The Big Bang Theory

A hit TV sitcom about science geeks? Neil talks with the co-creator and science advisor for "The Big Bang Theory."

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium. This week, we're going to talk about the hit CBS television series, The Big Bang Theory. For those who may have never seen it, it follows the adventures of four scientists, Leonard, Sheldon, Raj, and Howard, as well as the girl next door, Penny, who's an aspiring actress and a waitress at The Cheesecake Factory. We'll learn more about all these characters later in the program, but I should let you know that if you do a Google search on Big Bang Theory, number one is this TV show, and number two is the origin of the universe.

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I sat down with Bill Prady, co-creator and writer of the show, in his office in Los Angeles. And joining us was David Salzberg, an astrophysicist at UCLA and science advisor to the show. The first question I had to ask was, what were you thinking, creating a show about geeky scientists? And why did you think anyone would watch it?

• 1:25Speaker 01

  As I understand the world, there are nothing but geeky people in it. So, based on me and the people I know, so to me, it's a depiction of the world as I see it.

• 1:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you have geeky roots to lead to this?

• 1:38Speaker 01

  I have the geekiest of roots. Before I was a television writer, I was a computer programmer. And this is back in the early PC days, when, before they were called PCs, when they were called microcomputers. And I programmed in Z80 assembler.

• 1:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa, so you're card carrying?

• 1:55Speaker 01

  I am card carrying, absolutely. And I've been to my share of Star Trek conventions.

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But did you don Spock ears? That's the question.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  I have donned Spock ears, but I've donned Spock ears on television, in fact. If you hunt through reruns of Dharma and Greg. I had a recurring mute character of a guy, a forty year old virgin who went to Star Trek conventions and I sat in the chair and got the Spock ears, if you have a makeup person, take about forty-five minutes to put on. So I've had that experience. It doesn't get much geekier than that.

• 2:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you've got the roots. So it's one thing to be of the geek mold, but it's very different to then have non-geek populations embracing a show that is a celebration of geek life. Did you predict that? Because The Big Bang Theory could not be this successful unless, quote, "regular people were watching it."

• 2:43Speaker 01

  If I had the ability to predict what things would make a television show successful, then we would be speaking from my home in the cloud city I would have built.

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On Mount Olympus.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  On Mount Olympus, hovering in gold hover thrones. So, so no, there's no...

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What a picture, a hover throne. I love it.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  But no, you can't predict. All you can do is ultimately say, "I'm gonna do an honest portrayal of characters that interest me. I'm gonna do stories that I find honest," and you hope that people find them. I'm fond of the definition of geek as not necessarily being somebody where it has to be science or science fiction, but it's that unbridled passion toward knowledge in an area. So I think that there are just as legitimately gardening geeks and rock climbing geeks.

• 3:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just listed your next two shows.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  That's right. Well, gardening geek is gonna be a very exciting show, and dry cleaning geek is gonna be big. The next project is a dry cleaning procedural, and we don't get to know the characters. It's all really about just stain removal with a lot of CSI-type photography.

• 3:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You heard it here first on StarTalk Radio.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  So I think the two things that people identify with, one is a passion about an area of interest, and the other thing is that the feeling that you're on the outside and that other people sort of have it figured out turns out to be the universal human condition. That, you know, everybody goes home and assumes there are other people who have life figured out better. I'll talk to people who are clearly the high school football athlete or supermodel, high school cheerleader type, and they say, "Oh, my God." This show is me and I look at them saying, oh, really? Okay, fine.

• 4:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When was the last time you were slammed into the locker?

• 4:24Speaker 01

  That's right, but for everybody, you know, it's the two trains at the beginning of the Woody Allen movie, where one train seems to have the party on it and the other train goes by and with people sort of peering through the window. And I think that feeling is one of the things that is an emotional underpinning to Big Bang Theory.

• 4:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So presumably you don't carry all this physics, even though you're a card carrying geek. Presumably you get help.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  We get help. Chuck Lorre, who is the co-creator of The Big Bang Theory with me, we will often sit as we're writing and we're trying to come up with something scientific and we'll be furrowing our brows. And I will say to Chuck, what is it we're trying to do now by furrowing our brows? Is somehow the knowledge of physics going to arrive in our brains? So we have, from the beginning of this project, reached out and starting with the first episode after the pilot, it's been to Dr. David Salzberg, who is a-

• 5:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The gentleman who is seated to your left at this moment.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  To my left right now, who is a professor of astrophysics at UCLA.

• 5:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  David, welcome on to StarTalk Radio.

• 5:30Speaker 02

  Well, thanks for having me.

• 5:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, so you're an astrophysicist, but there's more than astrophysics on this show. There's particle physics, there's some biology thrown in, material physics. So are you a jack of all trades or do you have your lifeline when Bill calls you?

• 5:44Speaker 02

  I am not an expert in all areas of science by any means, and certainly not even all areas of physics. So one of the explanations of getting a PhD is to be to learn more and more about as narrow a subject until you know absolutely everything about nothing.

• 5:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's excellent.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  But being that I am a professor of physics, it is incumbent on me to try to be broad. What's wonderful about the show is it's actually forcing me to learn things. I actually learn a lot from the questions that I get asked by Bill and the other writers.

• 6:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so when you guys are writing, what comes first? Is the storyline first and say, we need a science infusion here that's comical? Or does the science then dictate what the characters are doing with each other?

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Both. Sometimes the moment of science is incidental. And there you're just looking for, "I had a great day at work, you know, X happened." And when we're doing something like that and nothing really turns on the specific, then as we write, we'll literally put "science to come" right in dialogue. And sometimes we'll be a little more specific. Sometimes we'll say "obscure science to come." Sometimes we'll say "discredited science to come." Or something like, because you know, if you want to write a line that says, "My God, thinking that we can get the movies in 20 minutes is the same as thinking." And then we might write "discredited science to come." And so that's a message to David. We communicate through those notes in the script and he'll provide a couple of things

• 7:08Speaker 01

  and we'll pick one. So that's the simplest thing. So David, you have to know the good science and the bad science to slip into the plotlines.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  Right. There was one wonderful moment where they had put in Quantum Brain Dynamic Theory for Sheldon to be working with Leonard's mother, Beverly. And I was really nervous because it's not the most accepted theory, let's say. But the whole episode revolved around it. I didn't want to say you can't use it. So I just mentioned that this wasn't really published in refereed journals. And they solved it. They came with one word. Instead of working together on this topic of Quantum Brain Dynamic Theory, they were working on disproving it.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Oh, there you go. Yeah, that works. Well, sometimes we'll do a little internet hunting around and that's sort of the second way things happen. Sometimes we do kind of know something here. You know, every now and then we'll have a vague handle on it. So we'll put something in, we'll take a shot at it. And then it's like turning in a paper. We'll get a grade back. And sometimes we get it right and sometimes we're close. In that case, you know, we missed by 180 degrees, but that's easily by adding the word "not."

• 8:08Speaker 01

  I never thought of the word "not" that way, but that's exactly what it is. The word "not" solves a 180-degree error.

• 8:18Speaker 03

  Oh, hi. What's going on? We're up on the roof bouncing laser beams off the moon. I'm sorry, what? It's pretty cool. We've got a two-meter parabolic reflector and everything. I thought you might want to see it.

• 8:29Speaker 04

  That makes no sense.

• 8:32Speaker 04

  How can you bounce stuff off the moon? There's no gravity.

• 8:37Speaker 05

  Uh, Leonard, this is Zack, Zack Leonard.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  Dave. Sorry, I didn't know you were busy. Maybe another time.

• 8:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, maybe.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  Hey, I wanna see this laser thing.

• 8:44Speaker 05

  Oh, but what about the party?

• 8:46Speaker 03

  It's a surprise party, doesn't matter when we get there.

• 8:51Speaker 05

  Right.

• 8:52Speaker 04

  Okay, well, yeah, come on up.

• 8:55Speaker 05

  Hey, guys, this is my friend Zack.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  Hey.

• 8:57Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Whoa, is that the laser? It's bitchin'.

• 9:02Speaker 04

  Yes, in 1917, when Albert Einstein established the theoretic foundation for the laser in his paper, "Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung", his fondest hope was that the resultant device be bitchin'.

• 9:17Speaker 03

  Mission accomplished.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  Let me explain what we're doing here. In 1969, the astronauts on Apollo 11 positioned reflectors on the surface of the moon, and we're gonna shoot a laser off one of them and let the light bounce back into this photomultiplier.

• 9:33Speaker 05

  Oh, cool, that's very cool.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  One question, how can you be sure it won't blow up?

• 9:39Speaker 03

  The laser? The moon.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  Uh, that's a great question, Zack.

• 9:46Speaker 04

  No, it's not.

• 9:47Speaker 05

  Sheldon, play nice.

• 9:49Speaker 04

  Well, it's not a great question. How could somebody possibly think we're going to blow up the moon?

• 9:56Speaker 04

  That's a great question.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  Don't worry about the moon, we, we set our laser to stun. Smart. Now, we'll be able to see the beam when it leaves, but it won't be strong enough when it comes back to be seen by the naked eye. Naked.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  Right, it, it's funny.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  That device there will measure the photons that return and let us see it on this computer. Raj, get them some glasses. Cool, it's gonna be in 3D?

• 10:29Speaker 04

  Preparing to fire laser at the moon.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Make it so.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  There it is, there's the spike. 2.5 seconds for the light to return. That's the moon, we hit the moon!

• 10:47Speaker 03

  That's your big experiment? All that for a light on the screen? Yeah, but think about what this represents. The fact that we can do this is the only way of definitively proving that there are man-made objects on the moon, put there by a member of a species that only 60 years before had just invented the airplane. What species is that?

• 11:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of all episodes that I've seen, that one is so good. Could you tell me what went through your mind? How'd you come up with the idea?

• 11:18Speaker 01

  I don't think we have a lot of political agenda on the show, other than there's a shared feeling that there's been a wave of anti-intellectualism that somehow moved through American society where it became cool to be uneducated. And I find that frustrating. I want my presidents and my scientists and my doctors all to be smarter than me. And I think there's a value in being smart, and the great advances that we've lived through come from smart people. So, one of the things that Penny discovers is that education and intelligence tends to make people more interesting.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  It also, at the same time, granted, makes them geekier. There are times when you ask Sheldon what time it is and he tells you how to make a watch. And I think that that's sort of one of the things-

• 12:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some of the baggage that comes with it.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  That's right, that's a little bit of the baggage. The other writers have accused me of teaching things to people against their will. And, alright, there are those things, but there's also, when you talk about guys who do what our guys do, which is to marvel at the underlying structure of matter and the universe, and to be on that quest. And I think that that's a more interesting quest to be on than success in beer pong, not that that doesn't have its value.

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think one of the reasons why this sequence works so well is that the stupid guy is stupider than anyone you actually know, and that allows someone who might not be as well-educated to still point to that person as being really stupid.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he fits a good sort of ecological niche of our Darwinian finches of characters.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  I just wanted to mention that when I saw that, I also thought, okay, this guy's clearly dumber than anybody you will come across. Well, the head of the experiment that does bounce the lasers off the moon, Professor Tom Murphy at UC San Diego, wrote to me, and the part where Zach says that he's afraid of blowing up the moon.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Professor Murphy says he gets that question all the time.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  From his students.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Well, from people he meets.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  From civilians who are watching.

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, because we think of lasers as the most powerful weapon that you can ever imagine.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  So he explains it, and he says he actually gets a follow-up question, which is, but why risk it?

• 13:31Speaker 01

  But wow, that's fascinating.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this really is going on out there.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you guys are the pulse of all that is brilliant and stupid in the country.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  I think we are.

• 13:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to my exclusive interview with Bill Prady, co-creator and writer for the hit television series, The Big Bang Theory, and David Salzberg, astrophysicist and science advisor for the show. When StarTalk Radio continues, we'll have more of this interview and some of our favorite scenes from the show.

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. For this episode, I've been talking with Bill Prady, co-creator and writer of the hit television series, The Big Bang Theory, along with David Salzberg, a UCLA astrophysicist and the show's science advisor. You know, I actually had a cameo on the show during its fourth season, playing myself, since in some circles, I'm known as the guy who demoted Pluto from its planetary status. They had me visit Rajesh Koothrappali, or Raj, as his friends call him. On the show, he's an astrophysicist who studies objects in the farthest reaches of our solar system. In this scene, Raj gets to be in People Magazine, thanks to one of his astronomical discoveries.

• 14:50Speaker 06

  Remember that little planetary object I spotted beyond the Kuiper Belt? Oh yeah, 2008 and Q sub 17. Or as I called it, Planet Bollywood.

• 14:59Speaker 06

  Anyway, because of my discovery, People Magazine is naming me one of the 30 under 30 to watch! Wow, that's incredible!

• 15:07Speaker 04

  Excuse me, the 30 what under 30 what to watch what?

• 15:13Speaker 06

  30 visionaries under 30 years of age to watch as they challenge the preconceptions of the fields.

• 15:19Speaker 04

  Quite a million guesses, I never would have gotten that.

• 15:23Speaker 06

  It's pretty cool, they've got me with a guy who's doing something about hunger in Indonesia, and a psychotherapist who's using dolphins to rehabilitate prisoners, and Ellen Page, star of the charming independent film Juno.

• 15:35Speaker 04

  Do I get an honorable mention for designing the telescope camera mounting bracket you used?

• 15:39Speaker 06

  Sorry, it's not part of my heartwarming and personal narrative, in which a humble boy from New Delhi overcame poverty and prejudice and journeyed to America to reach for the stars.

• 15:49Speaker 04

  Poverty, your father's a gynecologist, he drives a Bentley.

• 15:54Speaker 06

  It's a lease.

• 15:59Speaker 04

  I'm confused, is there some sort of peer review committee to determine which scientists would be included?

• 16:05Speaker 06

  Peer review? It's People Magazine. People picked me.

• 16:09Speaker 04

  What people?

• 16:10Speaker 06

  The people from People!

• 16:13Speaker 04

  Exactly, who are these people? What are their credentials? How are they qualified? What makes accidentally noticing a hunk of rock that's been traipsing around the solar system for billions of years more noteworthy than any other scientific accomplishment made by someone under 30?

• 16:29Speaker 06

  Boy, I bet Ellen Page's friends aren't giving me this kind of crap.

• 16:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Raj is from India, and that's not a stretch because we know many engineers and scientists who come from not only the subcontinent but the Far East as well. I was surprised when I met him, his accent is not as strong as the accent he portrays on the show.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Actually, if you spend time with him, his accent floats somewhere between London and New Delhi, and I'll tell you when he has a couple of drinks, it moves all the way back to New Delhi. But he works hard, basically, just to keep the UK out of his accent. The best, though, is when Kunal tries to do an American accent. And he talks about hamburgers and things.

• 17:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I didn't know until this show that there is actually an affliction where you cannot speak to some people or types of people or in certain circumstances.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  So selective mutism is real.

• 17:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to remind the listeners, so he-

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Has an inability to speak around women.

• 17:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and-

• 17:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Particularly attractive women.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  And this was based on a fellow I knew who had this problem, not quite to the extreme that Raj does, but he would stop talking when women came in the room and he, you know-

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, you're telling me The Big Bang Theory is your autobiography?

• 17:40Speaker 01

  No, but there are certainly people I know who are well reflected in the show. But people who are afflicted by it, it winds up being in one of those anxiety feedback loops where the anxiety that the problem will occur becomes the cause of the problem and the brain gets sort of locked in that. And it's similar to a golfer or a bowler getting the yips and-

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's interesting. There's some baseball players who used to have precision arms and then you just-

• 18:08Speaker 01

  And then you lose it. You lose it and they can't find it. And selective mutism is the same kind of piece of suffering. That it is psychosomatic doesn't mean that it's not real. Psychosomatic means having its origin in the mind. And he's eased by alcohol, we've discovered, but that's not a practical solution, but it is a drug that works for him.

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the episode I was on, he didn't have the alcohol, so he ate the rum cake.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  He ate rum cake.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even that worked. And the fact that he could speak the instant he chewed it.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  It is-

• 18:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Made it clearly a-

• 18:38Speaker 01

  It's clearly a psychological problem and we think he ought to get help and he's tried a couple of times badly.

• 18:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Speaking of being socially awkward, the character of Sheldon Cooper pushes the boundaries of antisocial behavior. Although, as played by Jim Parsons, he's hilarious. Sheldon is a theoretical physicist, so, as we'll hear in this scene, he struggles to find answers to some of the deepest mysteries of the universe.

• 19:07Speaker 05

  Sheldon, what do you want?

• 19:09Speaker 04

  I came to tell you, I've got the answer. Really? You've figured out the graphene problem? No, I'm still hopelessly stuck on that, but I figured out how to figure it out.

• 19:21Speaker 05

  You know what, Leonard, I know I said I could handle your roommate, but I was wrong. We're gonna have to break up.

• 19:27Speaker 04

  What are you talking about? Einstein. Yeah, I'm gonna need a little more. Albert Einstein.

• 19:39Speaker 04

  Keep going. When Albert Einstein came up with special relativity, he was working at the patent office. So, you're gonna go work at the patent office? Don't be absurd. That's in Washington. You know, I could never live in a city. The streets are laid out in a wheel and spoke pattern. No, I'm going to find a similarly menial job, where my basal ganglia are occupied with a routine task, freeing my prefrontal cortex to work quietly in the background on my problem. Sounds like a great plan. Of course it is. Even talking to you is officially menial, but I can feel the proverbial juice is starting to flow. Hey, well, thanks for sharing with us. Good night.

• 20:18Speaker 05

  Okay, I'll get those drinks started for you.

• 20:22Speaker 04

  Good day behind you.

• 20:25Speaker 05

  Sheldon, what the hell are you doing?

• 20:27Speaker 04

  I'm trying to get these tables cleared. We're slammed.

• 20:32Speaker 05

  No, wait, wait, no, wait. What are you doing here?

• 20:35Speaker 04

  A reasonable question. I asked myself, what is the most mind-numbing pedestrian job conceivable? And three answers came to mind: a toll booth attendant, an Apple Store genius, and what Penny does. Now...

• 20:51Speaker 04

  Since I don't like touching other people's coins, and I refuse to contribute to the devaluation of the word genius,

• 20:59Speaker 04

  here I am.

• 21:01Speaker 05

  You just walked in and they hired you? Just like that?

• 21:04Speaker 04

  Oh, heavens no. Since I don't need to be paid, I didn't need to be hired. I simply came in, picked up a tray, and started working for the man.

• 21:13Speaker 04

  Let me get that plate out of your way.

• 21:15Speaker 05

  Sheldon, this is ridiculous.

• 21:17Speaker 04

  Is it? Just a moment ago, I had a minor epiphany regarding polymer degradation phenomenon while scraping congealed nachos off a plate.

• 21:29Speaker 04

  Is that really necessary?

• 21:33Speaker 04

  Good lord. The interference pattern in the fracture, the motion of the wave to the molecular structure, I've been looking at it all wrong. I can't consider the electrons as particles. They move to the graphene as a wave. It's a wave!

• 21:53Speaker 04

  The amount of to applaud would be now!

• 21:58Speaker 05

  Sheldon, where are you going? Aren't you gonna clean this up?

• 22:01Speaker 04

  I'm sorry, I don't work here.

• 22:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that was a brilliant sequence. Was that done before or after the Nobel Prize was given for the graphene discovery?

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Oh, before.

• 22:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was before?

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you guys are right on top of things.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Well, I talked to David, and I always say I want our guys about 20 feet back behind the cutting edge. I don't want them accidentally on the verge of a discovery where we have to have Big Bang Theory exist in a parallel universe where a discovery has been made that hasn't been made in ours. Graphene, transneptunian objects, we were a little bit ahead on some stuff that actually happened. And my favorite is that the toilet in the International Space Station broke about two weeks after we aired an episode where Wolowitz's ISS toilet broke. And it broke in almost the way our toilet was said to have broken.

• 22:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now you guys are getting spooky.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  That's right. By the way, about the graphene clip that you played, that was a great example of David having a real puzzle to look for a piece of science. Every now and then you'll sort of work backwards from an idea and the question was, is there ever anything that would take Sheldon into working at the Cheesecake Factory? And then we started talking about Einstein and the Patent Office. And there's a logic to it. If you're focused on something that isn't your work, maybe it sort of frees up the mind a little. But then we went to David and said, look, there's a problem. He's working on it. And here's the progression. It starts with marbles on the floor. And then it progresses to balls in a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  And then ultimately it's solved by something he sees working at a restaurant. So we gave him that. And I think it was a couple of days before you came back with graphene on that one. I'm just curious how you, given those puzzle pieces, how you got?

• 23:50Speaker 02

  You made it easy because he had marbles on the floor, which is clearly a plainer structure.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Graphene is carbon in a flat plane.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  It's basically a chicken wire of carbon, a single layer, completely missed by the theorists and the experimentalists. Made it basically by pulling pencil lead off a paper with Scotch tape. And the person who did it, one of the two who won the Nobel Prize, Konstantin Novoselov, actually came to show afterwards.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  He also mentioned Big Bang in his Nobel lecture.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  In his acquired Nobel lecture when you received the prize, and he showed Sheldon working at the whiteboard.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, wait. First, you break the International Space Station toilet. Now, you're showing up in people's acceptance remarks for the Nobel Prize.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  There we were.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  I'm scared. You're out of control. Well, we've had a number of Nobel laureates. I'm going to say that we're the sitcom set that's been visited by more Nobel laureates than any other sitcom set ever, given that we stand at three and I think that the previous record is zero.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Jan Hall, who won the Nobel Prize for the optical comb, among other things.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Dropped by to visit.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  You had George Smoot actually?

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Well, George Smoot, yes, because he sent a letter asking if he could be on the show and then later claimed his assistant had sent the letter.

• 25:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, the accusation that someone else sends letters, we've heard that before.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. I have to say, a letter saying maybe the director of the Hayden Planetarium could be on the show is like my mother reporting that she had a dream that I'd invited her to the Emmys instead of my wife.

• 25:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  After the break, there's more of my interview with Bill Prady and David Salzberg about the hit TV series, The Big Bang Theory. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I've been talking with Bill Prady, co-creator and writer for The Big Bang Theory, along with David Salzberg, an astrophysicist and science advisor to the TV show. In this segment, we discuss the characters Howard Wolowitz, an engineer and the only one of the lead characters without a PhD, along with Penny, the girl next door, who also happens to be Leonard's love interest. Both Howard and Penny illuminate some fascinating aspects of the interplay between science and

• 26:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  society. So Howard is an interesting character because he's the only engineer, he doesn't have the PhD, he's very handy with robotics, and the fact that he's Jewish is a fundamental part of his character. So how is religion in general treated in the show?

• 26:28Speaker 01

  I think there's no overt intent to have a religion-science debate of any kind on the show, but because religion is an aspect of existence in modern society, the coexistence of religion and science is something that you're aware of on the show.

• 26:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if it comes up, it comes up.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  And we are comfortable with the spectrum of experiences. So you have, for example, Sheldon, who grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home, and he has the hardest time reconciling his mother's beliefs with his own knowledge of the universe. And we've seen it in moments where his mother has referred to her belief in creationism and intelligent design and things like that. Leonard's upbringing was atheistic, his parents rejectors of religion, so he comes at religion as an outsider. And I think there are moments like a Christmas tree where he kind of misses the warmth that it might have added to his childhood. There doesn't seem to be much warmth in his childhood at all. Howard is culturally religious. Jews

• 27:29Speaker 01

  are well-represented among scientists because of a cultural predisposition toward academic careers. So here's- A character whose religion is cultural for him, but not particularly significant. And Koothrappali seems to be the character whose Hinduism actually seems to inform his life. So in terms of their relationship with religion, there are four different approaches. Not by design, just by accident, by getting to know the characters.

• 27:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a happy accident, because clearly many viewers would be religious and it'd be curious to them how that plugs in.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Absolutely, and I think one of the things that you find is, you know, sometimes people, there's an assumption made that religion isn't a part of the life experiences of scientists. And I think what you find is that scientists represent the spectrum of humanity like any other group. And these things aren't incompatible with the pursuit of science. The other wonderful thing that Howard gives us is that engineers often have a bit of a chip on their shoulder, that they're hands-on doing the scientific work, but they're sometimes looked at as the grease monkeys of the group. Sheldon condemned engineers as the Oompa Loompas of science.

• 28:40Speaker 07

  Oh, thank God you're here. What's the emergency? I got the Mars rover stuck in a ditch.

• 28:46Speaker 07

  Where? On a dusty highway just outside Bakersfield. Where do you think on Mars?

• 28:52Speaker 08

  Howard, is everything okay?

• 28:54Speaker 07

  Yeah, baby, I'll be right in.

• 28:58Speaker 07

  You brought a girl to the Mars rover control room? Yeah, I picked her up in the bar. She's a doctor. One free berium enema, my mother won't care, she's not Jewish.

• 29:08Speaker 07

  So what exactly do you want us to do? I need you and Raj to help me get the rover out of the ditch, and I need you to get Stephanie out before somebody notices she's here. She doesn't exactly have clearance. Really? They don't let strange women from honky-tonks come in and play with $200 million government projects on distant planets? Yes, I was bad. Maybe she'll spank me. Can we please move on?

• 29:28Speaker 08

  Wait, Howard, you know, it's getting late, so do I get to drive this thing or what?

• 29:33Speaker 07

  Yeah, no, I'm sorry, but something's come up, kind of a Mars rover, Mars rover, can Howard come over?

• 29:46Speaker 07

  So my friend Leonard is gonna take you home.

• 29:52Speaker 07

  Anything?

• 29:53Speaker 06

  Actually, I was just checking my email.

• 29:57Speaker 06

  But, uh, nope, the rover is not responding.

• 30:00Speaker 07

  There's gotta be other options.

• 30:02Speaker 06

  Try calling AAA.

• 30:05Speaker 06

  But based on NASA's latest timetable, they won't get there for thirty-five years.

• 30:09Speaker 04

  Plus, I understand you have to be standing next to the vehicle with your card when they arrive.

• 30:15Speaker 07

  Oh, snap!

• 30:17Speaker 04

  Snap what?

• 30:19Speaker 07

  Okay, I guess we have to turn to Plan B.

• 30:21Speaker 06

  What's Plan B?

• 30:22Speaker 07

  Erase all the hard drives, grab the surveillance tapes, wipe our fingerprints off every surface, and run.

• 30:27Speaker 04

  Why wasn't that Plan A?

• 30:31Speaker 09

  A NASA spokesman states that due to the loss of data, they will most likely be unable to determine the cause of the Mars rover's malfunction.

• 30:42Speaker 07

  Thank God for Plan B.

• 30:46Speaker 05

  Howard, didn't you say you worked on the Mars rover?

• 30:49Speaker 07

  No, you're mistaken.

• 30:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, when we first met, you said that if I went out with you, I could drive a car on Mars.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Penny, who we've never felt was an unintelligent person, but uneducated, her knowledge was... That's an interesting and important distinction. It is very important, and that her knowledge is pragmatic and useful. We've created many situations where our guys' extreme education wasn't useful, but Penny's knowledge of the real world was. And if that weren't true, then these characters wouldn't need each other, and they very much do. And what she also has, which our guys lack, and I think they lack because, in the case of Sheldon, because he doesn't want it, but in the case of the other guys, because they've spent a lot of time isolated in academic fields, is they lack an ability to move through

• 31:43Speaker 01

  the muggle world, so she can often be a guide to that. You're using Harry Potter to reference characters in The Big Bang Theory. Yes, deal with it.

• 31:54Speaker 05

  I flipped in the shower, and I think I dislocated my shoulder.

• 31:59Speaker 04

  Not surprising. You have no safety mat or adhesive stickers to allow for purchase on a surface with a low coefficient of static friction.

• 32:07Speaker 05

  What?

• 32:09Speaker 04

  Tubs are slippery.

• 32:11Speaker 05

  I know, I slipped!

• 32:13Speaker 04

  I have a series of whimsical duck stickers on the bottom of my tub.

• 32:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, okay, whatever. Will you just turn the water off and help me up?

• 32:22Speaker 04

  They're holding umbrellas.

• 32:24Speaker 05

  What?

• 32:25Speaker 04

  The ducks in my tub.

• 32:27Speaker 05

  Uh-huh.

• 32:28Speaker 04

  They're whimsical because ducks have neither a need for nor the ability to use umbrellas.

• 32:33Speaker 05

  Oh my god, I gotta go to the emergency room.

• 32:35Speaker 04

  Well, assuming you're correct that your IQ humorous is no longer seated in the glenoid socket, I would certainly think so.

• 32:41Speaker 05

  Okay, can you drive me?

• 32:42Speaker 04

  I don't drive.

• 32:43Speaker 05

  Well, I can't drive!

• 32:45Speaker 04

  It seems we've reached an impasse.

• 32:48Speaker 05

  No!

• 32:49Speaker 04

  I could call you a cab or an ambulance.

• 32:51Speaker 05

  No, no, no, I can't wait that long. You gotta help me, please!

• 32:55Speaker 04

  Alright, let it never be said that Sheldon Lee Cooper ignored the pleas of a damsel in distress.

• 33:00Speaker 05

  No one's saying that, let's go.

• 33:02Speaker 04

  It does seem rather ironic that for one of ninety-nine cent adhesive ducks, we might die in a fiery car crash.

• 33:11Speaker 04

  Alright, there's no need to bark at me.

• 33:15Speaker 04

  According to the inexplicably irritable nurse behind the desk, you'll be seen after the man who claims to be having a heart attack but appears to be well enough to play doodle jump on his iPhone.

• 33:27Speaker 04

  We have to fill these out. Describe illness or injury.

• 33:32Speaker 05

  I dislocated my shoulder.

• 33:34Speaker 04

  Alright. And how did the accident occur?

• 33:38Speaker 05

  You already know that.

• 33:41Speaker 04

  Cause of accident? Lack of adhesive ducks.

• 33:48Speaker 04

  Okay, medical history. Have you ever been diagnosed with diabetes?

• 33:52Speaker 05

  No.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  Kidney disease?

• 33:54Speaker 05

  No.

• 33:54Speaker 04

  Migraines?

• 33:55Speaker 05

  Getting one.

• 33:58Speaker 04

  Are you currently pregnant?

• 33:59Speaker 05

  No.

• 34:00Speaker 04

  Are you sure? You look a bit puffy.

• 34:05Speaker 05

  Change migraine to yes.

• 34:08Speaker 04

  When was your last menstrual period?

• 34:10Speaker 05

  Oh, next question!

• 34:12Speaker 04

  I'll put in progress.

• 34:16Speaker 04

  Okay, moving to psychiatric disorders. List all major behavioral diagnoses, e.g. depression, anxiety, etc.

• 34:23Speaker 05

  Oh my god, what the hell does this have to do with my stupid shoulder?

• 34:26Speaker 04

  Episodes of sub-psychotic rage.

• 34:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you can almost think of Penny and Sheldon as opposites in every possible metric of humanity.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  They absolutely are. Whereas Sheldon, on the scale of intelligence on the show-

• 34:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We looked it up, 187 is the IQ.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  But mostly in terms of education, he has the most with multiple postgraduate degrees. And Penny, having dropped out of community college, has the least education on the books. But then if you talk about their ability to function in the real world, the positions are reversed. Sheldon is almost self-infantilized to the point of inability to function on his own. He doesn't drive. He's a grown man who doesn't drive, so he's dependent on other people to take him places.

• 35:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's called a New Yorker, by the way.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Well, that's right, yeah, absolutely. But in California, you're very dependent on other people. And so in terms of his ability to function on his own, he seems to be about 10. Whereas Penny, on the other hand, grew up on a farm. She has the ability to repair an automobile engine and things like that. And also she has the social skills that come of functioning in the real world, of a place that Sheldon doesn't care for. You know, Sheldon, when one of the other characters says, "Let's go outside," he doesn't get what the big deal is about outside. If outside were so great, why did mankind devote so much energy to inventing inside? Which is typical of Sheldon. His motion, it's agoraphobic and misanthropic. It's away from places and people.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Whereas Penny is social. So they represent the extreme, and it's by design because they-

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, it creates a scripting fertility for you.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Well, it's that, but they also represent the two poles on Leonard, who is the character who sits in the middle of them, who longs for the world, and he longs for ability to function in the world. And he exists at a point of balance between Penny pulling him into the world and Sheldon pulling him out of it.

• 36:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  After the break, I'll have more of my interview with Bill Prady and David Salzberg about the hit TV series, The Big Bang Theory. But first, let's hear Sheldon's thoughts about being a scientist after he's had a few drinks.

• 36:37Speaker 04

  Let's get serious for a moment. Why are we all here? Because we're scientists. And what do scientists study? The universe. And what's the universe made of? I am so glad you asked. There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium, and hydrogen, and oxygen, and nitrogen, and radium, and nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium. Everybody! And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium, europiums, or conium, lutetium, vanadium. Just the Asians! And last but not least, bismuth, and aztekinium, and radium.

• 37:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I've been talking with Bill Prady, co-creator and writer for The Big Bang Theory, and David Salzberg, an astrophysicist and the TV show's science advisor. In this next scene, we'll hear an emotional argument about competing scientific theories.

• 37:39Speaker 04

  She is an arrogant, subpar scientist who actually believes loop quantum gravity better unites quantum mechanics with general relativity than does string theory.

• 37:48Speaker 10

  Are you gonna let him talk to me like that?

• 37:54Speaker 03

  Okay, well, there's a lot of merit to both theories.

• 37:56Speaker 10

  No, there isn't. Only loop quantum gravity calculates the entropy of black holes.

• 38:04Speaker 03

  Sheldon, don't make that noise. It's disrespectful.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  I should hope so. It was a snort of derision.

• 38:11Speaker 10

  You agree with me, right? Loop quantum gravity is the future of physics.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  Sorry, Leslie. I guess I prefer my space stringy, not loopy.

• 38:20Speaker 10

  Well, I'm glad I found out the truth about you before this went any further.

• 38:24Speaker 03

  Truth? What truth? We're talking about untested hypotheses. It's no big deal.

• 38:28Speaker 10

  Oh, it isn't, really? Tell me, Leonard, how will we raise the children?

• 38:35Speaker 03

  I guess we wait until they're old enough and let them choose their own theory.

• 38:40Speaker 10

  We can't let them choose, they're children.

• 38:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a hilarious scene. I know it's way back from the first season and Leslie's not a recurring character anymore, but it's a fascinating analog, obviously, to discussions that parents have about what religion they might raise their children in. So what was the genesis of that scene? No pun intended.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  No, it's exactly that. Here we have Leslie was moving much faster in the dating relationship with Leonard than was reasonable. And we said, "Let's have them find a stumbling block in the relationship." This debate is something that we certainly knew in the writers' room, and we went to David for the specifics of the debate. But we're fascinated in general about Sheldon's work in what was then string theory and became M-theory during the course of the series. But what's really going on is that people are afraid of relationships. And so people pick arguments with their potential partners to create emotional distance.

• 39:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This case had happened to be the physics of...

• 39:42Speaker 01

  About physics. But people pick arguments with their potential partner to push them away, to see if the person will come back. You ask, "Will that person climb a mountain to get back to me?" And this is one of those cases where what they're talking about almost doesn't matter.

• 39:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  David, there are probably many conflicting physics theories that you could have selected for this. What led you to loop quantum gravity and string theory?

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Well, actually, as Bill said, in the writers' room, they'd already picked those. But I should say the show actually does poke quite a bit of fun at string theory, which has made me a little scared in the beginning because there are a lot of string theorists.

• 40:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You think they might band together and storm the set?

• 40:21Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  Well, they can untie matter.

• 40:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They might have power you haven't dreamt of yet.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  They know where the strings are. They unknot it, and you simply drift apart.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  This hasn't gone unnoticed, and I've gotten a number of emails about it, but they'd all fit in under the topic of give them hell.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Brian Greene, who wrote The Elegant Universe, appeared on the show. He got mocked by Sheldon and Amy for the absurd notion in their minds of trying to explain science to the masses.

• 40:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was the scene where he was giving his book talk at the local bookstore.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they were sitting in the back snickering.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Right, like they'd gone to see a comedian perform. But that's also fun. I mean, part of the sort of normalization of science as a career means that you revere it sometimes, you mock it sometimes. It's simply an ordinary part of their world. You know, as we said when we first sat down, geekery isn't necessarily about science and science fiction. It's a passion to understand an area beyond the general level of knowledge that exists.

• 41:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's an intensity of attention.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  An intensity.

• 41:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Given to one subject.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Or to a field. And it comes from an underlying fondness of knowing. To me, that kind of passion toward the world is very appealing.

• 41:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe even, dare I say, timeless and transportable. One might imagine a Big Bang Theory counterpart in another set of fields where the dynamics of the characters are just the same.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Look, we see it in entertainment all the time.

• 41:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, I hate to call it a formula.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  You know, when you have a law show, those characters are lawyers because at some point they had a passion about the law, where the law is fiercely geeky if you really start pursuing it. You can find those aspects of the law that have the same kind of fascination as figuring out, you know, why Klingons look different in one Star Trek series versus another.

• 42:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, my favorite parts of the Big Bang Theory are the ferocious arguments over fictitious constructs.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Ferocious arguments over fictitious constructs are absolutely a part of the Big Bang Theory. They're also a part of the Socratic dialogues. A fictional construct allows you to have a simplified discussion of something happening in the real world, whether it's in the physical world, whether it's in the ethics or morality. And the fact that our guys' reference points are Star Trek characters or Superman is because that's their mythology. And when they're having an argument about Superman's moral compass and his exercising of great power, they're not doing anything differently than the conversation Greeks would have had about their gods, which are simply ways of examining moral quandaries. And whether an argument is logically and internally consistent.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Yes, that's right. Where you can break down and simplify an argument. Not to say that any of this discussion happens in the writers' room. The discussion in the writers' room is as geeky as the discussion on the show. And one of the very first things that we had was the question about Superman catching Lois Lane, which is something that's troubled me all my life. As she fell off the... Oh yeah, she would have broken every bone in her body. Well, I maintain, in fact, that she's coming down so fast that when Superman sticks out those two arms of steel, she's trisected. One part falls to the left, one through the middle of the arm, and one off to the right. Right, and I've always said, if he really loved her, he let her hit the ground. It's a more merciful death. Wait, that just occurred to me. That also happens in one of the Matrix series.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Right, but then you could argue in The Matrix that you're in a world with modified or adjustable rules of physics. Oh, but Superman isn't. Superman is. Well, there you go. And look, this is... Let's fight about this. But let me just say, this is the kind of argument that scientists will have all the time, where we'll say, let's take an impossible given and now work with it. Because in the Superman example, you say, well, let's take the given that a man can fly. Now, given that, and we're not going to assault that, you have a situation where we'll look, the rest of this doesn't work. But take a look at what's happening in high energy and quantum physics, where you say, let's make an impossible assumption. For example, that the position and speed of a particle are not mutually knowable.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  And that is absurd. That is linguistically absurd. That is conceptually absurd. But you discover if you're willing to make that assumption, then all of a sudden, a whole lot of other math falls into place.

• 44:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's the founding principle of quantum mechanics.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  That's right. So you say, all right, well, maybe the ability to hold in your mind, let's say Superman can fly, is a building block to the kind of thinking that leads to science. I wish I could-

• 44:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or it's a manifestation of that kind of brain wire.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  That, right. Now, I wish I could say that we sat around and said, look, here's our educational goal. Whenever I talk to a scientist and say, we'd like to use you or your material, I always begin by saying, you understand, we're in the buffoonery business. That is our primary goal.

• 45:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've got to wrap up the show. So that means it's time for my tweet of the week. Let's see here. How about, okay. The Big Bang Theory. When geeky scientists can be main characters in a hit primetime series, you know there is hope for the world. You've been listening to Startalk Radio, brought to you in part by a generous grant from the National Science Foundation. As always, until next time, keep looking up.