But after a while, people seem to be able to solve them within seconds blindfolded.

• 39:51Heather Berlin?

  Hmm, okay, I think there, there's a lot to unpack here. But what we, what we know about solving puzzles is that the majority of what's happening is happening unconsciously, right? So we, we try to solve it consciously and then because our unconscious has a much larger capacity, can process many more variables, um, most of, uh, problem solving is implicit or happening unconsciously. And we know that from two interesting studies. One is they gave people a problem to solve. Um, the answer wasn't obvious, you kind of had to think outside the box and people weren't able to do it. Then they used TMS, which is a type of magnetic stimulation, it's called trans, transcranial magnetic stimulation, to stimulate the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

• 40:36Heather Berlin?

  Which in a way released our, our kind of constraints in our brain. Normally, things are constrained. It released the constraints and suddenly people were able to solve the problem because it allowed them to access these unconscious processes.

• 40:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 40:48Heather Berlin?

  Really fascinating stuff. And the other study that's related to that is that they had people try to solve a problem, again with a, a solution that was outside the box. They couldn't do it. Then they either had them sleep for eight hours or kept them awake for eight hours. And after which, the people who slept, sixty percent of them could now find the shortcut and only twenty-three percent of the other group. So again, the unconscious brain is processing. So with the Rubik's Cube, you know, I think over time, people, not only did they consciously learn the algorithms and figure out how to solve them, but after practicing and doing it over and over again, the unconscious, again, was picking up on cues and figuring out how to solve it, maybe even faster than the conscious mind. So.

• 41:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. I think there's a thread in that question unstated, that there is a researcher named Rupert Sheldrake in the UK.

• 41:36Heather Berlin?

  Oh, I know him.

• 41:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, who is certain that there's some kind of consciousness field and that, that we all tap into. And as more people solve it, that enriches the consciousness field such that it's easier for you coming later in the day than it was for those who started it earlier in the day. And he based that off of the, the very real statements that people make solving the London Times crossword puzzle. Uh, by the end, they say, oh, by the end of the day, I was really good at it, but early on, I wasn't. And so he's making this assertion, but I, I always wondered, you know, maybe just you're more awake at three in the afternoon than you were at nine in the morning.

• 42:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There might be other explanations for that than a consciousness field that defies all experimental measures of the laws of physics.

• 42:25Heather Berlin?

  Agreed.

• 42:26Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna go with that too.

• 42:30Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna go with that instead. Instead of the consciousness field. Okay, I'm gonna go with that.

• 42:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, you're going with that.

• 42:37Chuck Nice?

  And by the way, Vatim Feskin, because you answered his question, but I would just want to read it. He says, hello Neil, Chuck, Heather, I have a question about problem solving phenomenon that happens when you get stuck on a problem and do some other non-brain intensive activity and then you happen to arrive at the answer what's happening. So I just wanted to read that because you answered his question in the process of answering this Rubik's Cube question as well.

• 43:03Heather Berlin?

  The thing is, when you're trying to solve a problem, take in all the information, distract yourself, do something else, let your unconscious work on it, and then you'll come up with these aha moments and be able to solve it.

• 43:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or walk into one of your magnetic chambers that you have in your home that you put your husband through every day.

• 43:18Chuck Nice?

  Put that big magnet, put that magnet and the zapper right on one both sides. And then all of a sudden, you won't even care what the problem is, you'll just go take out the garbage.

• 43:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Heather has the most obedient husband I have ever seen in my life.

• 43:33Heather Berlin?

  Our little secret.

• 43:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's our little secret, we won't tell anybody.

• 43:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 43:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, time for a few more.

• 43:40Chuck Nice?

  This is Joraz Petrovic, who says this. Hello, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Blin, I would like to ask you, how different is the location of brain activity? Depending on the type of puzzle the person is actually solving.

• 43:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that.

• 43:57Chuck Nice?

  Are there any nodes, in quotations, of problem solving which might light up an MRI or other scans, no matter what the nature, visual, numerical, linguistical, of the problem may be?

• 44:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it, yeah.

• 44:13Heather Berlin?

  So no matter what the problem is, and of course, if it's linguistic, you're gonna get language areas or visual spatial, you get visual areas. But outside of those differences, you're always going to get activation in the prefrontal cortex when you're doing problem solving. That's called the, it's involved in executive function of the brain, it's kind of like the conductor of the orchestra. And we see that always when somebody is solving a problem, no matter what the problem and what domain, you get prefrontal cortex activation, and that's why people have lesions in the prefrontal cortex or brain damage. It can affect their problem solving skills. But this is another really interesting case. They can still solve problems in some cases. So this one patient, HM, he had damage to his hippocampus, the memory part of his brain.

• 44:56Heather Berlin?

  And he would try to, they would have him solve these crossword puzzles. He wouldn't remember doing them at all. Um, but each day he would do them. He would get better and better at them. So his prefrontal cortex was intact, but his memory system was broken down. So he can't remember doing the puzzles, yet he kept getting better at solving them. So the problem solving part of the brain is still doing its work, whether you're consciously aware of it or not, which is also.

• 45:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. So he was not, he was not solving the puzzle from memory is what you're saying. He was resolving it every time.

• 45:26Heather Berlin?

  Yes.

• 45:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And get, and getting better as if he didn't know it from. Getting better. That's amazing.

• 45:30Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's really cool.

• 45:32Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, HM, cool, cool subject. Yeah.

• 45:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. And, and remind me what the hippocampus does?

• 45:38Heather Berlin?

  Memory, long-term memory consolidation. So he, he had no, he lost his long-term memory, but he could still get better at implicit tasks like, you know, solving problems.

• 45:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Damn. Cause, cause I, I told Chuck before, in my day, I was a big man on the. Uh-oh. No. I just, I just wanna say, I don't mean to brag or anything, but in my day. Oh my God. What? That hurt. There can't be that many brain jokes. That hurt, that hurt, that, that hurt every lobe in my brain. There's gotta be like a finite number of brain jokes that exist. All right. You know, this, this, this reminds me, one of my favorite shows on National Geographic um, is Brain Games where every show they, they take you to some uh, curious part of how we function as humans. It's my favorite show too. Oh, oh, oh, oh, but I bet, I think I know why it's your favorite show because

• 46:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  we just learned on StarTalk that Chuck Nice, our very own, we're taking ownership. Yes. Our own Chuck Nice is the new host of Brain Games. Poo, poo, poo, poo. Da, da, da, da. Yes. Da, da, da, da. That's right. So Chuck, congratulations. Thanks, man. Yeah, so uh. And, and we knew you when, I just wanna say. You'll still know me then, so.

• 46:56Heather Berlin?

  Just don't forget the little people. Don't forget the little people.

• 46:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just when you're, you know, just we're still here Chuck.

• 47:02Heather Berlin?

  I taught him everything he knows. Everything he knows about the brain. Right here.

• 47:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We taught him everything. Yeah, Heather needs a big thank you on that one.

• 47:11Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, without a doubt. Yeah, no doubt.

• 47:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when does it air? When does it pick up?

• 47:16Chuck Nice?

  Fourth quarter of this year. So look for it later on in the year, guys. Yeah.

• 47:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fall 2021.

• 47:21Chuck Nice?

  Fall 2021. We're looking at it towards the end of this year. Yeah.

• 47:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. How many episodes are there?

• 47:26Chuck Nice?

  Um, well, there should be 20, but you never know.

• 47:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so it's gonna go the whole year?

• 47:32Chuck Nice?

  It looks like it's gonna run the entire year.

• 47:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fall into the spring. Okay.

• 47:36Chuck Nice?

  And if it doesn't, then we will know that Chuck is no longer the host.

• 47:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it cancels?

• 47:44Chuck Nice?

  If you see less than 20 episodes.

• 47:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It did even worse.

• 47:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we all look forward to that. Yeah, that's one of my favorite shows on Natural Geographic. After Cosmos, of course.

• 47:59Chuck Nice?

  Well, yes, of course. How could you not?

• 48:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So guys, thanks for being on StarTalk and helping make sense of this puzzle solving centers of our brain. And it was a delight to have Soleil Sancier in that first segment. And I look forward to having her back. Maybe she would have solved problems that we have created and have yet to solve going forward.

• 48:21Chuck Nice?

  The first one could be, hey, when are you coming back?

• 48:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that would be easy compared to other things we confront. But anyhow, she's the future and that gives me confidence that civilization will not go extinct. All right, Heather, always good to have you. Chuck, we're looking forward to your Brain Games. I've been Neil deGrasse Tyson. Keep looking up.