Magic, Illusion, and Skepticism, with Bill Nye – StarTalk All-Stars

In this week’s StarTalk All-Stars, host Bill Nye applies his scientific mind and skeptical nature to fan-submitted Cosmic Queries chosen by co-host Chuck Nice, on subjects from miracles and levitation to conspiracy theories and climate change denial.

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

• 0:00Bill Nye?

  This is StarTalk.

• 0:09Bill Nye?

  Greetings, welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm your guest host this week, Bill Nye, and I'm joined by none other than the inimitable, the remarkable, the thoughtful Chuck Nice. Chuck, it's great to see you.

• 0:21Chuck Nice?

  Hey, man, it's good to be seen. I'm not sure if I believe you, though.

• 0:26Bill Nye?

  Yeah, sure, it's good. It's radio. It's fine. I can see you well enough.

• 0:31Chuck Nice?

  Well enough.

• 0:32Bill Nye?

  So we have cosmic queries.

• 0:34Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we do.

• 0:35Bill Nye?

  About skeptical points of view, about magic.

• 0:39Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:39Bill Nye?

  About illusion. Magic and illusion very closely related. And for me, so is skepticism. Is skepticism closely related for you?

• 0:47Chuck Nice?

  It is, indeed. Skepticism is the basis of my entire life. I try not...

• 0:51Bill Nye?

  Really?

• 0:51Chuck Nice?

  I try not to believe anything. You know, I'm serious. You know what's funny is when I was...

• 0:57Bill Nye?

  What is funny?

• 0:58Chuck Nice?

  Well, it's probably not funny. What's not even strange. My mother used to say...

• 1:03Bill Nye?

  Chuck?

• 1:03Chuck Nice?

  I would ask her, yes, she would say Chuck, I would ask her anything, and she would tell me, "Go find out. Find different sources and compare those sources and find out for yourself. Just because I say it doesn't make it true. What are you gonna do? Walk around just believing stuff that people tell you?" My mother was an educator. So, of course, this led to me having a very healthy sense of skepticism about anything. And, you know, unless I see some kind of reference that allows me to engage in critical thought, I really don't believe you.

• 1:34Bill Nye?

  What if I were the internet? Then you'd believe everything, right?

• 1:38Chuck Nice?

  Well, because it's true. If it's on the internet, it's true.

• 1:42Bill Nye?

  Well, speaking of which, we're StarTalk Radio, and we're on the internet and on the air.

• 1:46Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 1:47Bill Nye?

  So let's take a cosmic query from one of our participating listeners.

• 1:51Chuck Nice?

  Yes, that's right. We've got one from Christopher Wise. And Christopher on Facebook says, "Isn't all technology just a highly engineered version of a magic trick in which the magicians have shared their secrets?"

• 2:07Bill Nye?

  Sort of, but for me, engineering is where you're trying to solve problems and make things, not fool people.

• 2:14Chuck Nice?

  But see, that's because you, my friend, are an earnest individual, because there were engineers like Bill Nye back in the day, who figured out some stuff and could build some stuff and went, yo, we can get paid.

• 2:27Bill Nye?

  Well, and we can grow food and have carts with wheels and steam engines and telegraph communicate, we can have flags for crying out loud, we could make textiles.

• 2:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:40Bill Nye?

  And clothing from skins of other animals, we could do all kinds of extraordinary things. But it is to, I will say that, in my view, the really cool magic tricks.

• 2:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 2:52Bill Nye?

  Are based on the skill of the presenter, where he induces you to believe one, or she induces you to believe one thing, and then you see something else. They often use extraordinary engineering, this is to say, this object looks like it's one thing, but it's actually something else.

• 3:08Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 3:09Bill Nye?

  Hence the expression, it's all done with mirrors. But in science, you know what we say, it's not all done with mirrors, it's done with molecules. Whoa, get it? Huh? Huh? It's brilliant. Give me another query cosmically.

• 3:23Chuck Nice?

  Here we go, let's move on to Christine Pierce Hoffman, and Christine wants to know this, Bill, do you have any insight as to how we could better teach skepticism, and, more importantly, critical thinking to the next generation? I love you for this question, Christine.

• 3:43Bill Nye?

  I say, teach people magic tricks, and I'm not even kidding.

• 3:46Chuck Nice?

  Are you for real?

• 3:47Bill Nye?

  I don't mean, you know, spend three semesters on it, I mean, have kids try to fool each other, and you'll see that how easy it is to make you believe something, especially something you're afraid of. Ghosts, spirits.

• 4:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:03Bill Nye?

  Uh, cars coming right at you with a horn blaring. And so.

• 4:07Chuck Nice?

  Unemployment.

• 4:08Bill Nye?

  Maybe that was a bad example. Yeah, unemployment. So you can really fool people. And if you learn to do that, uh, learn to recognize that, I think it will help you think critically about all sorts of things.

• 4:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you're right, because fear alters your perception on everything.

• 4:24Bill Nye?

  It sure does.

• 4:25Chuck Nice?

  And you know, one of the, one of the things they say is never make a, a decision when you are, uh, emotional or in any way or afraid. You always take the time to stop and then get back to a rational.

• 4:39Bill Nye?

  Decision. I mean, it's good to decide to apply the brakes.

• 4:43Chuck Nice?

  Yes. Or, or to run because you heard a loud boom.

• 4:48Bill Nye?

  Oh, yeah. Or the flood coming.

• 4:50Chuck Nice?

  Or the flood, right. Yeah, no, I mean.

• 4:51Bill Nye?

  I know what you're saying.

• 4:52Chuck Nice?

  Like buy a car.

• 4:53Bill Nye?

  And she did, she asked me for a specific thing, and I think it's important to show people how easy it is to fool each other.

• 4:59Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha. So actually, actually, magic tricks can be used to inspire critical thinking.

• 5:05Bill Nye?

  Absolutely.

• 5:06Chuck Nice?

  Wow, man, that's a great answer.

• 5:07Bill Nye?

  And the other one that everybody loves is forensics. You come to a crime scene and teachers, some teachers create crime scenes to fool you.

• 5:16Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 5:16Bill Nye?

  Get you to draw wrong conclusions.

• 5:18Chuck Nice?

  All right. So there you go, Christine. Kill your teacher.

• 5:21Bill Nye?

  Wait.

• 5:24Chuck Nice?

  Erase.

• 5:25Bill Nye?

  But if you're.

• 5:25Chuck Nice?

  Erase.

• 5:27Bill Nye?

  You're just kidding. Put that down.

• 5:30Chuck Nice?

  Believe me.

• 5:30Bill Nye?

  Chuck, Chuck.

• 5:31Chuck Nice?

  Better, I better say it because the way people come after me on Twitter when I say certain things, I'm, I was joking. All right, man, this is great. Let's move on to, um, John Hughes. And John says this, Bill, what is your favorite magic trick? And what would you do to make it better or more scientifically plausible?

• 5:55Chuck Nice?

  Do you have a favorite magic trick?

• 5:57Bill Nye?

  Uh, well, no, uh, but I do respect, I really respect the work of Penn and Tower. Penjolat and, and Robert Tower. Man, they do this thing where they show you the magic trick, then they show you how they did, separately, they show you how they did it.

• 6:11Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 6:12Bill Nye?

  It is a beautiful thing.

• 6:13Chuck Nice?

  And it is still equally as entertaining and fascinating.

• 6:17Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 6:17Chuck Nice?

  The fact that you know how it's done does nothing to you in terms of you're being absolutely enthralled by the whole thing.

• 6:24Bill Nye?

  Cause they picked the tricks that are spectacular. So I guess, uh, the first thing is to really fool the person and then to show them how you did it. So there's two things.

• 6:34Chuck Nice?

  So that's your favorite trick, really fool the person and then show them how you did it?

• 6:37Bill Nye?

  Yeah, those, I like to be satisfied now, or I like to wonder what happened. I, it has to be, the trick has to be good enough that I wonder what happened.

• 6:44Chuck Nice?

  So now I'm interested to know, and I may, I hope I'm not stepping on anybody's question, but I'm just shooting from the hip here because of John's question. What do you think of guys like, uh, what's the guy's name who sits on ice for a week? Uh, oh God, somebody help me out here. Uh, wait, you're the only one in the room.

• 7:01Chuck Nice?

  I'm looking around for help. We're by ourselves. What's his name? The guy, he's, oh.

• 7:05Bill Nye?

  Yeah, that's cool. I mean, there must be literally cool. Yeah, but there's gotta be, it's not, he doesn't have superpowers.

• 7:11Chuck Nice?

  No, he doesn't.

• 7:12Bill Nye?

  Really well.

• 7:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, okay.

• 7:14Bill Nye?

  But there are guys who can walk on tight ropes without falling off. I can't do that.

• 7:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:19Bill Nye?

  But I can imagine putting in an hours where you could.

• 7:22Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah. David Blaine, that's the guy.

• 7:23Bill Nye?

  That's David Blaine.

• 7:24Chuck Nice?

  David Blaine, okay, cool. All right, just wanted to know, that's a, hey, let's move on, let's go to, uh, Lenore Hernandez. Okay.

• 7:33Bill Nye?

  I imagine it looks like ice, but it's not really.

• 7:36Chuck Nice?

  Oh, are we giving away David Blaine's secrets right?

• 7:39Bill Nye?

  Go ahead, take it.

• 7:40Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, I'm tantalized. Okay, uh, Lenore Hernandez wants to know this. Why are spheres the most represented shape in our universe? Could there be a universe?

• 7:52Chuck Nice?

  That is the more.

• 7:53Bill Nye?

  Spheres are the most represented shape. Is that documented?

• 7:56Chuck Nice?

  That's what she's saying, that spheres are the most represented shape in our universe.

• 8:00Bill Nye?

  And they put them in square picture frames. Wait a minute. Just if you're a planet, or rather, if you're a cosmic dust.

• 8:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 8:09Bill Nye?

  Let's say, and you actually, we are cosmic dust. Whoa, dude. We are. We are made of stardust.

• 8:14Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 8:15Bill Nye?

  Anyway, if you have enough of it, its mutual gravity constrains it to form a sphere.

• 8:20Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 8:20Bill Nye?

  We got a spherical earth. We have pretty much spherical moons, spherical suns, spherical Jupiter. Not big enough, an asteroid out there, uh, then you oftentimes don't, or don't become spherical. Pluto, icy world.

• 8:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:35Bill Nye?

  Is spherical.

• 8:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:37Bill Nye?

  Uh, yeah.

• 8:38Chuck Nice?

  So now she said, so basically it's gravity.

• 8:40Bill Nye?

  Well, that's one case.

• 8:41Chuck Nice?

  That's one case. Now, could there be a universe in which that is not the case? Could there be a universe where, um, something forms a box or a pyramid?

• 8:51Bill Nye?

  Instead of.

• 8:52Chuck Nice?

  Instead of a sphere.

• 8:53Bill Nye?

  So on the right scale, you know, if you're an atom, uh, if you're, um, lithium hyd- lithium ion battery.

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 9:02Bill Nye?

  Your oxygen atoms form octahedra.

• 9:05Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 9:06Bill Nye?

  Which is our pyramids back to our base to base. Uh, but when you get macro, we get big enough, you apparently you form like a bubble forms a sphere. So if you had another universe that had different rules, I guess you'd get different shapes. And it's another way of expressing this sentiment, which I'm so fond of.

• 9:23Chuck Nice?

  Which is?

• 9:24Bill Nye?

  If things were any other way, things would be different. So if you had a universe that had played by different rules, I guess you'd get different shapes. But I, right now, cannot conceive of those rules.

• 9:36Chuck Nice?

  Okay, there you go.

• 9:37Bill Nye?

  But I'm watching for them. I'm watching. I'm watching you molecules.

• 9:42Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Hey, Lenora, great question. All right, let's, uh, let's check out Dex Jones, what he has to ask. And Dex is also coming to us from Facebook. Dex, uh, says, Bill, is the human mind programmed to want to believe what we cannot discern to be fact? If so, do you think this is why magic or similar illusions are so popular?

• 10:10Bill Nye?

  No.

• 10:11Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 10:11Bill Nye?

  Not exactly.

• 10:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 10:12Bill Nye?

  I think what we're actually programmed to look for are patterns.

• 10:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 10:18Bill Nye?

  What makes you, I think, successful as a hunter-gather scavenger is you're looking for patterns.

• 10:23Chuck Nice?

  Patterns.

• 10:24Bill Nye?

  When the crops are gonna be here, when the bananas are gonna come off that tree, when I can grow my ground nuts, when I can go looking for this carcass that the lion left behind.

• 10:34Chuck Nice?

  Right. By the way, I've been looking for a time to grow my ground nuts for a very long time.

• 10:38Bill Nye?

  Well, you gotta have some ground. For your nuts. That's first of all. If you're living in an apartment in Manhattan, Chuck, you know, your ground's gonna be limited, nut-wise.

• 10:50Chuck Nice?

  I'm getting a bumper sticker that says, "You gotta get some ground to grow your nuts." All right.

• 10:56Bill Nye?

  Uh, it's a, I would call that a fact, what I whimsically refer to as a true fact.

• 11:02Chuck Nice?

  That is indeed a true.

• 11:03Bill Nye?

  As opposed to a false fact.

• 11:04Chuck Nice?

  A true fact.

• 11:05Bill Nye?

  So with that said, I think it's the patterns that we look for, and the reason magicians are able to fool us is the pattern, it looks one way, but it's, your expectation is not met. The pattern's not fulfilled.

• 11:17Chuck Nice?

  So our expectation of a pattern coupled with misdirection basically gives us magic.

• 11:22Bill Nye?

  Yeah, that's what I think.

• 11:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 11:25Bill Nye?

  And I know books are written about this very subject, but it's the patterns that make, our ability to memorize, learn, and extrapolate, or take the patterns the next step beyond what we've already seen or experienced, is what makes humans such planetary butt kickers.

• 11:42Chuck Nice?

  Sweet. All right, that is very cool. Hey, let's take a Patreon question.

• 11:47Bill Nye?

  Yes, let's do that. These are patrons who are on.

• 11:51Chuck Nice?

  That's right. These are patrons who go to patreon.com and support StarTalk.

• 11:55Bill Nye?

  Support, I think you all know what we're saying.

• 11:58Chuck Nice?

  Out of their substance. They freely give to StarTalk out of their substance so that we can continue to bring you the quality programming that we-

• 12:04Bill Nye?

  They're substance, you're talking about cash.

• 12:05Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I am.

• 12:06Bill Nye?

  You're not talking about-

• 12:07Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 12:08Bill Nye?

  Baking powder.

• 12:09Chuck Nice?

  No, not baking powder. It's cash.

• 12:11Bill Nye?

  Okay.

• 12:12Chuck Nice?

  So this is Joel Cherico, and Joel from Minnesota says this. "Does knowing more science make magic less impressive for you, Bill? As a scientist, do magicians even impress you at all, since you know that there's no li, that there is indeed a logical explanation for every single trick?"

• 12:31Bill Nye?

  No, my relationship to it is- I guess different. I know that I'm being fooled.

• 12:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:36Bill Nye?

  But I enjoy it. It's art.

• 12:38Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 12:39Bill Nye?

  I mean, I know why a ballerina is able to remain on point. I mean, in some sense.

• 12:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:45Bill Nye?

  Uh, but I still think it's great.

• 12:47Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah.

• 12:47Bill Nye?

  So I know the guy's gonna do a card trick. He's gonna make me think that I have the card, but he's got the card and then, but actually he forced me to think of the three of clubs when I wasn't even thinking about the three of clubs. I thought, that's cool.

• 13:00Chuck Nice?

  That is cool.

• 13:00Bill Nye?

  Gives us insight into ourselves and our pattern seeking. I mean, I, I mentioned them earlier, but I very much enjoy the Penn and Teller Show.

• 13:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:09Bill Nye?

  Cause they're gonna show you how they did it after they messed with your mind. I love that.

• 13:14Chuck Nice?

  Very cool. Alright, so there you go, uh, Joel.

• 13:17Bill Nye?

  I think I appreciate it on an even higher level than just being scared.

• 13:20Chuck Nice?

  Oh, look at that. So, uh, uh, being a scientist actually allows you to appreciate magic even the more.

• 13:26Bill Nye?

  Perhaps.

• 13:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 13:27Bill Nye?

  Perhaps.

• 13:28Chuck Nice?

  Alright, very cool.

• 13:29Bill Nye?

  You'd have to wire our brains to the appreciation meter.

• 13:34Bill Nye?

  Which might be out there.

• 13:35Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, I, I'm, I'm, I need to know where that is.

• 13:38Bill Nye?

  I saw one, man, and the needle moved. I saw it.

• 13:41Chuck Nice?

  Then I put a quarter in it. I wished that I would be big.

• 13:44Bill Nye?

  And then I lost a quarter somehow. Lead on.

• 13:48Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. Uh, Christopher Harold Miller, uh, wants to know this. He first states this. I am skeptical of everything.

• 13:59Bill Nye?

  Right, sure you are.

• 14:00Chuck Nice?

  That's what he says. This is Christopher words, not mine. I'm skeptical of everything. I believe half of what I see and nothing I hear. Naturally, I don't get along with conspiracy theorists.

• 14:12Bill Nye?

  I thought he was going to the grapevine. Yes.

• 14:15Chuck Nice?

  Do you feel like conspiracy theorist and theories deliver a quantifiable blow to science? If, for example, enough people believe in things like the moon landing was faked, does it not slow the progress of humanity? You know, I thought this was gonna be a BS question when I started, like, where is this guy going? But now I get what he's saying. He went a long, a long way to go down the block, but it basically.

• 14:41Bill Nye?

  Yes, it holds us back.

• 14:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 14:43Bill Nye?

  Conspiracy theories are lazy.

• 14:45Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 14:46Bill Nye?

  There for people who don't think critically.

• 14:48Chuck Nice?

  Now, wait a minute. Go back on that one, Bill, because that's a good point you make, but.

• 14:53Bill Nye?

  What point did I make?

• 14:54Chuck Nice?

  You said conspiracy theorists are lazy.

• 14:56Bill Nye?

  If only there were 60 people. Who are screwing everything up. All we'd have to do is find those 60 people and unscrew it. But that's not what it is. It's 7.3 billion people running around trying to make a living and things just get messed up because they just do.

• 15:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 15:14Bill Nye?

  And if you're skeptical of the moon landing, uh, being fake, I just, as always, I tell everybody, just look how much paperwork was generated to land on the moon. There's no faking company who could afford to create those warehouses of manuals.

• 15:29Chuck Nice?

  Right. And to what end? All right. So now let me ask you this, because I think, uh, uh, I think Christopher has hit on something and I want, I want you to talk about this very quickly. There are some conspiracy theorists, Mr. Nye, Dr. Nye, who make a very convincing case that scientists such as yourself are pushing the whole climate change agenda because it brings attention to them and gets them grant money for work and crap. And there are a lot of people who believe this. So how do you answer somebody like that?

• 16:02Bill Nye?

  Well, as when it comes to climate change, we remind us that people have been worried about climate change for decades. And you may remember June 23rd, 1988, when James Hansen testified in front of Congress. I consider that the beginning of the climate generation.

• 16:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 16:19Bill Nye?

  And 97% of the world scientists are worried about it. Consider how much the fossil fuel industry invests in creating this myth that there's not a scientific consensus. It's a factor of 100. If, if something like the Environmental Defense Fund spends 3 million, the coal industry spends 700 million.

• 16:43Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 16:44Bill Nye?

  To promote these myths. And so, by the way, along with the four things, electricity for everybody, clean water for everybody, improved electrical storage, improved transmission lines, and, uh, top-down or regulatory system that discourages the production of carbon dioxide and fugitive methane, along with that.

• 17:04Bill Nye?

  We need to skate these climate deniers off the play. They are causing trouble, in my opinion.

• 17:11Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 17:12Bill Nye?

  They are holding the earth, they're holding humankind back. They're leaving the world worse than they found it. And I say to conservative politicians, if you're out there.

• 17:19Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 17:20Bill Nye?

  You could be like the guy who quit smoking. Who is the most anti-smoking person you're ever gonna meet? The guy who just quit.

• 17:28Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 17:28Bill Nye?

  So politician. Politician, we got 15 months. We got 13 months. You could change. You could say, hey, I've looked at the evidence. Hey, 97% of the world's scientists are concerned about this. Every other government in the world is begging the United States to lead on climate change issues. And you could change. And then you'd have all the millennials with the potential to vote for you. This would be a fantastic thing. Chuck, I should pull back on Star Talk Radio. Chuck Nice here is taking your cosmic queries about skepticism, magic and illusion. And I'm your guest host, Bill Nye will be back right after this.

• 18:08Bill Nye?

  Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Star Talk Radio. I'm your guest host, Bill Nye. And our cosmic queries this week are with respect to skepticism, magic and illusion.

• 18:22Chuck Nice?

  Yes, that's correct.

• 18:24Bill Nye?

  So Chuck, you've got a stack of queries from the cosmos.

• 18:28Chuck Nice?

  Yes, that's right.

• 18:29Bill Nye?

  Regarding, I'm skeptical. No, I'm not. I believe you. Lead on, give me one.

• 18:34Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's go to Eddie Rogers Kubrick. And Eddie wants to know this. Would you say all eyewitness accounts of miracles are either lies or the product of an illusion or hallucination?

• 18:49Bill Nye?

  Well, I think there are people looking for patterns that aren't really there.

• 18:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 18:53Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so we all, we all get confused. Eyewitness accounts are the least reliable evidence you're gonna come across, perhaps. And so if you haven't done this in psychology class where the red car hits the green car. No, wait, it was a white car. You get it all confused. And so eyewitness accounts aren't especially reliable. And what we say in the skeptical community is. You have to have high quality evidence, extraordinary evidence, to prove an extraordinary claim. And the classic example, which I did on a television show back in 1995, was the earth is round. When you stand on the earth, it looks flat.

• 19:38Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 19:39Bill Nye?

  But you can show, I'm pretty solidly convinced the earth is round. So it was an extraordinary claim with extraordinary evidence. I can predict the outcome of horse races. If you could do that, why aren't you crazy rich?

• 19:51Chuck Nice?

  Well, probably.

• 19:52Bill Nye?

  Well, I can almost do it. Okay. Then you're almost crazy rich.

• 19:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:56Bill Nye?

  Okay, cool. Give me another one.

• 19:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay. So what do you think about, okay, so he says.

• 20:00Bill Nye?

  What do I think about?

• 20:01Chuck Nice?

  These are eyewitness accounts.

• 20:02Bill Nye?

  I think they're not especially reliable.

• 20:04Chuck Nice?

  All right. So now, what do you think about the people who believe in miracles because of personal experience when it comes to, say, for instance, an inexplicable cure of cancer?

• 20:15Bill Nye?

  See, it has to be so. In the case of an extraordinary claim like that.

• 20:17Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 20:18Bill Nye?

  And you say it's inexplicable. We'd have to look at the specific case and see how splicable it was.

• 20:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Bill Nye?

  Because it's easy to make broad statements. And somebody says, "The doctors gave him six months to live, and he lived five years." Oh, okay. Good. I'm glad he did.

• 20:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:37Bill Nye?

  But I'm not sure that it's any more proof that the doctors didn't have it quite right, rather than it was a miracle with the divine intervention of an entity that we cannot see or speak with. Or you say you can speak with, that I cannot see or speak with, that caused this. So it really depends on the specific claim. As we say in skeptical community, it depends on the claim. The claim is the key.

• 21:00Chuck Nice?

  Okay. That's a damn good answer, man. All right.

• 21:04Bill Nye?

  I'm so surprised, Jack. I put my heart and soul into the show, man. Help a fellow.

• 21:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 21:12Bill Nye?

  All right, all right.

• 21:14Chuck Nice?

  All right. And this is Andy Brooks. Andy wants to know this, Bill. As a scientifically minded person, what do you consider to be magic? What sparks that childlike sense of awe within you, Bill Nye?

• 21:32Bill Nye?

  Okay.

• 21:32Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I like that question.

• 21:33Bill Nye?

  Sparking childlike sense of awe, that happens to me all the time.

• 21:36Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:37Bill Nye?

  That's not the same as magic for me. I mean, we're talking about definition of words, perhaps, but magic is something done with supernatural phenomena that I cannot explain.

• 21:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:48Bill Nye?

  What a magician does, uh, that might be magical, having the characteristics of or pertaining to supernatural phenomena is art and, uh, science and often engineering.

• 22:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:01Bill Nye?

  Where you have the, open the book and it catches on fire, or somebody engineered a cigarette lighter that fit in the book.

• 22:06Chuck Nice?

  Right, okay.

• 22:07Bill Nye?

  Uh, so I am in awe every day of my place in the cosmos.

• 22:13Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 22:14Bill Nye?

  Yes, that I can somehow be made of stardust and understand that I'm made of stardust to me is astonishing, astonishing.

• 22:23Chuck Nice?

  Cool, okay.

• 22:24Bill Nye?

  But is that, I don't, I don't consider that magic.

• 22:27Chuck Nice?

  I got you, but that is what, uh, sparks the childlike awe within, within Bill Nye.

• 22:34Bill Nye?

  Science for me really starts with, whoa, what happened? How did, did you see that? That's how science starts for me.

• 22:40Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 22:41Bill Nye?

  And magic has that in common with it. Wow, what was, how did that happen? What, but, uh, uh, cosmic phenomena are different from people trying to fool you.

• 22:51Chuck Nice?

  All right, well then I need to grow up because that was a very good answer. And my answer was boobies, so.

• 22:58Bill Nye?

  Well, I think I have a fascination with those as well.

• 23:04Bill Nye?

  And they certainly are magical. I think it was Katy Perry who remarked, uh, we girls are so magical, so kissable. Yeah.

• 23:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:13Bill Nye?

  I say remark.

• 23:14Chuck Nice?

  Look at you with the Katy Perry reference.

• 23:17Bill Nye?

  Magical is not the same as supernatural, unexplained by anything we know in all of science.

• 23:21Chuck Nice?

  There you go. All right. There you have it. All right, Andy. Good question. We appreciate it. All right, let's go to Tom Rix. R I X. What a cool name. Tom, Tom Rix. Tom Rix wants to know this. Uh, first he states, "To me, magic is simply a word to describe an occurrence that you didn't fully understand." Then he gives an example. "For example, I imagine my dog Duke is completely bewildered by my ability to change images on the TV without touching it." I think you're giving your dog a lot of credit there, man. But anyway, "He doesn't know about the invisible signal sent from the remote, so to him, it's complete magic." Would a technologically superior civilization be able to compete, completely

• 24:05Chuck Nice?

  bewilder our scientists with their technology to the point where our scientists would believe it's magic? Or is our understanding of physics sound enough that we would know what's up even if we couldn't replicate it ourselves? That was a long way to go to say this, Bill Nye. You as a scientist, you encounter an alien race. They are able to perform what looks like magic by violating the laws of physics. Would you say it's magic? Or would you say, "No, I gotta find out how they violated the laws of physics?"

• 24:38Bill Nye?

  I'd go with the second one. And what I'd probably say is, there's some law of physics we don't fully understand.

• 24:44Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 24:45Bill Nye?

  This is, this is something, this manifestation, this effect, this phenomenon is, uh, described by some aspect of nature that we do not yet grasp.

• 24:54Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 24:55Bill Nye?

  Um, to say that the dog thinks it's magic when you change the channel.

• 24:59Chuck Nice?

  Hey, man.

• 25:00Bill Nye?

  I'm open-minded but skeptical.

• 25:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so am I.

• 25:02Bill Nye?

  I think Duke, the dog, just kinda takes it for granted.

• 25:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 25:05Bill Nye?

  A human shows up. He's got food.

• 25:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:09Bill Nye?

  Once in a while, he smells like a dog. Are we going for a walk?

• 25:11Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 25:12Bill Nye?

  Are you another dog?

• 25:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:13Bill Nye?

  Are we going for a walk?

• 25:14Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 25:15Bill Nye?

  I'm tired. Do you have any food?

• 25:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:18Bill Nye?

  I mean, that's, I don't think, the claim that a dog thinks it's magic.

• 25:23Chuck Nice?

  It's a little out there.

• 25:23Bill Nye?

  That a dog believes in supernatural phenomena.

• 25:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 25:26Bill Nye?

  I'm open-minded, but skeptical.

• 25:28Chuck Nice?

  That's a, that's a bit anthropomorphic.

• 25:30Bill Nye?

  It is. It's projecting.

• 25:31Chuck Nice?

  You're projecting.

• 25:31Bill Nye?

  Projecting your human perceptions.

• 25:34Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 25:34Bill Nye?

  So it was Arthur C. Clarke who remarked that any sufficiently sophisticated technology would be insufficient, would be indistinguishable from magic.

• 25:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:42Bill Nye?

  But it's a charming turn of phrase or quotation, but you start getting into the semantics of what is magic, and you can knock yourself out. I just think with 85% of the observable universe being dark matter.

• 25:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:55Bill Nye?

  Which means you can't see it. There's a lot we don't understand, peoples.

• 25:59Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 25:59Bill Nye?

  That's all I'm saying.

• 26:00Chuck Nice?

  That's.

• 26:00Bill Nye?

  To claim that that is magic, supernatural, and that certain people can control this dark matter, dark energy with their minds.

• 26:08Chuck Nice?

  I am your father.

• 26:11Bill Nye?

  I'm open-minded, but skeptical.

• 26:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, there you go, Tom. So, uh, no, that's not the way it would work. And, uh, so, uh, scientists would still say, nope, we just don't understand how they're doing it, uh, but it doesn't mean that it's magic. And two, any animal that licks its own testicles really doesn't care what's on TV. So there's your answers.

• 26:29Bill Nye?

  Oh, I don't know. I've seen dogs. There's definitely certain programs dogs prefer.

• 26:33Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:34Bill Nye?

  I mean, there's no, there's no doubt.

• 26:35Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 26:35Bill Nye?

  As an assessment of animal behavior.

• 26:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 26:38Bill Nye?

  All right. I don't, that's not on my business card, animal behaviorist.

• 26:40Chuck Nice?

  Maybe now I'm projecting, because maybe me as a dog wouldn't care what's on TV.

• 26:45Bill Nye?

  Well, I think we're all dogs.

• 26:48Chuck Nice?

  I feel a little Parliament Funkadelic coming on right now.

• 26:50Bill Nye?

  In a certain situation.

• 26:52Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 26:53Bill Nye?

  I'm a dog.

• 26:56Bill Nye?

  But as you are the reader of the queries.

• 26:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:00Bill Nye?

  You the man now, dog.

• 27:01Chuck Nice?

  There you go. That's right, my dog. All right, here we go.

• 27:07Chuck Nice?

  Ray Maron, Ray Maron wants to know this, Bill. Why can't mathematics and physics explain what happened before the Big Bang? Do we need a newer math or a newer version of physics?

• 27:24Bill Nye?

  Bring it on.

• 27:25Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 27:26Bill Nye?

  I mean, hold it. When you say, why can't math do this or physics do that? Humans discovered math. Humans made up physics. It doesn't like come from the sky. These are human endeavors, mathematics and physics.

• 27:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:40Bill Nye?

  And it was very recently that humans discovered the Big Bang. I mean, people didn't even know about the Big Bang. Who knows what else we have not discovered? The pursuit of whatever it is or was before the Big Bang is a reason for astrophysicists to get up in the morning and stay up all night. It's a, it drives us. It makes us want to know more about nature. So there is no question that our physics, our mathematics is incomplete. Otherwise, we would know the answer.

• 28:13Chuck Nice?

  We would have the answer.

• 28:14Bill Nye?

  Yeah. So, and if we, and if that is unknowable, we'd prove that it's unknowable somehow.

• 28:20Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 28:20Bill Nye?

  And if I'm wrong about that, then I will be enlightened. And that will be the process that we call science.

• 28:27Chuck Nice?

  Cool, man. Well, there you have it, Ray Maron.

• 28:30Bill Nye?

  Not to go tautological on you, but our belief in science is that we can know, there is a process by which we can know nature.

• 28:42Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 28:42Bill Nye?

  And so if we say there's this phenomenon in nature, we call the Big Bang, we expect to be able to know a lot about it, and certainly more than we know now. I'll give you that.

• 28:51Chuck Nice?

  Right. All right, man.

• 28:53Bill Nye?

  What if it's like unknowable and we're like, you know, living on a ping pong ball and like a cosmic game of ping pong played by cosmicians of the cosmos? Could be, but much more reasonable is that we just haven't figured it out yet.

• 29:10Chuck Nice?

  And at the end of that impression, let me just do this.

• 29:15Bill Nye?

  There you go.

• 29:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 29:17Bill Nye?

  Okay. We covered that on an earlier.

• 29:19Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we did.

• 29:19Bill Nye?

  Star talk.

• 29:20Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we did.

• 29:21Bill Nye?

  All right. No, just some disclosure there.

• 29:23Chuck Nice?

  So let's go to Brian Holmes. Brian's got a quick little question. He wants to know this, short and simple. Is it possible for a human, uh, human, sorry. I don't, I saw a person and I said.

• 29:34Bill Nye?

  You thought human might be my old boss.

• 29:38Chuck Nice?

  Let me do it again, Brian. Sorry for butchering your question. Brian wants to know this. Is it possible for a person to levitate like the trick done by David Blaine? And under what circumstances would that be possible?

• 29:53Bill Nye?

  Well, if you're doing it like the trick done by David Blaine, yes, he's a trick.

• 30:00Bill Nye?

  If you're saying, can he do it as an illusion? Yes.

• 30:04Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 30:04Bill Nye?

  Can he really have superpowers and fly around like Superman and some other guys? Green Lantern, I think can fly.

• 30:10Chuck Nice?

  Green Lantern, Green Lantern.

• 30:11Bill Nye?

  Wonder Woman, uh.

• 30:12Chuck Nice?

  No, she's in a plane.

• 30:13Bill Nye?

  She's in a plane.

• 30:14Chuck Nice?

  She's got an invisible plane. Looks like she's flying.

• 30:16Bill Nye?

  It's invisible.

• 30:16Chuck Nice?

  It's invisible.

• 30:17Bill Nye?

  A rookie mistake, yeah. Uh, so no, I would say no. And if you find a way to do it, more power to you. The guy who did claim to levitate, this, um, guy who had a mystic quality from, uh, the region of India.

• 30:31Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 30:33Bill Nye?

  From Asia.

• 30:33Chuck Nice?

  I forget his name. Yogi, Yogi something.

• 30:35Bill Nye?

  It had a Yogi, I think, in it, but he was an athlete who could flex his, uh, thighs in such a way that it looked like he was flying. He was just bouncing.

• 30:44Chuck Nice?

  He was bouncing off the ground.

• 30:45Bill Nye?

  In an athletic fashion, but he wasn't really levitating. So I'm very skeptical. However, can somebody like David Blaine make it look like it? Absolutely.

• 30:54Chuck Nice?

  Cool. And, and, and would there be a way to, I don't know, using like, okay, for instance, trains hover over top of an electromagnetic bed.

• 31:03Bill Nye?

  Yes, with magnetism.

• 31:04Chuck Nice?

  With magnetism, they're, they're levitating. So that's a form of levitation.

• 31:07Bill Nye?

  There you go.

• 31:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:08Bill Nye?

  Could you have enough magnets on a person to levitate? I should think so.

• 31:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 31:12Bill Nye?

  But his clothing or her clothing would, would have an unusual appearance.

• 31:18Bill Nye?

  But I wonder if, but, and by, by the way, you don't levitate that high. You know, the magnetic field generally falls off as the cube of the distance.

• 31:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 31:25Bill Nye?

  So you have to have a very strong magnetic field even to. To move things even a little bit.

• 31:31Chuck Nice?

  Just a little bit.

• 31:31Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 31:32Chuck Nice?

  Okay, well, there you go, man. Hey, uh, great question there, Brian. All right, let's move to Jeff Norbury. Jeff, uh, says, what's the biggest illusion you ever fell for?

• 31:47Bill Nye?

  Fell for?

• 31:48Chuck Nice?

  So, now, see, I don't know if that would be the right term.

• 31:53Bill Nye?

  Well, when I was in the Boy Scouts.

• 31:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 31:55Bill Nye?

  I was, um, instructed to get a, um, smoke shifter.

• 32:02Chuck Nice?

  I don't know what that is.

• 32:03Bill Nye?

  Well, it was a thing to shift smoke away from the campfire and the tents to some other part of the forest.

• 32:10Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:10Bill Nye?

  So your eyes wouldn't be watering continually, your clothing wouldn't just be soaked with smoke and have that smell.

• 32:16Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 32:16Bill Nye?

  Turned out to be no such thing.

• 32:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay, there was, I was gonna say, I was about to say, my god.

• 32:21Bill Nye?

  But I walked around.

• 32:23Chuck Nice?

  That's.

• 32:23Bill Nye?

  I was fooled. I was badly fooled. I was a young person. I don't think I was yet 12 years old. And I was badly fooled. So that was a very good illusion. And what the key to it was, these other guys who I respected, camp counselors, who had shown me how to keep from drowning, how to rescue others who might be drowning.

• 32:43Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 32:43Bill Nye?

  How to operate a canoe.

• 32:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:45Bill Nye?

  How to identify 15 or 25 different species or genuses of forest plants.

• 32:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:52Bill Nye?

  These same people were all in on this deception. Bahahaha.

• 32:59Chuck Nice?

  That's awesome.

• 33:00Bill Nye?

  And I fell for it, hook, line, and smoke shifter. For about an hour.

• 33:04Chuck Nice?

  Uh, listen, I just fell for it right now. Are you kidding me?

• 33:07Bill Nye?

  For about an hour. And then, and then I was tired of running, literally running. And I was afraid I was gonna be derided or penalized or subjected to further kitchen cleanup if I did not come back with this mythic device. And so I was motivated and which made it all the more frustrating. And for those of you out there for whom the beans of the smoke shifter can have been spilled.

• 33:34Bill Nye?

  I'm sorry, but it was part of my critical thinking and it was induced by this thoughtful question here on the Cosmic Queries.

• 33:42Chuck Nice?

  And once again.

• 33:42Bill Nye?

  Star Talk.

• 33:43Chuck Nice?

  Here's the great thing, once again, you just illustrated your own point. Here's a pattern. These guys you trusted because they had done so many great things for you. No way they would ever subject you to that type of.

• 33:53Bill Nye?

  No, they're trustworthy. Of course they are.

• 33:56Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 33:56Bill Nye?

  Yeah, sweet. It was quite bitter, really. I'm still a little shaken up. This is Cosmic Queries, Skeptics, Magic and Illusion. We'll be back with your questions with Chuck Nice and myself, Bill Nye, right after this. Welcome back to Star Talk Radio. I'm your guest host, Bill Nye. But I think, more importantly, and more impressive, and just really something that I hope inspires our audience, I'm here with Chuck Nice.

• 34:23Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 34:24Bill Nye?

  Chuck Nice is going to read your queries, your Cosmic Queries.

• 34:28Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 34:29Bill Nye?

  This week's episode features Cosmic Queries that involves skepticism, magic and illusion.

• 34:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 34:35Bill Nye?

  Cue the music. But these have been cool questions because these are about, for me, Chuck.

• 34:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:42Bill Nye?

  These are about how we know nature. They're about how we know our place, is how we know the natural world. And that, for me, is the process of science.

• 34:52Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 34:53Bill Nye?

  But it's very easy to draw incorrect conclusions, or what are provably incorrect conclusions about the natural world. And magic and illusionists are people that try to induce you to draw incorrect conclusions.

• 35:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:07Bill Nye?

  Oh, the humanity.

• 35:08Chuck Nice?

  That's where their bread is buttered, so to speak.

• 35:10Bill Nye?

  There you go. And I'm sure it's gluten-free and it's a vegetable-based bread. It's all good. Chuck.

• 35:19Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 35:19Bill Nye?

  Here we have some, you have some queries.

• 35:22Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we do. Let's go with Adam Rammer from Facebook. And Adam would like to know this.

• 35:30Chuck Nice?

  How do you know if your standard of proof is too high? How do you know you're not being too skeptical?

• 35:40Bill Nye?

  I need an example.

• 35:41Chuck Nice?

  That was gonna say, I don't really understand.

• 35:42Bill Nye?

  It depends on the claim. If you're like, Bill, just like roll with it and like, you know, let it like happen. You're not gonna, there's a very good chance that you won't draw correct conclusions.

• 35:54Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 35:55Bill Nye?

  Where you're so skeptical that you don't even get anything done and you don't enjoy a magic show, for example, that's a little different deal. But can you be too skeptical? You can certainly reject too many data that seem too far off your nominal or what you're hoping for.

• 36:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so.

• 36:11Bill Nye?

  What you expected.

• 36:12Chuck Nice?

  All right, so with that in mind, let's talk about experimentation as a scientist. You're trying to.

• 36:18Bill Nye?

  You're walking down the street.

• 36:19Chuck Nice?

  Right, but no, no, you're just trying to prove something in the lab.

• 36:22Bill Nye?

  Give me an example. Is the lab a street? Then you could be walking through it.

• 36:26Chuck Nice?

  That's true, you could be walking through it.

• 36:27Bill Nye?

  Sorry.

• 36:28Chuck Nice?

  But no, let's just say you're trying to prove, I don't know.

• 36:32Bill Nye?

  That hydrogen atoms have resonant frequencies that have dark bands where the electrons fall from one quantum level to another.

• 36:40Chuck Nice?

  That's exactly what I was gonna say.

• 36:42Bill Nye?

  Okay, then you shine light through the hydrogen and see if you get the bands.

• 36:47Chuck Nice?

  All right, now, let's say you do that, I don't know, 2,000 times and it happens all 2,000 times and you go, I don't know, we gotta find out, we still don't know for sure. So I think like, I think that's what he's saying is where does it, where does it happen in experimentation where you say, all right, good enough, we know this happens, let's move on.

• 37:07Bill Nye?

  Oh, let's talk sigma, shall we?

• 37:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:10Bill Nye?

  So imagine the bell curve of anything.

• 37:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:14Bill Nye?

  Hydrogen spectral line measurements. So there's a hump.

• 37:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:18Bill Nye?

  In the middle, then it goes out to the left and on the right, the positives and the negatives and it tapers down.

• 37:25Chuck Nice?

  Down, down, down.

• 37:26Bill Nye?

  Smooching the horizontal axis, bell fashion.

• 37:31Bill Nye?

  Well, where it changes from curving down to curving up.

• 37:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:36Bill Nye?

  That's the standard deviation.

• 37:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:38Bill Nye?

  Left and right of the center. So, we ran in mathematics, they run out of Roman letters, so they start using Greek ones. And for standard deviation, they use sigma.

• 37:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:51Bill Nye?

  Lowercase sigma usually. Okay, so then if you're one standard deviation width from the middle, that's one sigma.

• 38:00Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:00Bill Nye?

  Then you can go out two sigma, then three sigma. When you're three of those distances from the center.

• 38:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:07Bill Nye?

  Your 97.3% of the data are between the plus minus, plus three sigma, minus three sigma.

• 38:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:14Bill Nye?

  But now, you can go out to five sigma and six sigma. Way out where the bell curve is just about touch, it's almost touching the axis.

• 38:25Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 38:26Bill Nye?

  But it's not quite touching.

• 38:28Chuck Nice?

  Show me on the axis where the bad bell curve touched you.

• 38:31Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah, so. So you get to a place where you're good for all practical purposes.

• 38:37Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 38:37Bill Nye?

  And the practical purpose might be manufacturing an automobile engine.

• 38:41Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:42Bill Nye?

  Some of them are gonna mess up.

• 38:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:44Bill Nye?

  Almost all of them are gonna work just fine.

• 38:47Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 38:47Bill Nye?

  And so.

• 38:49Chuck Nice?

  Bam.

• 38:49Bill Nye?

  There's a case where you can be too skeptical and spend too much money.

• 38:54Chuck Nice?

  Too much money and time.

• 38:55Bill Nye?

  Trying to get it even better, but it doesn't do any good.

• 38:58Chuck Nice?

  Right, because even if you do, it's a diminishing return because.

• 39:02Bill Nye?

  Diminishing return.

• 39:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's so negligible, what difference does it really make?

• 39:06Bill Nye?

  So this is a case where mathematical modeling of nature is quite instructive when we go to make things. But there are other things that are absolutely provably true.

• 39:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 39:18Bill Nye?

  And if you got somebody who says, well, you can't prove the sun's not gonna come up tomorrow. I can prove it beyond any reasonable doubt. I can call somebody in Australia where the sun is rising right now.

• 39:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:31Bill Nye?

  And they, yep, they're still, yep, sure enough.

• 39:33Chuck Nice?

  It's still happening.

• 39:34Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 39:34Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 39:34Bill Nye?

  What if the earth blows up? Okay, probably won't, probably won't, if you're a betting guy.

• 39:39Chuck Nice?

  Right, right. Okay, hey, there you go, great question, man, way to go, way to go, Adam, we love it. All right, let us move on to.

• 39:47Bill Nye?

  Yes, let us.

• 39:48Chuck Nice?

  Dean Hiller, or Hiler, H I L E R, Dean.

• 39:52Bill Nye?

  H I L E R, Dean.

• 39:56Chuck Nice?

  I love that you just turned him into an advertisement for himself.

• 39:59Bill Nye?

  Well, it was Jell-O. Back in the day.

• 40:01Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God, I totally missed that.

• 40:03Bill Nye?

  J E L L O. There we go.

• 40:05Chuck Nice?

  That's right, and now we can't have any of it.

• 40:07Bill Nye?

  There's gonna be lawsuits.

• 40:08Chuck Nice?

  Oh, God, this is going to be, please, don't eat the Jell-O and take the nap.

• 40:12Bill Nye?

  Wow, whoa, whoa, a reference from a discredited comedian.

• 40:17Chuck Nice?

  This is all I'm saying, you want to keep the Jell-O.

• 40:20Bill Nye?

  Wow, wow.

• 40:21Chuck Nice?

  I'm just asking you to.

• 40:22Bill Nye?

  Not too much of that.

• 40:23Chuck Nice?

  Please, just stay away.

• 40:24Bill Nye?

  The man is in trouble.

• 40:25Chuck Nice?

  No, don't go to sleep is what I'm saying, please.

• 40:27Bill Nye?

  The man's in trouble.

• 40:28Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God, please.

• 40:29Bill Nye?

  Lighten up on him.

• 40:30Chuck Nice?

  Wake up. Okay.

• 40:34Chuck Nice?

  Dean wants to know this, Bill. Children are highly suggestible. They believe just about any idea or concept.

• 40:41Bill Nye?

  Depends on the kid, I gotta stop you right there.

• 40:44Chuck Nice?

  Oh, you're right about that.

• 40:45Bill Nye?

  But go ahead.

• 40:47Bill Nye?

  Prove it, you prove it, prove it. You can't prove that, it depends on the kid.

• 40:51Chuck Nice?

  So, do you have any tips for instilling a good sense of skepticism into children to prepare them for a world full of incredible claims from credulous people?

• 41:03Bill Nye?

  Show them how easy it is to fool each other. Do card tricks.

• 41:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:08Bill Nye?

  I'm a huge fan of Pepper's Ghost, where you have a piece of glass. You light an object on one side of the glass.

• 41:19Bill Nye?

  The viewer sees that object.

• 41:21Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 41:21Bill Nye?

  Then you change the lighting, so you no longer light that object, you light an object at a right angle to that. And this, the glass is at a 45-degree angle to the viewer, and now the viewer sees the other object.

• 41:33Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 41:34Bill Nye?

  By changing the lighting, you can make the viewer think he's seeing this or that. It's done with mirrors.

• 41:39Chuck Nice?

  Just done with mirrors?

• 41:40Bill Nye?

  It's done with mirrors. And it's a charming effect, and I can't say enough good things, and just, to promote me, you could watch the Bill Nye Show about pseudoscience. Turn it up loud.

• 41:54Chuck Nice?

  There you go. All right, so there you have it, man, do some experimentation at home.

• 41:58Bill Nye?

  Yeah, have your kids learn magic tricks and see how easy it is to fool people.

• 42:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 42:01Bill Nye?

  And the better you are at the trick, the more people you will fool, you'll see it's an art as well as an engineering problem.

• 42:09Chuck Nice?

  Excellent. All right, this is Marco Darko, I don't think that's his real name.

• 42:14Bill Nye?

  It's good enough for me.

• 42:17Chuck Nice?

  You'll take it.

• 42:18Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 42:18Chuck Nice?

  Marco Darko, he says this, I'm from Canada, eh? I put the A in there.

• 42:23Bill Nye?

  Oh, man.

• 42:24Chuck Nice?

  And curious about future exploration. Is the team with various countries a type of space race? Or can we legitimately join together and pool resources? So that we can be the best that we can be.

• 42:38Bill Nye?

  Oh, that's a great question. So, speaking of Canada, you know, the Canadian Space Agency, although its funding is cut way back from what it was even a few years ago, participates in so many missions around the world because Ca- Canada made a cool decision not to build rockets, just to build instruments.

• 42:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:57Bill Nye?

  Their can- their space agency. And they've been very successful and they built the Canadarm, which is on the space station and so on. And so, yes, we can all pull together, but we're not there yet, everybody, believe me. Or, or not, run your own test. If China were sending people to Mars, the, every other country would be interested in a mission to Mars.

• 43:18Chuck Nice?

  So, the space race aspect, that, that, that sense of competition actually inspires governments to get their asses, get their asses moving.

• 43:28Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah, that's what, the Cold War was all about, the race to the moon and, and it was declared informally and pursued formally. So, uh, but people who study the history of space cannot help but notice the space race and how much it did to get people on the moon. But because a- after that was done and the moon is lifeless, not a lot of stuff going on.

• 43:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:51Bill Nye?

  Brought back some cool rocks. It hasn't become a big destination and it was really what people in history call the Nixon Doctrine.

• 44:00Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 44:01Bill Nye?

  Richard Nixon.

• 44:02Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 44:02Bill Nye?

  This, yes, decided that NASA or the space agencies had to compete for money like any other domestic program.

• 44:11Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 44:12Bill Nye?

  That's right. He, he was, he was a crook, but that aside, he put, he made NASA a domestic issue rather than an international relations or international issue.

• 44:24Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 44:25Bill Nye?

  And this is, had a much bigger effect on the space programs of the world than this, the famous Nixon, uh, Kennedy was, the famous Kennedy moment. The famous Kennedy moment when, uh, Kennedy said we're gonna go to the moon.

• 44:39Chuck Nice?

  We choose to go to the moon because

• 44:40Bill Nye?

  That's right.

• 44:41Chuck Nice?

  And do this, that, and the other thing. Cause it's hard, not easy.

• 44:45Bill Nye?

  It sounds like you're kinda Caribbean

• 44:47Chuck Nice?

  I don't know.

• 44:48Bill Nye?

  New English thing, which brings me, of course, Caribbean New English, as always, brings us to the lightning round.

• 44:53Chuck Nice?

  Boom.

• 44:55Bill Nye?

  So in the lightning round, you read these questions fast and I give you answers quickly.

• 44:58Chuck Nice?

  That's right. This is Orlando Lonzo, who says, evolutionarily speaking, isn't it refining our species to be skeptical of new things, good and bad alike?

• 45:08Bill Nye?

  Well, I claim that the better our ancestors are at understanding nature through the scientific method, the better their offspring will be. And the humans that do draw good, do correct or provable conclusions about nature will have a much better survival rate than those who do not.

• 45:25Chuck Nice?

  Boom. Christopher Allen says this, I'm a teacher and I would like to know, what is the possibility and physical science of telekinesis? So that would be either thought transfer or moving stuff with your mind?

• 45:37Bill Nye?

  Uh, there's no evidence for it.

• 45:39Chuck Nice?

  Period.

• 45:39Bill Nye?

  I, I love you. So a brain uses about 30 watts, just turned up to 11, just go and work on as hard as you can, 30 watts.

• 45:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 45:47Bill Nye?

  You can't do a lot of telekinesisifying of tables and lamps and cars with that. And plus, how do you get it out of your head into the space around you? Uh, prove it and we'll be excited.

• 46:03Chuck Nice?

  Mark Miller.

• 46:06Chuck Nice?

  Mark Miller wants to know-

• 46:07Bill Nye?

  Chuck's in tears. Chuck, bring it on. Spit it out, man.

• 46:10Chuck Nice?

  Mark Miller wants to know, what would the world be like without skepticism? Where would we be?

• 46:16Bill Nye?

  Well, take my word for it. We'd be, we'd be really well off and we'd all be rich and all have superpowers. And no one would ever be unhappy ever again.

• 46:28Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Hey Bill, that was really good. Okay. Kelly Elizabeth Claus wants to know this. Can you explain the quote unquote illusion behind what makes stars in the night sky such as Sirius appear to twinkle?

• 46:43Bill Nye?

  Yeah, the atmosphere. Uh, the atmosphere is swirling like clouds in your coffee, clouds in your coffee. And the swirling atmosphere makes the objects appear to change brightness.

• 46:55Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Uh, Lenny. Ancre- Ancredi, Ancredi.

• 47:02Bill Nye?

  Ancredi.

• 47:03Chuck Nice?

  Ancredi wants to know this. Is there anything that you would accept as being permanently outside the realm of science to explain, uh, to explain things and therefore be magical? And can something exist outside the realm of science, Bill?

• 47:15Bill Nye?

  Well, then we would just say our science is incomplete. It's tautological. I, I mean, show me the thing and we'll take a meeting.

• 47:23Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Uh, here is somebody I just can't even. Stefan Kralljic. Hey guys, my question is, where do we draw the line between skepticism and absolute truth?

• 47:37Bill Nye?

  Well, it's seven sigma way out there. So, uh,

• 47:42Chuck Nice?

  We just did kind of go through that, right?

• 47:43Bill Nye?

  Well, but I mean, so you gotta decide if you're, is the sun gonna come up tomorrow for me? Yes, I'm counting on it. Will the world end in 2017? The people who issue my credit cards don't think so. So it's up to you, but for other, for most of us in science, we, there are absolute truths and the big bang is one of them and you and I are made of cosmic dust is another. And this has been another wonderful and exciting cosmic query episode of StarTalk. Chuck Nice has been your reader and commentator. I have been your host, Bill Nye, and we'll see you next time on StarTalk. In the meanwhile, everyone, please keep looking up. This is StarTalk.