StarTalk and Baba Booey Rock Comic-Con (Part 1)

Join us from San Diego Comic-Con 2012 for a gadget geek-out when Neil deGrasse Tyson interviews Baba Booey, Nerdist Chris Hardwick, and the Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. And we are here live at Comic Con San Diego 2012. And I've got Chris Hardwick.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The nerdist.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The one and only.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And of course, the one, the only, the inimitable Gary Dabuti.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Baba Booey.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Baba Booey.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  Baba Booey.

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Baba Booey.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  This is your first Comic Con, too.

• 0:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is my first Comic Con. Me too. I'm a Comic Con virgin.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  How is it so far?

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm feeling it. I'm feeling the love.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm feeling the craziness.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  There's a lot of love out there for Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know, we were out there in the street and like storm troopers walked by and Klingons walked by. And you don't even look twice.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where else can you not look twice?

• 1:10Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At creatures, you know?

• 1:11Speaker 01

  And it's okay, it's okay.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's okay.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  I'm sure people come to you and go, "That's a really good Neil deGrasse Tyson cosplay." Like, no, no, I really, uh...

• 1:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I tell them. This is my Tyson outfit.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Somebody interviewed me last night and they said, "What's the weirdest thing you saw at Comic Con?" And I go, "Nothing's weird, there's nothing weird here."

• 1:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything's normal.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  I'm the weird guy. It's a safe zone, it's a safe zone, yeah.

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I got you on StarTalk because I have good information that tells me that you're like the tech gadget geeky dude.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  I'm an enthusiast, I love the tech stuff, love the gadgets.

• 1:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You own everything.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  I have a lot of stuff, I mean, you can't own everything, but I write a column for a magazine, so I do get enough stuff.

• 1:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta stay on top of it.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  And I get to test stuff out, it's great, because I say...

• 1:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you write a column, that means they send you the stuff for free.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  But you gotta send it back.

• 1:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  That's the thing with gadgets, when you're working with gadgets, they send it to you for a minute.

• 1:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  And some companies are like, "You'll get calls, when are we gonna get our thing back?" Well, you know they're serious when they give you the bubble wrap and the sticker to send it back.

• 2:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The return of the envelope.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's your favorite gadget right now?

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, there's so many. I'm a big fan of Sonos. You know what Sonos is?

• 2:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, the system.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  S-O-N-O-S.

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sonos.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  So, so many people want to do all-room audio on their home.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  But they don't want to be chipping away at walls. So this is a way to do all-room audio through a wireless system. And they've really perfected. They've been around for-

• 2:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now your, your surrounding neighbors can't hide from you.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because every room is vibrating.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Apple has a version of it called AirPlay where you can get music from your device on to other devices in your home. But Sonos, they bridged all of that.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  And, and Sonos has done a better job because they partnered with SiriusXM, Rhapsody, National. They partnered with all these companies.

• 2:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So whatever device you have that makes noise, it can now be in every room of your house?

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Well, you buy a Sonos and you hook it to a pair of speakers and through your computer or through wifi, you can feed it what's on your computer, also your library of music. But they've really done a great job of keeping going with it because they started like three or four years ago. So there's a docking station for your iPad.

• 3:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh-huh.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  So if somebody comes over and say, "Hey, put your iPod in. Let's listen to what you're playing tonight." And you can send music out to your back patio. Well, I'm not running wires from the basement. Now you don't have to.

• 3:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that's a gadget that just improves on our previous capacity to want to just share music. Give me a gadget that I didn't know I needed. I didn't even know-

• 3:24Speaker 02

  There's a sonic screwdriver that someone has just released that is actually a remote control. And using a series of hand gestures, it will control your iPad or devices. And it's, for Doctor Who fans in particular, it's like having a sonic screwdriver.

• 3:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it does stuff.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At a distance.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  You point at it stuff and it controls.

• 3:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you jiggle it.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, did you get one of those?

• 3:43Speaker 01

  I did not get one of those.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do I have you for?

• 3:46Speaker 02

  I'm the guy that will try to help you get one of those.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  But I mean, you know, when you say, "What's a gadget you didn't know you needed," that's the great thing is, you don't need any of them. They're just awesome to have.

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but then when you have them, you can't imagine life without it. Like the remote control. I'm old enough, maybe you're old enough.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  No, I am.

• 4:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You remember, you actually had to get out of the couch. And walk to the TV to change the channel?

• 4:04Speaker 01

  No, you just watch one channel all day because it was easier.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You wouldn't get out of the couch.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  I went to a place last week, it was like an antique place where they have like old Coke machines and old jukeboxes that had old TVs. Do you know what a predicted TV is? It's in the science fiction where it's got sort of that, oh yeah, you know, that funky front on it, it's sort of like on an angle. And I didn't even know this because I sort of collected-

• 4:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was that a mod TV in its day?

• 4:24Speaker 01

  In its day. So what they did is, there was the TV, the head, right, and then the main box came with this 50-foot ridiculous-looking cable. And what you would do is you would take the box with you so you could change the channel from the box.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, they probably were like, "Oh my gosh, we're living in the future."

• 4:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's technically a remote control, in some ways.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  I'm really interested in, they're making a lot of advancement in like inductive charging. It's really just the move to wireless everything. So I see a lot of this untethering ourselves from our devices.

• 4:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I wanted to pose the question, then what of the title Wired Magazine?

• 4:56Speaker 02

  Oh no!

• 4:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I'm saying-

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Then it becomes retro.

• 4:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that is retro. Now we pass Wired.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  It is. I was at the Consumer Electronics Show last year, there's a company that's working on that, so they had a demo area, so they had a kitchen island, right? And in the bottom of your kitchen aid is this magnetic thing that just gets power, so you don't plug it in anywhere, so you can move it all over the kitchen. But the thing that got me is because they make it in drywall now, so when you put your drywall up, you can put these lights on, right? That just are magnets that go on the wall, and they're getting electricity from what's in the drywall. So for me, the way I say is like, "Okay, I got a 50-inch TV, now I got a 100-inch TV", you know what I mean? You can just move the lights on these-

• 5:36Speaker 02

  That's really incredible.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So all of these are things for the consumer home electronics marketplace?

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's gotta be some gadgets that are outdoor gadgets, or stuff that's not just for the home?

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Well, there's an outdoor TV, which I love that you can put on your patio, that's waterproof.

• 5:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Waterproof? Are you watching a TV in a rainstorm?

• 5:54Speaker 01

  You could be.

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you need a waterproof TV for?

• 5:56Speaker 01

  But that's the whole point, because it's out there all the time.

• 5:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. It's like underwater, other stuff that I would never need to be doing underwater.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  I got an underwater camera, and I went scuba diving with my kids, and it was awesome. I took great movies and great pictures. And then I put it away for 364 days.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, that's how that works.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  I wonder what it was also what I needed it.

• 6:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll get you back to your sonic screwdriver.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you have one that actually can unlock a safe?

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Not yet.

• 6:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the good one.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  But someday, someday.

• 6:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I could go up to the cash machine.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 6:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the real need.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Well, you really could, like, you know, especially with a lot of advancements in NFC, the near-field communication, where you basically just need something on you that activates...

• 6:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So near-field communication would be like Bluetooth?

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Well, it's a form of near-field communication, but not the near-field communication that, like, Apple was rumored to have put in their iPhones, that you could just walk through a store and not even need a cashier, they would take everything you bought.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  It's sort of like an easy pass, but how does it know? How does it know that you're buying something?

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Everything would have a chip in it of some type that would emit a signal, and then, you know, if you removed something, it would be...

• 6:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's like smart chips, smart chips?

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  But I guess there's no more shoplifting, because if you pick something up and you have that, since you walk out the door, it registers.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it just makes shoplifting way less fun.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Well, unless you don't have one of those phones.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Unless you don't have those phones, yeah.

• 7:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what does this cost? If they just send it to you, you don't have no clue what it would set you back.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  No, they tell you what it costs. I mean, they give you the price and everything. One of the things about the gadgets that I love is, there's a thing called unboxing. And unboxing is when you get it, there's this moment, like, okay, I got my...

• 7:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a little kid.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  So the day the iPad comes out.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  The smell of a new Apple product to me is the best smell for...

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Exactly, and so I'm going to slowly, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take the, I'm gonna take the plastic off, I'm gonna slowly take the box off, I'm gonna take all the pieces of it off.

• 7:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's pleasure and every, it's a striptease.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  It really is.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  The Apple Store is my, like, Bath & Body Works, where people go in, they're like, oh, smell all these fragrances, like, just smelling new electronics to me is the greatest thing in the world.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  There's a big excitement.

• 7:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back to StarTalk, we will get more into the psychology of unwrapping...

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Unboxing.

• 7:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unboxing tech gadgets. We'll be back in a moment. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. Joining me over the break is the bad astronomer himself, Phil Plait, longtime friend and colleague. I love this man.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Trying to, where do I?

• 8:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bro hug.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  We'll just watch.

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Phil, meet Gary.

• 8:23Speaker 03

  Howdy.

• 8:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice to meet you Phil. Tech dude, extraordinaire, and of course, the nerdist himself.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  Wi-Fi.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  You look familiar, Wi-Fi.

• 8:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wi-Fi, I like that.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  Wi-Fi, yeah, we can't touch it.

• 8:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi. Before we left for the break, Gary was telling us, because he gets tech gadgets to write about, which is very cool, he doesn't have to buy them, they show up on his doorstep. And he was talking about the emotional high he gets in the striptease of removing the gadget from the box.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Well, it's called unboxing, and when you get, if it's something you wanted for a long time, or something you've been waiting for a long time.

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's an actual psychological term.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, video gamers have it too, by the way. Video gamers, like, the actual unboxing of the video game is a very, is very ritualistic for a lot of people, same with gadgets.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  And I gotta tell you, with a gadget, there, there really is something to be said for how it's packaged, and Apple really has it down to a science. You take it out of the wrapper?

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, Apple doesn't have it down to a science, they have raised it to an art.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  They really have.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  Well done, well done.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Well done, well played. It's something you've either been waiting a long time for, to come out, or something you've waited and saved a lot of money to get.

• 9:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The anticipation adds to the moment.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  It's Christmas, and when you get an item that you want, or a gadget that you want, it's Christmas morning, it really is that feeling.

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every time you open it.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 9:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what else you got? What else have been, you've been coming your way?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it's funny, I haven't been able to try this out yet, because they're really not sending many of them out, but I went to the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

• 9:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where was that?

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Uh, in Vegas.

• 9:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Vegas? It's there every year, right?

• 9:47Speaker 01

  It's there every year, yeah. And, um, they have this thing, it's called, have you heard of a camera called Lytro?

• 9:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a-

• 9:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lytro?

• 9:52Speaker 01

  L-Y-T-R-O, it's a light field camera. Now, I don't understand exactly how it works, but it's supposedly taking light from everywhere, and I know that it's a little, it doesn't look like a regular camera, it looks like a, a square kaleidoscope, right? And you look through it, you take the picture, and no matter what the picture looks like, you can always put it in focus, because it's gathering light from all different areas.

• 10:12Speaker 03

  Do you know about this? I thought it was a joke when it came out.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  It's not.

• 10:15Speaker 03

  And it, it, what you do is you take a picture-

• 10:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's the optics of it?

• 10:18Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 10:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, why am I curious to you?

• 10:20Speaker 03

  This is what's killing me.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can see it this way.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  It's what's killing me, because I, I think about it, it's like, how would you do this? You take a picture, and it maps every- Every photon that comes in and then after the fact you can change the focus. So you've got this data cube I guess and you can say where do I want it focused? At five feet, 10 feet, 20 feet and you can do that.

• 10:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  After the fact.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  After the fact. So if somebody were taking a picture of us, right? We were all in focus and the background was out of focus. That's probably what we want. But if for whatever reason we wanted the back to be in focus as well, we can change that. And if for whatever crazy reason we want to be out of focus and we want the back only in focus, we can change that after the fact.

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what that means is everything is in focus to begin with and it's defocusing what you don't want. It's gotta be because you can't start out out of focus as data and then get focused.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  But that's the thing that it does start out out of focus.

• 11:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I'm asserting, I don't believe that. I think, I think it has to take everything in as a focused cube as he said.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  But how does every, how do you, but there is no camera that can focus on cameras.

• 11:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, there is, you know what that is?

• 11:22Speaker 01

  What?

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a pinhole camera. A pinhole camera has infinite depth of field. A pinhole camera. Everything is in focus. The problem is the pinhole is so small, you need flooded lights to get everything there. And so it becomes a challenge. Otherwise, everything would be a pinhole camera.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Well, I have not been able to get my hands on this camera to try.

• 11:41Speaker 03

  Right.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Because it's so, and that's sometimes, you know, they.

• 11:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the future of cameras.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that makes me a little nervous because they announced in January. If I'm not seeing it, I always wonder, sometimes they come out with these big.

• 11:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Vaporware.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 11:53Speaker 03

  Vaporware.

• 11:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Vaporware.

• 11:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, vaporware is basically when a company or someone talks about something that's coming out, but then it's like vapor, it never, like it never solidifies.

• 12:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They never got it to match what they said.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  It just doesn't work and then it never comes out and you hear about it for years. It happens at CES all the time.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Right, because what I think what happens is some of these people show up to CES with these grand ideas, a prototype, and then what they're hoping is someone will see it and go, oh, I want to have money in that.

• 12:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  That's a game, that's a game. So I don't know, but it's called light throw and I want to try it.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  And this is why I haven't been able to figure out how it works. Maybe there's information on the web, but when I, when it was first announced, I went online and I was thinking, how would you do that? Something like what you're saying, you're creating, you know, you're creating this, this map of where all the, all the lights coming in.

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a, there's a series of planes of detectors and.

• 12:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, a couple ways, yeah.

• 12:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you choose what combination of those detected planes are...

• 12:45Speaker 03

  And there are problems with light coming in from different angles and it's really interesting. And maybe by now, somebody's put up an explanation of this, but at the time when it was announced, I did not know.

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm very disappointed in you, I just want to say.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  I just want a Photoshop filter. You know, it's like, if you know in Photoshop, you can go in and if an area is dark, the information's still there, so you can go in and lighten it up.

• 13:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  I would just regret if there was just a focus filter.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  In one way, there is. And that is, if you know what a point source looks like. In other words, I have a point of light.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 13:15Speaker 03

  And it gets defocused somehow by a telescope or a camera, whatever. But you know it's a point of light, and it's like, well, it starts a point of light, but later on, it's blurred. If you could collect that light back into a point, it's like you're focusing it after the fact.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  But how would you collect that light?

• 13:29Speaker 03

  Really hard.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have to take all that light off of the detector itself, and then put it back in the point that you know was started out as a point.

• 13:37Speaker 03

  It's magic. It's called deconvolution. We had to do that when Hubble was first built, because Hubble was out of focus.

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 13:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I spent two years doing that.

• 13:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was deconvoluted for a year.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Are you going dot by dot and defocusing each?

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, essentially. Pixel, pixel by pixel.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Oh, that is a...

• 13:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're removing the light from each pixel and putting it back in the...

• 13:58Speaker 02

  That is the scientific version of like going in and cleaning up old art. Where you're just kind of going in and...

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 14:05Speaker 03

  Except, the problem with that, if you have a crack, you can kind of just say, well, it was brown on this side and brown on this side. I can just make that gap.

• 14:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With light brown and dark brown, it sort of interpolates across the gap.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. The problem here is that if I'm taking light from one part and putting it in another, because it was... It started here and focused, it defocused over here. But if there was something here, I'm taking light away from that and putting it over here. But now there's light over here, I have to put back over into here. And it's all, it's what's called nonlinear. You have to do everything all at once. And it's very complicated. And there are issues with it mathematically. It makes it really hard to do.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  Does complicated mean it also takes a lot of time, or is it just the notion is complicated?

• 14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's computationally intensive, but now with Moore's Law, just handing us computational capacity. I don't see why that can't just... Happened like on the fly.

• 14:52Speaker 03

  I used to run programs overnight, but three years later I was doing over like a snack break.

• 14:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Over snack.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  But isn't Moore's law slowing down? I mean, I don't see processors really getting that much faster than they were.

• 15:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, they've been cheating because now it's all done in parallel.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? So I want to be twice as fast, get twice as many processors.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Quad-core, eight-core.

• 15:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you have to program it in a way that all the processors can share the calculation.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 15:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? If you have to wait for one to finish after another, four processors don't help you.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  I mean, is there-

• 15:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So programmers have to know in advance how to distribute what is being calculated.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  I mean, have we, have we achieved all we can achieve with current technology? I mean, do you know anything about quantum computing or?

• 15:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm waiting for that. Quantum computing. A little overdue, actually.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  I remember the video game Cubid, but not, uh, that's what the qua- You said Cubid? Yeah, Cubid. I know, I know.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  Oh, Cubid. You said Cubid.

• 15:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what else you got? What else you got on your list?

• 15:37Speaker 03

  That's what programs are gonna do, yeah.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Hold on, let me look. I do have, I do have a list-

• 15:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's crib sheet.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  I do. Hold on, I have a list on here and, uh-

• 15:42Speaker 03

  On your pocket computer that you can carry around with you.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  So Kingston is a company that makes, you know, thumbnail drives-

• 15:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  And, you know, and memory and all that. So they just came out with an item, I'm literally testing it out on this trip. So it's 160 gigabyte Bluetooth little memory drive. So what do I need that for? So I've got my iPad, it's now filmed and everything. I've got, it's overloaded with movies, it's overloaded with music. I've been on the road for a week now.

• 16:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you can't put it back on your desktop, right? Where your big discs are.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Well, what, what happens is whatever's on your iPad, it's full. You can't put any more stuff on it. And you can't delete movies while you're on the road or anything. Even if you do, you don't have any more room to put it on. So as a, for instance, I have this little hard drive and I put like the entire second and third season of Breaking Bad, because I'm patching up on it on there. Am I gonna get to it? I don't know. Well, it turns out I am getting to it. So without hooking it into the computer, because you can't hook it to an iPad, I turn it on, Bluetooth, and now I have access to a secondary hard drive.

• 16:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is little.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  It's like, it's the size of a credit card.

• 16:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  160 gig.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And what's great about that is it's, it's not only good for movies and stuff like that, but it's also good if you're on the road, if you're doing a PowerPoint presentation and you want everybody can Bluetooth into you, you get, you know, put it on the desk in front of you. So I like that answer a lot.

• 16:54Speaker 03

  Does, does the Bluetooth have a USB port to go in?

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Well, the iPad doesn't have-

• 17:00Speaker 01

  No, it's, it's my point. It's got a USB port, it's got a firewire to USB- For putting it into your computer. Oh, but it also works.

• 17:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because that's where the data started.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Right, so in other words, I USB'd it into my computer to put the data on it. Now I can Bluetooth it to any device. I'm very jealous. How fast is it? It's pretty fast.

• 17:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it'll be Bluetooth fast, so.

• 17:18Speaker 03

  When I was packing for this trip, I'm thinking, well, I got my video camera, I got my still camera, but I don't want to bring my laptop. But if I'm taking a video, if I'm going to interview somebody like, say, Nerdist Sar Chris Hardwick, right, now I've got it on my flip camera. What am I going to do with this? I've got my iPad. You're saying I could take my flip, plug it into this Bluetooth, get it there, and then it'll go into the iPad?

• 17:37Speaker 01

  I don't know if it's got to be...

• 17:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It might need a file system to feed it.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:42Speaker 03

  But if they had that, I'd be golden. Because the iPad only has that stupid connection.

• 17:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back to StarTalk, more with Gary the Gadget Man, talking about his stuff. You've just begun to tell us.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  I got more stuff.

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we'll be right back.

• 18:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Gary Delamonti.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Delabonte.

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Delabonte.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Delabonte? I got it all when I was a kid, don't worry.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  Baba Booey's easy.

• 18:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Baba Booey, the one and the only Baba Booey. I got him right here. We're talking about tech gadgets. I got the Nerdist, Chris Hardwick, my colleague and friend, the Bad Astronomer. Welcome to StarTalk. Not your first time. So, we were going down this list of these gadgets you get that you write about. And where does it appear? Where's your...

• 18:34Speaker 01

  I write a column in Sound and Vision Magazine.

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sound and Vision Magazine?

• 18:37Speaker 01

  I go under the name Gadget Gary.

• 18:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Gadget Gary, what else you got for us?

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Okay, so now they make a Bluetooth camera that's, looks like a little bullet, and it goes over your ear, okay? So, there's a couple of things that you can do with it. You're like, why do I need that?

• 18:51Speaker 03

  It's so I can be low-key as a Borg. Hello?

• 18:54Speaker 01

  I do have to say, it's a little weird-looking, and you would be the weird guy at your kid's recital with it on. But there's a couple of uses for it. First of all, you can Bluetooth it right through your phone and write to anybody. So, if grandma's sitting at home in Milwaukee and your daughter's doing her recital, you can have this camera going through your phone, Bluetooth-ing live into your phone, and going right to the grandma's...

• 19:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That doesn't say why it has to be stuck in your ear.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Well, that's one of the things they had because the feeling was they wanted it to be small, they wanted it to be portable, and they wanted to be your point of view, so the premises. Wherever you're looking. If it's on your ears, wherever you're looking.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  Well, that's very similar to the, you know, Sergey Brin at Google, they're developing the glass.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  The goggles, the goggles.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, which, I spoke at Google and he was there, and it's weird, he looks at you with the glasses on, and they just look like little sport glasses, but you see a little flickering light in the middle, and you feel like you're being...

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Targeted.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, just like, you don't know what information he's seeing.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. Did you see the thing that they did where they jumped out of the plane?

• 19:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  It was crazy. They did a thing where they wore the goggles, and there were guys in a plane over where they were, they were talking about what they were gonna do, they jumped out of the plane, they landed on the roof where the event was, and then they got on bicycles and they rode into the event, and everybody could see the whole thing via these glasses, being transmitted, it was very cool. So, point of view is interesting, right? Yeah, but the other interesting thing about it that I love is, it's constantly recording, almost like a Timo, so it's going 30 seconds, 30 seconds, 30 seconds, or, maybe it's like a two-minute buffer, so if you have this thing on all day, and something really cool happens, because you don't know what's... You don't know, right, when what you decided was cool, it's too late to catch it from the beginning. Or if you saw it, and you go, "Oh my god, I want to take a picture of that", and it's way too late, you hit the button on top, and it immediately saves... So it's got a two-minute buffer.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  The previous 30 seconds, so, like, I was at an event last night where I saw this guy, holding up a sword to this electron thing, and it was like blowing sparks out, and I went to get my camera and I missed it. If I was walking around with this very goofy ear thing on, I would have pushed the button, and I would have saved the file. All right, what else you got? There's a lot of stuff going on with Bluetooth speakers, so I talked about Sonos, but even if you don't want to go that route, you want to go a smaller route, the people that make Jawbone, or the guys that make...

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Jambox.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Jambox. Jawbone is the company, Jambox, it's about this big, they just made a bigger one, so, what it is, is it's a speaker with... Bigger isn't always better in this business. But it's got really, really good sound, like, shockingly good sound, like, you're looking at this...

• 21:11Speaker 02

  Well, the little Jambox had great sound.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  It does.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  And it's kind of rubbery, so you can drop it.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  So this one's got a few... Rubbery? It is, it is. So you can drop...

• 21:19Speaker 02

  It doesn't bounce.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  But just don't drop it, I mean...

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Well, that's the other, that's the other approach.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  So, again, like, I built a house, I wired it to the hill, and I... Got to wire the porch. It just didn't dawn on me that I'd want to sit on the porch and listen to music. So again, I could go drilling and putting wires in and putting speakers in, or bring the jam box out. I take my iPhone. I usually do either Sonos over that, or I can do Sirius XM. So sit on the porch and I will stream it to the Bluetooth speaker and it's got great sound and it's a great way to get that sound without tearing your house apart.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so now, are there any gadgets that put you into a profound state of silence?

• 21:55Speaker 01

  You mean I'm so blown away by them?

• 21:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 21:59Speaker 03

  The cone of silence, I think is where it's going.

• 22:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A little cone of silence. Everything you've described is to distribute sound and music. Is there anything that creates a meditative state?

• 22:07Speaker 01

  No, I don't want that. I want the ultimate visual or audio experience. That's what I'm about.

• 22:14Speaker 03

  That's a cool idea though, particularly thinking about we're at Comic Con right now, so not just noise cancelling headphones, but is there any kind of a device that creates a feel that cancels out?

• 22:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Acoustic deadening force field.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, what is it?

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Michael Jackson had one. It was that tanky?

• 22:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was the, uh, hyperbaric chamber.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  The hyperbaric chamber. It was the one that William Hurt gets in and comes out an alien in that movie. You know the movie I was talking about?

• 22:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, where he goes into suspended animation.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Yes. But see, that would make me very claustrophobic. I would be freaked out about it by that.

• 22:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could you get a one of those? Could you close the lid?

• 22:43Speaker 03

  Like deprivation chambers.

• 22:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Complete darkness, complete silence.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  I couldn't handle that.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  I could not do that.

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it was just kinda cool if that were just an area you could walk into in your room. Something, for example, the babies crying, the traffic noise, whatever. Just walk into the zone, total silence.

• 22:58Speaker 03

  I think they call that the wife chamber. Have you ever been in one like that? For example, at NASA, when they test satellites, they do all these different shake and bake tests where they'll heat it and they'll shake it and everything. What they'll do is they'll also put them into these rooms, which completely deaden sound. And they can do all kinds of tests. And that's an anechoic chamber. And they have those weird triangle foamy things come in.

• 23:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, it's what set the standard for the foam wall installation in sound studios.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, right.

• 23:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:24Speaker 03

  But when you go into one of these highfalutin ones and you stick your head in between these cones, sound is gone.

• 23:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 23:31Speaker 03

  And it is really weird. It's really weird.

• 23:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Horse past your eardrum.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  I wouldn't like that.

• 23:37Speaker 03

  It's really distressing.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  I guess they-

• 23:39Speaker 03

  You'd probably get used to it.

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I guess they do it because you don't want to send the guy up to find out he's claustrophobic.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah.

• 23:44Speaker 03

  We're gonna lock you in this room.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Hopefully they test for that before they're like, "You're a master."

• 23:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what they say. Yeah, I've been in one at Bell Labs, out in Jersey, and it's the quietest place on earth in the Guinness Book for just this reason. We are live at Comic Con 2012 San Diego. We're talking about gadgets, past, present, future, and the most. We're back at StarTalk, live from San Diego, Comic Con 2012. I got the bad astronomer, I got Gary the gadget man, and I got the nerdist. So you're going down your list of gadgets, so give me, you got a couple more for me?

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got one. This is, you know, a lot of the gadgets are about, you know, making you feel better.

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, someone pays you to test their gadgets and write about it?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're okay with that?

• 24:37Speaker 01

  I would be doing it for free, so sure as hell.

• 24:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what do you got?

• 24:40Speaker 01

  But there's things that are practical, too, so I'm very big on backing up the computer because I have so much music, I have so much video now, I have so much audio, and so many important files, so I have a RAID drive system. And I use this company called Drobo, and it's for-

• 24:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  RAID?

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  RAID is acronym for?

• 25:00Speaker 03

  A really awesome interface device.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  Thank you very much.

• 25:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good on us, Steve.

• 25:06Speaker 03

  You're all day.

• 25:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I knew it was good for that, go.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  But it's a backup system, so what you do is you, I put in four 1TB drives. If one of those drives dies, the other three pick up the slack, so theoretically you can never lose any of your stuff.

• 25:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's redundant.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  It's redundant. However, as great as that is, I still, this is how nutty I am, I still have a drive that once every four, five, six months, I back it up, right, a regular drive, not a RAID drive, I back it up, and I take it to my bank, and I put it in the safety deposit box.

• 25:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And your bank is in Cheyenne Mountain.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  No.

• 25:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Colorado with NORAD.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Here's the one thing a RAID drive won't save you from, a fire.

• 25:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because that drive gets lost.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Well, there was one company I looked at that had a RAID drive that it survives a fire. You could throw it in a fire. So I thought I almost lost a lot of my photographs once, and it is the most horrible feeling in the world. I ended up getting an expert. He went way deep into the drive and he found that they weren't lost.

• 25:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, I'm pulling your leg, but I have, I'm equally as manic about my backups. And there's a backup that I put 100 miles away from the other backups. So, so I calculated what nuclear device would take both out. And then I figured that's a large enough nuclear device that I'm not really worrying about my iTunes music.

• 26:18Speaker 03

  So your drive to the bank isn't so crazy anymore. Did you account for the EMP that's going to wipe out everything?

• 26:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, the EMP I don't think would affect a non-running drive.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  No, unless it, unless it, unless it creates a current that goes through the drive. It could have, you know, an induced current.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  But I do have a question for you guys. This is where I feel like I'm being really old school. Does everybody trust the cloud? Because the cloud is another way to back up. So do you trust putting your most important stuff on the cloud that's backed up in Kansas City? Um, I mean, I use it.

• 26:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have issues with the cloud.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  I do. I use it, I use it for accessibility. I use the cloud. Like I have a Dropbox and I have access to all the files.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  But would you take your most important stuff and just rely on the cloud?

• 26:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I see what you're getting at. People put their stuff on the cloud and that's where it lives. And for me, the cloud is just, is the, is the super highway to get it from the iPad to the iPhone to the desktop.

• 27:11Speaker 03

  But you are of a certain age.

• 27:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I am.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  I have a daughter who is in her teens and has grown up with the internet. And so for her, that's just the stuff that happens. For me, I wouldn't trust the cloud because maybe, you know, corporate interests running all of my data is not something I want.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  There's two things going on.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  The kids don't know that.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  There's two things going on.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't have that mentality.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  And yet we go to bank, we put our money in banks, which are like financial clouds.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  Yet I'm not happy. I like that.

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a financial cloud. I put it there and where did that dollar go?

• 27:38Speaker 01

  You know, it's like, it's a famous speech, "Oh yeah, your money's in Billy's house and Eddie's house." You know, for once it's a wonderful life.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  Merry Christmas, the old Chris Hardwick over there. But I have a Lego bank. I keep my money under my mattress.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  But there's two things in the cloud that are weird. The first is, you're exactly right. How do I know that somebody's not looking in my cloud or where it is? And the other thing is, so I've now got this wonderful company who stores it in this temperature-controlled room in Kansas City. What do I do when they go out of business?

• 28:05Speaker 03

  Close. It's close to Colorado Springs.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  What do I do when they go out of business?

• 28:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Kansas City's in the middle of the country, so that we're invaded. You still have time to sort of get ahead of the line and then save your music.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  I'm not talking about a nuclear disaster. I'm talking about a business disaster. Like, they ran the company so bad that they go out of business, so what happens to the hard drive?

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and they got no money to go dig it out, because they're broke.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  So I think Chris is on to it. You use the cloud for convenience, but I keep everything on my hard drive at home.

• 28:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, me too.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Don't trust the cloud. Right. Use it for convenience. I don't trust it.

• 28:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, and also, when I leave town, I take all my backup drives and I put them away, hide them, just in case someone breaks in, then my drives are protected.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take my jewels, take my...

• 28:46Speaker 02

  But don't take my data, please! But what's your backup system for if your house catches on fire? Uh, well, then it's like, worst-case scenario is the cloud right now.

• 28:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The cloud.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  So, hopefully if my house doesn't catch on the fire at the same time as the cloud does.

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta wind down this segment of StarTalk. So, we're gonna lose you...

• 29:04Speaker 02

  Yes, I have to take leave of you. I'm going to doing my live Nerdist Podcast at the Baba Theater in San Diego.

• 29:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're gonna lose you for the next segment?

• 29:10Speaker 02

  You're gonna lose me for the next segment, but it's been such an honor to be here.

• 29:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But thanks for sharing your Nerdist time with us!

• 29:14Speaker 02

  It's so great. It's such a fun collection of dudes.

• 29:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you gotta spread your Nerdist love. I know we only get you for a piece of it.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I gotta go do my show now, but it was wonderful to guest on your show.

• 29:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for having me here.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for coming. Good to see you, Gary.

• 29:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. When we come back to StarTalk Radio, we're gonna launch this into the future and find out what gadgets we always wanted to have and have yet to be invented. I'm your host, the Underground Titan. See you in a moment.

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk. San Diego. Comic Con 2012. I've got the bad astronomer. And I got Gary the gadget man. Otherwise known as Baba Booey. Baba Booey. Baba Booey.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  I have to say, when they told me that I was doing a show with an astrophysicist and his astronomer's friend, astronomer friend, okay?

• 30:08Speaker 03

  I'm both, actually, yeah.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  I thought like, I thought it was gonna be like two nerdy guys, but you guys are very, very... Do you get that a lot? Do people go... Do people expect you to be socially awkward, because you're not?

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, well, you don't see us in other settings where we...

• 30:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, that's true.

• 30:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I think we're, you know, yes, we're socialized.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  You think smart guys get a bad rap?

• 30:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes. But not only that, in astrophysics, there's no reward for being socialized, so even if people have the capacity, it goes untrained. In many, in many circles.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Like, do you watch The Big Bang Theory?

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Okay, so...

• 30:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, I had a cameo on The Big Bang Theory.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Did you?

• 30:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah!

• 30:44Speaker 01

  You have to tell me when, because I never miss it.

• 30:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  But, but, so a guy like Sheldon is not that uncommon?

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, we, we see that all that... They're a bit of a caricature, but still...

• 30:55Speaker 03

  It's really true, and in fact, especially with scientists, we see ourselves. You know, I think, I have, not only have I known Sheldon and Raj and, you know, and how, all those guys, they're me. In different situations, I've seen myself.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So accurately captured.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Have you ever been at a party, gotten a little drunk, and realized that you're over-explaining something to somebody who can't comprehend it?

• 31:17Speaker 03

  You know, it's funny you'd say that. When I first met my wife at a party, I was in graduate school, she was an undergraduate. She was at a party, I was actually, um, uh, looking through some math books that were in the, in the that host's house, because I was looking for something I needed for my work. And she came up to me and said, "So, what are you doing?" And I told her, "Oh, epicycloids, blah, blah, blah", and I went through this whole thing, and her eyes, and she was gone, okay? Married that woman, eventually...

• 31:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That sounds creepy, now she has to chase her down.

• 31:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Caveman style.

• 31:49Speaker 03

  "No, no, this is cool, this is cool."

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Before the expression "stalking" had been invented.

• 31:54Speaker 03

  Yes, right. But it worked out, you know, we've been married a long time.

• 31:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we need a device that can make, that can make that happen. So how long you been writing about gadgets?

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Probably about five years now.

• 32:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Five years? And like you said, they actually pay you to do that?

• 32:07Speaker 01

  They do, not a lot.

• 32:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, now what's the clumsiest, stupidest gadget you ever looked at? You said this is stupid.

• 32:13Speaker 03

  Save the iPad, save the iPad!

• 32:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you an Apple hater?

• 32:18Speaker 03

  No, I think Apple is just as sucky as every other kind of computer.

• 32:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, are there no computers? I'll pull him in in a minute.

• 32:26Speaker 03

  I have a PC with an iPad, I have an iPhone, and a...

• 32:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have a PC?

• 32:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, I had a Mac for a long time and it died. I got a PC because it was a lot cheaper.

• 32:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, are you using your DeLorean?

• 32:35Speaker 03

  I'm really wishing I had gotten an iMac, I know, I know, I know! I'll get a Mac again, but, you know.

• 32:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you one of those people who thinks like Mac is taking over the world? And you just don't want to be like, like everyone's lemmings?

• 32:46Speaker 03

  No, I take things as they come. I make my decisions based on what's going on. There are things I like about the iPad and things I think are really dumb, but...

• 32:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why, in a minute, we're gonna talk to her about future gadgets, not current gadgets.

• 32:57Speaker 03

  Don't ask me questions, I'll start talking.

• 32:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's your suckiest gadget that you know?

• 33:01Speaker 01

  Oh gosh, there's, some of them are just so stupid. There was one, when I was at a CES, there was one, it was supposed to be like a... It looked like Rosie the Robot from the Jetsons.

• 33:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh yeah?

• 33:11Speaker 01

  And it was like a...

• 33:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was her name Rosie?

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Rosie the Robot.

• 33:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't remember that.

• 33:14Speaker 03

  There's somebody cosplaying as her.

• 33:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, but she had a little apron.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  But it was like a mini version of her, and it was, it was supposed to help you lose weight? And you're supposed to go talk to it every morning? And tell it what you ate, and it was gonna tell your calories back, and it was like... I couldn't use my brain, like, you know, they come up with all these different things for weight loss? And this was like a, you know, a very expensive item. It was like a mini computer, and I just thought it was so dumb, and I haven't seen it since.

• 33:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it was overkill for the, for the need?

• 33:41Speaker 01

  There's a thousand apps on your Droid or your iPhone that will do the same thing for you? With a little bit of input, it was just, you know...

• 33:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like LoseIt, for example, I've used LoseIt, and it just keeps track of your weight.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  I've tried to lose 30 pounds on LoseIt.

• 33:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It reminds you what you're doing.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it plots it.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  Right, but that's all losing weight really is.

• 33:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's all it is.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  So that's a $3.99 app versus a $500 robot?

• 34:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Anything that you felt was too hard to figure out? Because that's the big thing, you know, Apple, you just walk up to it and it runs itself, right?

• 34:12Speaker 01

  I will tell you this-

• 34:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't need it, no Apple user uses an instruction manual.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Well, the story I'm about to tell, I'm very ashamed to talk about because I'm not very handy mechanically inclined.

• 34:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yet you just said you built your house.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  No, I had somebody build it. You think I was out there like a Quaker?

• 34:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, I was about to be impressed. Okay, you had enough money to pay somebody else to build your house.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Me and the Amish were out there.

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, right, right.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  We did a barn raising. No, there's a couple of companies, one of them Schleglocks.

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, of course.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  So they came up with this really cool lock that, again, works off an app via a wireless thing. So, you know, you put the door lock on and you can key code it, that's easy, that's pretty common. Or I could be, you know, in traffic an hour away and my buddy calls, "Hey, man, your house, where are you?" "Oh, I'm stuck in traffic." I can hit the app and open the door for him.

• 34:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  So that's awesome.

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A remote door opener, yes.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  A remote door opener, or I can remotely set codes for the cleaning lady, a delivery guy, people that you don't want to have the same code over and over again. It's great, awesome. I've had it for four months, I haven't been able to test it out because I don't know how to put the doorknob in. The mechanical part of taking out a doorknob, I can't do.

• 35:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah, there's some stuff you gotta pull in and go-

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's in two dimensions, right? Exactly. Have you ever installed a doorknob? Yeah, yeah, no. It's a nightmare. I got an A in shop when I was a kid, guys, okay?

• 35:29Speaker 01

  And they keep calling me, they go, "When are you gonna review it?" I'm like, "I'm getting it, I'm getting it." I'm waiting for somebody to come over who says, "Oh, I got a friend who's like, 'Oh, give me that, could put it in in two minutes.'"

• 35:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know- We gotta wind down this first half. You've been listening to StarTalk, live from San Diego, Comic Con 2012. When we come back in our second hour, we're gonna talk about gadgets we wish existed, gadgets we want to be invented, and we're gonna talk about gadgets we've seen in the movies that we wish we had now.