Season 7 Time Capsule (Part 2)

Join host Neil Tyson for Season 7’s final episode as he revisits our fan’s favorite Cosmic Queries shows. Along with Chuck Nice, Eugene Mirman, Iliza Shlesinger, and guests, Neil answers questions about aliens, the multiverse, black holes, war, and more.

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.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your host and your personal astrophysicist. I'm also the director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. What you're about to hear is the final episode of season seven. Yes, there have been seven seasons of StarTalk. It's part two of our special time capsule show, and we do this every season. What we do is we send out a survey to all our fans, and we ask you to vote for your favorite episodes, co-hosts, guests. From those data, we choose what episodes to splice and glue and staple together, and

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  we end up with a kind of potpourri of StarTalk's best moments. I think of it as a comedic scientific melange. On this, part two of the time capsule, we focus only on our cosmic query episodes. Cosmic queries are what I like to think of as StarTalk after hours. It's a chance for me and my comedic co-host to field and explore, have fun with, but especially just to grapple with the questions posed to us by our very own listeners. And every now and then, we bring in a science guest to help us out. Such was the case with your number one favorite episode, according to your votes, "The Multiverse."

• 1:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here, co-host Chuck Nice and I brought in theoretical physicist Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University to help us untangle some of your questions about multiverse theory.

• 1:51Chuck Nice?

  Matt Eli from Facebook and also from San Antonio, Texas. A little more, uh, he wants to know this. A little more existential. Why should we take the multiverse theory seriously in the first place? Might there be extraordinary evidence for this extraordinary claim? He is not the least bit skeptical.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  Good. I like this question.

• 2:15Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so go ahead.

• 2:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's, it's, you gotta admit, Paul, to assert multiple universes is extraordinary. And if you're not on the tail, and you're a theorist, last I checked. So, you're not even, well, of course, good theorists think of how to test hypotheses. Have you? How's that for a setup? Good theorists do this.

• 2:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you? Yeah.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Well, I think I've already sort of played, laid out my cards and said that I think the multiverse is a sign of breakdown of this inflationary idea. It's a failure. It's a failure mode of the theory. Something we didn't expect. Wasn't designed to produce a multiverse. It's something we discovered after the fact. And the problem is that because it produces an infinite number of patches of every possible variety. If you ask what the theory predicts, the answer is nothing. Or everything, anything.

• 3:05Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  So, it's a little bit analogous.

• 3:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it explains everything, then in fact it explains nothing.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Yes. That's what, that's, so, in my view, that makes it no longer a scientifically interesting theory. So, it's not testable.

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even if it's true, it's just not interesting.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  It's not interesting, because anything you'd measure, you could say, oh, we live in that patch of the universe. And then you measure something else tomorrow, and it doesn't fit that patch. You say, oh, they must be in that patch.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We live in a patch where both of those are the fact.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 3:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that makes sense. I mean, yeah.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  And according to the multiverse idea, if it's physically possible, and obviously, our physical world is one of the possibilities, then it must exist somewhere in the multiverse.

• 3:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless we're a simulation.

• 3:42Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no, there's the...

• 3:43Speaker 02

  But even that would be part of the multiverse.

• 3:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, there's the, there's the...

• 3:48Speaker 02

  You can't get away from this.

• 3:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, man, drat.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Once you have a bad idea, you can't get away from it.

• 3:54Chuck Nice?

  That's funny.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Drat.

• 3:55Chuck Nice?

  All right, so there you have it. Okay. Hey, Matt, uh, nice question.

• 4:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so you agree that it has, it doesn't really set the standard yet for a testable theory?

• 4:06Speaker 02

  I think by construction, it does not. And if you read what the proponents of the multiverse say, that's exactly what they'll tell you. So.

• 4:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What about, what about the quantum foam bursting forth multiple whole other universes? From the very early universe and these would be universes that you would be able to see in a higher dimension. But they don't interact and they're perfectly.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Sort of separate fabrics.

• 4:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Separate fabrics, yes.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  I don't know what to make of that. That's another untestable idea in principle. So it's, it's another version of a, if, well, so there are two possibilities. One possibility is that those different fabric regions have completely different properties again, like the multiverse and you, and it's just random chance.

• 4:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The patchwork multiverse.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Like a patchwork multiverse in which you wouldn't, in which again, you, everything could possibly, everything that could happen will happen. In which case it has no scientific predictive value. Or it could be that you have a theory which says, actually, the same thing will happen each time. Every time you produce one of these fabrics, so that if I suddenly transported to the other one, imagine doing that. It would look familiar to me.

• 5:13Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  That's a different story. That's a predictive theory.

• 5:16Chuck Nice?

  That is, right, but the problem is you can't get there, is what you're saying.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and so it doesn't have a meaningful scientific value.

• 5:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Paul, could, uh, isn't it true for reasons that I never learned because I never took advanced field theory in graduate school? But my wife did and, okay, she, she has a PhD in mathematical physics.

• 5:36Chuck Nice?

  I know, I know your wife and she's smarter than you. I'm just saying.

• 5:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but from what I've been told, the, gravity is not contained in the space-time in which it is formed, in which you have it. So in other words, the, the effect of gravity can leak out of whatever is the membrane that is contained and be felt by other universes outside of that?

• 6:05Speaker 02

  Uh, so-

• 6:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unlike electromagnetic radiation, which is trapped within the spacetime, gravity is not. I've heard that.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  So I think you're referring to theories like in string theory, you have extra dimensions.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  And where we might live in a membrane-like surface, in which we seem, we think we're living in a world of three space dimensions.

• 6:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  There's actually extra dimensions, which we, our particles, can't-

• 6:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Access.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  ...move there. Our light can't move there, so electromagnetic radiation can't move there. But gravity would be felt even along that extra dimension. So that we, so that, for example, if there were another similar membrane parallel to us. Now, we are thinking about this idea of parallel universes- This is the parallel. Yeah. And something were happening over there, let's say matter lumped together to form a star- Right. Or a black hole, or something like that, that would be felt, it's gravitational effect-

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why isn't that dark matter?

• 7:02Speaker 02

  It could be.

• 7:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dark matter on our universe would be ordinary matter in a parallel universe that's leaking into ours, and we're mysteriously inventing stuff to account for it, when in fact it's just ordinary matter.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  I think that's a conceivable idea, that it could be matter on the other side, another brain, and another membrane that's a small distance away. It couldn't be like our matter, because if it were, it would also, when it gravitationally clumped, it would produce radiation, and that radiation would affect us as well in a way that we know, we know there aren't those sources of radiation there. And the dark matter, one of the things about dark matter compared to ordinary matter is dark, ordinary matter collapses to form stars.

• 7:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And stick together.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  And stick together and sits in a halo of very diffuse dark matter. If this dark matter were like us but on the other side, it would also collapse, and it wouldn't form the halo, which we know of dark matter that we observe.

• 7:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Typically, fan queries are related to a specific topic. But you all often submit such a range of intriguing and off-the-wall questions that the only appropriate category is, well, no category at all, random. So on this random edition of Cosmic Queries, comedian Chuck Nice helps me scrape the bottom of the Cosmic Queries barrel, where all the misfit questions wait to be answered. Check it out. Could there be life that exists that could not be classified as either plant nor animal, but still life? There's a famous science fiction story, and forgive me if I forgot who wrote it, because I don't come in here with notes in anticipation of questions.

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, you don't know these questions, so how could you? Right, right. So, so there's a science fiction story where the aliens came upon Earth. Mm-hmm. And saw that we, there's like muscle tissue. Right. And they go back to their home planet and says, "They're made of meat." (laughing) Because the aliens, they're made of some spirit energy. Right. Right? And we're made of meat. Right. And another thing that we take for granted, but I can imagine an alien, uh, life form that would just freak out. Mm-hmm. Other than salt, other than salt, animals have to kill to consume food. Other than the consumption of salt. Everything else you eat was once alive. Right. Well, sorry, sorry, sorry.

• 9:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless you live off of milk and honey, right? Those themselves were not once alive. That's still an animal byproduct. As an animal byproduct. You have to kill something. And even the vegetarians are slaughtering carrots. That's right. All right? Yeah. And slicing them, dicing them up, and shredding them. Yes. So, the fact that we have to kill other life forms on our own planet for our own sustenance could easily be seen as one of the most barbaric things to another civilization where they all absorb energy from their host star.

• 9:59Chuck Nice?

  Right. Yes.

• 10:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you have it.

• 10:00Chuck Nice?

  Because they're absorbing and not consuming, well, they're and and.

• 10:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're and they're unlimited.

• 10:05Chuck Nice?

  They're not ingesting.

• 10:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Their unlimited source of energy from their sun, uh, just like planets, like plants on Earth.

• 10:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't have to eat anything. There's some that do, of course, but most don't. The Venus flytrap is carnivorous. And what's that other one that eats flies that smells like?

• 10:18Chuck Nice?

  Picture plant.

• 10:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that one, okay, so they're carnivorous, but all the rest are doing just fine with sunlight.

• 10:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 10:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's, uh, that's an awesome way to live, I think. If I were to evolve the human into another form, I'd involve us with solar panels on our skin.

• 10:31Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Our skin would be one big solar panel.

• 10:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that way, getting sunburned, you just recharge your, your energetics.

• 10:37Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I believe they call that Africans.

• 10:41Chuck Nice?

  I'm just saying. Last I heard, those, that's why they're black.

• 10:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep.

• 10:47Chuck Nice?

  I say they.

• 10:51Chuck Nice?

  I just said, that's why they're black. That's so crazy. All right. Megan Morrissey says, hi. I'm showing for the first time an episode of Cosmos in my high school earth sciences class.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give it up for the teachers of the world.

• 11:06Chuck Nice?

  There you go. One of my students just asked me if a ship that is designed like a ship of imagination would actually be able to fly into space. Would that be possible? Love your show and thank you.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not authorized to say whether I actually own one of these.

• 11:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, no, the, the ship of the imagination on purpose has mobility through space and time, and that mobility is empowered by my thoughts.

• 11:33Chuck Nice?

  Whoa.

• 11:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there are no controls. There is no, uh, plus we had a mini discussion with, with Andruyan, who specified in the script that the ship would be impossibly minimalist.

• 11:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I would not be wearing a badge, which would imply that I'm captain and you're not.

• 11:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause you should be able to fly this as well. So, so the ship, no, it, it exists completely in my imagination as your tour guide. So no, there is no attempt to try to make it real.

• 12:02Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 12:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As there have been with the Starship Enterprise and other sort of sci-fi creations. So anyway, so yeah, it's not, uh, it's not real or it can even be imagined to be real.

• 12:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause it exists in my mind.

• 12:13Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 12:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As your private tour guide.

• 12:15Chuck Nice?

  There you go. There you go.

• 12:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, we, uh, you know what time it is?

• 12:18Chuck Nice?

  Uh-oh.

• 12:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is.

• 12:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm so bad at hitting this bell, let me tell you. Damn.

• 12:24Chuck Nice?

  There we go, lightning round. Lightning round.

• 12:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 12:26Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god, we got a lightning round.

• 12:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I'm answering in sound bites, because you still have so many I didn't get to.

• 12:31Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 12:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, ready, go.

• 12:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. Um, Jehovani Barrera wants to know, as the sun expands and gets close to the earth, will the, what will happen to the earth besides getting really hot?

• 12:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so, the, well, uh, the, the story here is that it's getting hot.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's the story, alright? So, the gravity will be the same, we'll still orbit the sun in the same amount of time, but it's as it gets hot, the oceans will come to a rolling boil and evaporate into the atmosphere. The atmosphere will itself evaporate into space.

• 13:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As we become engulfed by the expanding sun and we become a vaporized ember orbiting deep within earth's surface.

• 13:16Chuck Nice?

  Boom!

• 13:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have a nice day.

• 13:19Chuck Nice?

  From Andrew Lounsbury, who says, "This is not relevant to science, but where did Neil get his celestial vest?"

• 13:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, actually, I own about six vests.

• 13:29Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 13:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're for different stages of how wide my belly is, at different times.

• 13:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the one I'm most, the one I'm most seen in, it was the last vest sold at the gift shop of the Hanson Planetarium in Utah. In Salt Lake City, Utah, before that closed and reopened in another identity. And in fact, they had no more left, and I bought it off the back of the salesperson. And I've yet to see anyone else wearing this vest ever again.

• 13:58Chuck Nice?

  Dad.

• 13:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, that's the one.

• 14:00Chuck Nice?

  That, that person is probably so pissed off.

• 14:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Took it off their back. But they agreed, I didn't take, I didn't steal it off them.

• 14:06Chuck Nice?

  Man, give me the vest.

• 14:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Know who I am? I'm NDT, bitch!

• 14:11Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry. Next up, comedic co-host Eugene Mirman throws me your cosmic queries about new mysteries in the universe.

• 14:23Eugene Mirman?

  Denard on Google Plus asks, "With slowing investments in space-based science across the board in multiple countries, what effect does this have on limiting human discoveries of our place in the universe?"

• 14:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's a great question, and if you're gonna cut back on science, which is the current, which constitute the current roads of discovery, then just move back into the cave.

• 14:47Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 14:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What are you doing? Now, you can vote for that kind of country, but that's not the kind of country I grew up in.

• 14:51Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 14:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We had investments in science and technology. You did not need special programs to convince kids that they should be interested in science. They're built into the fabric of the media cycles.

• 15:02Eugene Mirman?

  Well, NASA, for every dollar put into NASA, it returns something like seven or eight dollars.

• 15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I hardly ever cite that calculation because there's a lot of...

• 15:11Eugene Mirman?

  Or is it somewhat accurate?

• 15:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it can be accurate, but it's a matter of what you value that goes into the equation that gets that number. So that's the kind of same calculation you do when you say, "Well, let's put an opera in town."

• 15:23Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 15:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, how are we gonna support the opera? Well, we don't know, but if you put an opera there, then these stores will open up around the entrance to that opera.

• 15:31Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 15:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so it's a seeding effect.

• 15:34Eugene Mirman?

  Right, right.

• 15:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That many people talk about, but...

• 15:36Eugene Mirman?

  But it's hard to actually say.

• 15:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's hard to anchor that in a way that if five different people did the same analysis, would they get the same answer? And the answer is no.

• 15:45Eugene Mirman?

  And that also isn't necessarily the... The scientific discovery is partially its own end, not the fact that...

• 15:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 15:51Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 15:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. Even though some people want you to do it for some purpose, it's really for its own end, and later on, you find out how it really applies.

• 15:57Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 15:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 15:58Eugene Mirman?

  All right. Mark Miller, Patreon, he asks, "With the discovery of a black hole expelling some of the matter it had consumed, what forces may be responsible for this unusual behavior?"

• 16:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, it's not unusual because it's not coming from within the event horizon. Once you cross over the event horizon, just, you know, kiss your ass goodbye. So what's actually happening is all this matter is spiraling towards the black hole center, and it can't all get there all at once, and it forms this disk on which all this material accretes, and the disk feeds the black hole on the very inner edge of it. But until it gets to that point, you still have this, this, um, this...

• 16:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Assembly of matter. And as it spirals down, it gets hotter and hotter and hotter, and it begins to radiate. It radiates so ferociously, it punches out above and below the disk itself. And then you get these jets.

• 16:58Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These, these, these long spewed forth, uh, sig- signatures of moving matter. And so, so, yes, this happens because all this matter's trying to get down into the same place at the same time, and it's gonna fail in doing so. And once you heat up a gas, it's gotta radiate somewhere, and it'll do it. It'll do it.

• 17:20Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. Oh, it will.

• 17:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 17:22Eugene Mirman?

  That's the promise I make to you.

• 17:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, so, most of the exotic galactic center phenomenon we've seen with powerful jets emanating from above and below a galaxy, and very intense in all bands of light, radio waves, microwaves, ultraviolet, uh, X-rays. So, we have, um, we have established over the decades that the thing that's causing all that violence in the galaxies are black holes with matter trying to get in there too fast, creating these explosive accretion discs. That's how it comes out of a black hole.

• 18:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. And right now, we're in the middle of our final episode of the season. This is a special time capsule edition, which means we're reaching back into the archives of season seven and extracting some of your best-loved moments and guests, according to your votes. Your number one favorite comedic co-host this season, Chuck Nice, returns to ask me your questions about the space race. Let's take a listen.

• 18:58Chuck Nice?

  Abhijit Manet.

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:00Chuck Nice?

  Uh, from Facebook wants to know this. The space race was, in a way, an extension of the Cold War arms race. But also the resolve of President John F. Kennedy, who pledged that we'd get there in 10 years. Do you know anyone today in the political sphere who could do the same? What kind of politician would be ideal in this regard? We go to the moon because we choose to. It's that and the other thing we do because, oh, nevermind, forget it.

• 19:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, that was your worst impression ever.

• 19:33Chuck Nice?

  It really is.

• 19:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And normally, you're good.

• 19:35Chuck Nice?

  I know, but you know what? I'm not even doing Kennedy. I'm actually doing Mayor Quimby.

• 19:41Chuck Nice?

  From The Simpsons, you know? Vote Quimby.

• 19:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, you imitate a TIE fighter from Star Wars.

• 19:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:51Chuck Nice?

  Even though you...

• 19:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought Kennedy would be easy after that.

• 19:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yes.

• 19:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, um, so here's... There's an assumption built into that question that the political will and charisma, perhaps, of Kennedy was a significant force operating in how and why we got to the moon. And this is commonly thought, but I... I'm contrarian in that regard.

• 20:15Chuck Nice?

  Well, good.

• 20:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? No doubt Kennedy had charisma. No doubt, uh, he had a sort of way with rallying people behind an idea. No doubt about that. But I submit that if we were not at war, all of that would have just been empty rhetoric, and nobody would have signed the check. Congress... Because Congress is not as swayed by speeches as the public is.

• 20:37Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 20:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right? And so it's Congress who writes the check.

• 20:40Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 20:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the end of the day. So, consider 1989. The 20th... July 20th. The 20th anniversary of the moon landing. Who was the then-sitting president?

• 20:53Chuck Nice?

  Uh, I don't know.

• 20:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Herbert Walker. George Herbert Walker Bush.

• 20:55Chuck Nice?

  George Herbert Walker Bush.

• 20:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He goes to the steps of the Air and Space Museum, delivers a speech not fundamentally different from Kennedy's speech. "We're Americans. We're explorers. Columbus set sail. This is our time. We will put men on Mars and have a space station... We'll have us build a space station, and we will..." This... He was trying to give a Kennedy speech.

• 21:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Fell flat on his face. Now, why? People said, "Well, because he's not Kennedy." I beg to differ.

• 21:28Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not that he isn't not Kennedy.

• 21:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That sentence make sense?

• 21:32Chuck Nice?

  That's correct. Because he isn't not Kennedy. No, he, well, he isn't Kennedy.

• 21:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It didn't work not because he isn't Kennedy.

• 21:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I claim, it didn't work because, do you remember what happened in 1989?

• 21:46Chuck Nice?

  Uh, I don't know.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Peace broke out.

• 21:49Chuck Nice?

  Ow.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Peace broke out in Europe.

• 21:52Chuck Nice?

  That's a terrible thing.

• 21:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

• 21:55Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 21:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the, the tear, tear down the wall. The wall came down in 1989. All of a sudden, our motivation for our military might, the very thing that drove who and what we were as the carriers of freedom and the American way, in the, in the face of evil communists, it all evaporated.

• 22:17Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 22:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That year. And he's trying to give a speech to get people to go to Mars

• 22:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  in the absence of a mortal enemy.

• 22:27Chuck Nice?

  Right. So, we would have either needed Martians.

• 22:32Chuck Nice?

  Uh...

• 22:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'd be the best.

• 22:33Chuck Nice?

  That would have been the best.

• 22:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The best.

• 22:34Chuck Nice?

  Right. We, we either needed Martians.

• 22:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Evil Martians.

• 22:37Chuck Nice?

  Evil Martians.

• 22:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not ET, like ET.

• 22:39Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Yeah. We're not, yeah.

• 22:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wouldn't it be cool if ET came out, guns drawn?

• 22:43Chuck Nice?

  That would be awesome.

• 22:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he shot Elliot, or whatever the hell that was.

• 22:46Chuck Nice?

  That's the way it ends. You know what I mean? ET go home. Hmm. Yeah, but first...

• 22:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We must test our ray guns on you.

• 22:58Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly. So, yeah, so really the, uh, competition. No competition.

• 23:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's not only competition, because you can do that, yes, and still succeed, but the greatest competition our species knows is the threat of death from someone who might out-compete you in a way that would kill you. So, I claim that the biggest reason that failed was not because Bush... Lack the charisma of Kennedy. What he happened is he lacked the Cold War.

• 23:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, he proposed, you know what it was? You know what it was? He said, this will be a, what, 25 year, I forgot the exact time interval, 25 year plan? And, uh, and it would be, you know, 25, 30 year plan, and it'll cost a trillion dollars.

• 23:43Chuck Nice?

  Whoa.

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so people freaked.

• 23:45Chuck Nice?

  Right, and that was the end of that, right there.

• 23:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, or, or half a trillion dollars, half a tril- half a trillion dollars.

• 23:49Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 23:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that, oh, that's better.

• 23:51Chuck Nice?

  No, listen, half a trillion, I'm like, alright, okay, we can work with that.

• 23:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But here's the thing, if you took NASA's budget at the time, which is between 15 and 20 billion dollars in today's annual budget, and then you multiply that over 30 years,

• 24:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get half a trillion dollars.

• 24:08Chuck Nice?

  A trillion dollars.

• 24:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we already are allocating half a trillion dollars to NASA over that same amount of time.

• 24:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So to say that's DOA because it's too much money, that's a false argument.

• 24:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  NASA was alre- you might have to retool NASA with its budget, but it was a false argument to think it's too much money. That's all. So, so, so I'm unconvinced by people saying that George Herbert Walker Bush was absent the charisma of Kennedy. So, so, I don't, so I don't think it has anything to do with politicians.

• 24:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It has to do with whether we think we're gonna die.

• 24:42Chuck Nice?

  Okay, there you, and there you have it. Uh, by the way, just to let you know, you are gonna die.

• 24:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, sorry.

• 24:49Chuck Nice?

  So we should, uh, we should do it irrespective. Uh, I think that if we really wanna go to Mars.

• 24:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Die by unnatural causes.

• 24:56Chuck Nice?

  There you go. We, but if we really wanna go to Mars, we should, um, we, scientists should get together. And, um, in a, in a, in a, uh, this, in a somewhat conspiratorial way, uh, tell the world that there's oil.

• 25:13Chuck Nice?

  On Mars.

• 25:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but then we'd be, we'd be lying.

• 25:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but we go to Mars.

• 25:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know why there's oil?

• 25:21Chuck Nice?

  That there's terrorists on Mars.

• 25:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know why there's oil on Earth? Because we have life on Earth, right? And so maybe, okay, maybe there was a period, there's an episode of Mars where there was life.

• 25:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All that life sunk down and then it made oil. So that'd be cool.

• 25:33Chuck Nice?

  That would be cool.

• 25:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go to Mars and get oil.

• 25:35Chuck Nice?

  And we'd be there next week.

• 25:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what I, but what I joke about is we should go to China and go, psst, go tell the leaders of China, "Pssst, can you leak a memo?" Don't, don't be true. It doesn't have to be true. Just leak a memo saying you want to put military bases on Mars.

• 25:47Chuck Nice?

  Boom, that's it. We're done.

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 25:49Chuck Nice?

  We're on Mars.

• 25:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're on Mars. In 10 months.

• 25:51Chuck Nice?

  10 months.

• 25:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  1 month to fun, design, build a spacecraft, 9 months to get there.

• 25:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next, StarTalk veteran author Mary Roach joined us in our 7th season to help us dig into the science of humans at war. Comedic co-host Chuck Nice joins us in studio to ask us your fan-submitted questions.

• 26:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay, Christian Prisbelec from Twitter says this. "Do vets of armed combat face a disproportionate number of chronic health issues? And does race play a role or as well as class?" So, class and race, do they play a role in the chronic health issues that vets face? And do vets face more chronic health issues than anyone else by virtue of being a vet?

• 26:42Speaker 04

  I would, yeah. Yeah.

• 26:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  There's a tremendous amount. I mean, just like, just starting with hearing, the number 1 VA expense, hearing loss.

• 26:50Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 26:51Speaker 04

  Come away with, yeah, I mean, it's not just, it's not just rifle, bombs going off and rifle fire. It's steady state noise, like you're in a Blackhawk helicopter, which is like 106 decibels. And you're in, yeah, and so they, and they have hearing protection.

• 27:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck's imitating a helicopter.

• 27:05Chuck Nice?

  You like that?

• 27:05Speaker 04

  I like that, yeah, yeah. Can you do a, an M16?

• 27:09Chuck Nice?

  Uh, well, M16 is a little bit more staccato, so it's

• 27:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  M16 the rifle.

• 27:17Speaker 04

  Sounds like a duck.

• 27:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I do.

• 27:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then there's the Huey from Vietnam.

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like it was a, it had a pulse, it was a pulsing, pulsing sound. So you're saying the consistent, the persistently, being persistently bathed in high decibel sound, even beyond just whether you were near an explosion.

• 27:41Speaker 04

  Right, and, and the other problem is that when the, uh, when the noise, when things go kinetic, when there's fire, when there's like, there's no warning, you don't have time to go, oh, roll down my foam ear plug and pull my outer ear back and put that, you know, there's just not time, and they're not gonna wear that stuff all the time, because you lose your situational awareness, you can't hear somebody shouting, get down, heard somebody over there, so they, uh...

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They've tried to do that in some movies.

• 28:05Speaker 04

  Well, they have, yeah, they have, Special Operations is really cool, bionic hearing, it's so cool, it's a headset, and it attenuates the loud noises.

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It changes the, the...

• 28:15Speaker 04

  Right, so the loud stuff gets quieter, and the quiet stuff is amplified, so you're like the bionic, I was doing, it's like, didi didi, so you could hear across the room. You could hear a conversation.

• 28:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that was, no, that was the eye, what you're doing.

• 28:27Speaker 04

  Was that the eye?

• 28:28Chuck Nice?

  That was the eye.

• 28:29Speaker 04

  That was the ear?

• 28:31Chuck Nice?

  That was the ear.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Okay, I think you're right, yeah.

• 28:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, Amy Summers had the ear.

• 28:34Speaker 04

  Amy Summers, and now she's selling mattresses. I don't know, late night TV.

• 28:40Chuck Nice?

  Can you hear me now?

• 28:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so, okay, so that's interesting, so these, so...

• 28:46Speaker 04

  Anyway, yeah, but that's just, that's the biggest one, but then, um, yeah, uh, you've got a traumatic brain injury, and you've got, and ortho, orthopedic stuff, I mean, if you're in a vehicle that is designed to withstand an ID going off, I mean, you'll survive, you survive, but you, you, like, the, the bottom of it would come up and slam into the foot and the pelvis and the spine.

• 29:05Chuck Nice?

  Speaking of that...

• 29:06Speaker 04

  Just wear and tear on your body, even if you're not... Blown up.

• 29:10Chuck Nice?

  So, speaking of that, and this question is from.

• 29:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, these are veterans that have been in combat.

• 29:14Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 29:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just veterans, generic veteran.

• 29:17Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause many, most veterans have not been in combat.

• 29:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 29:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 29:21Speaker 04

  Oh, so do they have more, well, I, I, I don't know.

• 29:24Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, I mean, you know.

• 29:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We presume it's combat veteran.

• 29:26Chuck Nice?

  We would have to assume because, I mean, I mean, I'm gonna say carpal tunnel doesn't count. I've been sitting at this desk filling out these reports for weeks. My wrists are killing me.

• 29:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, I have this book called Dear, Dear America, which is a collection of letters home from Vietnam.

• 29:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was collected before they made a Vietnam memorial here in Lower Manhattan. And so, on the memorial or the, or subsets of these letters.

• 29:50Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 29:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The book is all of them.

• 29:51Chuck Nice?

  That's cool.

• 29:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and just to your point, Mary, these are letters from all manner of servicemen serving in Vietnam. And there's some talking about like their friends getting blown up in front of them and.

• 30:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and wading through the muck and mire and the mosquitoes.

• 30:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then there's another letter of someone who's in a, in a, in an office.

• 30:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In Vietnam, saying, I can't, you know, I don't wanna laugh, but it's so hot in here. It's almost ninety-four degrees and the fan doesn't work. I, these working conditions are terrible.

• 30:25Chuck Nice?

  Unbearable.

• 30:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, do you have any (bleep) idea what's going on?

• 30:29Chuck Nice?

  Around you?

• 30:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Around you?

• 30:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 30:32Speaker 04

  My typewriter keys are sticky. The humidity.

• 30:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I think it's your, your biggest problem is your biggest problem. That's really what that is.

• 30:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever your biggest problem is, that's your biggest problem.

• 30:43Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that's cool. Um.

• 30:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many, how many questions can you squeeze into this?

• 30:46Chuck Nice?

  All right, you know what?

• 30:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Try it, go.

• 30:48Chuck Nice?

  Here's the deal, I'm gonna, we're gonna go philosophical less. Olen Hausa, Olen Hausa says, um, do you think there can be, or ever has been, something that can unite humans so effectively as war? What a profound question.

• 31:04Speaker 04

  Mars mission.

• 31:05Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, look at you with the Mars mission.

• 31:08Speaker 04

  Landing a human Mars, I don't think everybody's gonna tune into that, right?

• 31:13Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 31:14Speaker 04

  Don't you think?

• 31:14Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 31:15Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so I, so I, let me agree and add to that. So, I've thought a lot about things that unite humanity.

• 31:22Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 31:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, one of them is war, which is the largest organized. Unification of humans that we experience.

• 31:29Chuck Nice?

  That immobilizes us like a good war.

• 31:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, and what odd thing is it immobilizes us against one another, but it's nonetheless mobilizing. Another one is the Olympics.

• 31:41Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And another is the World Cup.

• 31:42Chuck Nice?

  Which by the way is a metaphor for war.

• 31:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it is actually, and so too is the World Cup.

• 31:47Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 31:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except you don't end up dead at the end of it.

• 31:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the World Cup, the Olympics, and the International Space Station. When you look at the cost of the International Space Station, the number of countries involved, it is the greatest collaboration of nations outside of the waging of war.

• 32:05Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 32:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You look at just the total investment that has gone in it, basically three billion a year plus. So, yeah, yes, so I agree, landing on Mars could do that if it's done as a multinational consortium.

• 32:16Chuck Nice?

  As it's done.

• 32:17Speaker 04

  Which it would be, wouldn't it? I mean, don't you think?

• 32:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It can be, but I don't have enough confidence in the human species to think that we wouldn't do it out of competitive urges rather than cooperative urges.

• 32:27Chuck Nice?

  So you're saying that if we make it a reality show competition between countries, we're more apt to go to Mars than if we were just to wait for us to finally come together?

• 32:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My feeling is that your urge to be innovative is greater stimulated when you're in competition than when you're in cooperation. That's my feeling here.

• 32:45Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As capitalism at its best reveals. Where you want, I want your money. I don't want you to give your money to the other person.

• 32:53Chuck Nice?

  So now that competition drives me to be better than the other guy.

• 32:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is.

• 32:56Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 32:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is.

• 33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and you've been listening to our special time capsule episode. We've sent out a survey to all our fans as we do every season, and you replied with your favorite episodes, favorite guests, and favorite co-hosts.

• 33:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On this next episode of Cosmic Queries, I'm joined in studio by co-host Eugene Mirman and the founder of Skeptic Magazine and author of The Moral Arc, Michael Shermer. You asked us your questions about the intersection of science and morality, so let's take a listen at where that conversation went.

• 33:57Eugene Mirman?

  So, so here's, Josh I on Twitter asks, "If we found life on other worlds, how would that affect the way like, the way we look at life on our world?"

• 34:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so let me, let me try to shape that. So, if we find aliens and they have a different social contract with one another, are we in a position to say, "No, that is morally low, we have a higher moral fiber, here's what you should do"? Because it's kind of what Star Trek did every now and then. You know, the prime directive is don't interfere with, with the civilization, but they always did.

• 34:27Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, that'd be a dull show. "Oh, these people are awful, we should go."

• 34:33Eugene Mirman?

  "These Greek-dressed aliens are so sensual, goodbye."

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw that, when they all went togas.

• 34:39Eugene Mirman?

  I think it was like, half the episodes of the 16s.

• 34:43Speaker 05

  Togas and miniskirts.

• 34:44Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, exactly. How unusual that they've adopted the fashion of the 16s in 2000 years before that.

• 34:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, is there?

• 34:53Speaker 05

  Well, two, two things, I think.

• 34:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is this, is this moral arc something that is, not only goes beyond our species?

• 35:00Speaker 05

  I think so. I speculate-

• 35:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's audacious, you know.

• 35:02Speaker 05

  Oh, I know, but you gotta think big.

• 35:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many aliens have you talked to?

• 35:06Eugene Mirman?

  Six.

• 35:10Eugene Mirman?

  Self-identify.

• 35:12Speaker 05

  Let's see, my wife's from Germany, is that an alien?

• 35:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have to be an extraterrestrial alien.

• 35:17Speaker 05

  Oh, I see, extraterrestrial, okay, yeah. Well, so, I do speculate about this at the last chapter of, toward the end of The Moral Arc, that what if, if we encountered aliens, would they be good or evil? As you know, Stephen Hawking came out with that statement, you know, "I think the aliens will be evil, they'll conquer us, they'll be colonialists and so on." I argue just the opposite. You can't become a viable spacefaring civilization, say a type 2 civilization, and be like the Romans, or the Nazis, or, you know, some conquering imperialistic, you know, 18th century, you know, constantly a war-type country.

• 35:46Eugene Mirman?

  So you, your claim is Battlefield Earth is unrealistic.

• 35:48Speaker 05

  Yes, that's right, yeah. I think, I think really you'd have to be a peaceful, more cooperative.

• 35:53Eugene Mirman?

  You'd be more like the Star Trek world.

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, part of that argument is, if you are that expansionist, and everyone feels that way about being expansionist, and you fight wars to accomplish it, as you start colonizing planets- Your expansionist attitudes then conflict with one another.

• 36:10Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 36:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you basically self-destruct.

• 36:12Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 36:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's gotta be some sense of peace and cooperation, deep within how you function as a species, to not implode

• 36:21Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 36:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  under your own shortcomings. Of the thing that got you there in the first place.

• 36:25Eugene Mirman?

  So, so Stephen Hawking said that because advanced civilizations, when they go to a new place, generally do attack.

• 36:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:32Eugene Mirman?

  Is there examples that that isn't the case on Earth?

• 36:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On his actual knowledge of how humans treat one another.

• 36:36Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 36:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not on any real knowledge he could have treated. Not on any real knowledge he acquired from aliens.

• 36:42Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 36:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If this is a point. And I, and I'd lean towards you, Michael, on this.

• 36:45Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, when Putin took over that portion of Ukraine, that was very unusual. And it's really the first time any borders have been redrawn with any significance in decades. It's really unusual now for countries to like expand their territory and bust in and take stuff, you know.

• 37:02Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 37:03Speaker 05

  And, and that's-

• 37:03Eugene Mirman?

  It's more likely that just, there's just regular war.

• 37:05Speaker 05

  And besides, the aliens are gonna traverse the vast instances of interstellar space and come here and take our coal?

• 37:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 37:11Speaker 05

  I mean, surely their technologies have gone beyond, you know, fossil fuels by the time, you know, they get here.

• 37:16Eugene Mirman?

  But maybe they want all our pretty birds.

• 37:21Eugene Mirman?

  Martin Bad asks on Twitter, "How has our moral standing affected the pace and direction of scientific discoveries?"

• 37:30Speaker 05

  Oh, in the opposite direction. Well, I, I, I do think a more open society, where there's more liberties and freedom, freedom of speech especially, especially freedom for, you know, women to be involved and minorities and so on, all that, it just makes science more appealing and more people involved in all the different scientific enterprises. So then I think it becomes sort of a feedback loop. You know, more science and reason is good for morality, more just and open society is more conducive to science.

• 37:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But how about some of the experiments that you, you, you might say, "Why are you doing that?" For example, if you can get the DNA from a mammoth that just got thawed out from a receding glacier line, and then clone it and then create a mammoth in modern times. And I always joke that, how unfortunate for the mammoth, because he was just fine for the Ice Age, and now bring him out just in time for global war. How cruel can you be?

• 38:27Speaker 05

  Well, well, Canada.

• 38:30Eugene Mirman?

  You get, you leave them in Canada?

• 38:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:32Eugene Mirman?

  Is that what you're suggesting?

• 38:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you, you.

• 38:34Speaker 05

  There's plenty of room up there.

• 38:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You plunk them down at the right latitude.

• 38:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good answer.

• 38:39Eugene Mirman?

  Maybe you put them all at the top of Everest. I bet it's quite cold.

• 38:42Speaker 05

  Siberia, there's plenty of space up there.

• 38:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good answer. I had not thought of that. Okay, that's my first one. Because they couldn't get there before because they would ultimately be broken off.

• 38:50Eugene Mirman?

  Now we can drop them out of airplanes.

• 38:52Speaker 05

  I mean, the Canadian population is decreasing, as is the Russian population, so more mammoths.

• 38:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that's good. Another one is, I was speaking with, with Richard Dawkins, and he said something that, while I agreed with it, I didn't want to agree with it. He said, if we have the power of cloning from any genetic sequence, then he would be interested in creating the common ancestor between us and chimpanzees.

• 39:17Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm. I think that would be.

• 39:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you did that, it means a chimp could mate with that as well as humans.

• 39:23Eugene Mirman?

  That would be so much fun.

• 39:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 39:25Eugene Mirman?

  I can only imagine how popular on the internet that would become.

• 39:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm just saying, when he said that, it was like, wha- why would you?

• 39:33Eugene Mirman?

  Right. It would be under specific conditions.

• 39:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so is that morality, or is that just ethics?

• 39:38Speaker 05

  Okay, there would be a moral question.

• 39:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or is it ethics?

• 39:41Speaker 05

  That is, that is, do they have rights? So, I, I think in order to allow that ethically, we would have to grant the offspring.

• 39:48Eugene Mirman?

  Right. And then it would have to choose who it mated with.

• 39:51Speaker 05

  Right, right. You know, there was a, there was a, there was a, a, a novel, a French novel in 1950s called You Shall Know Them, by an author named Ver Chors, V-E-R-C-O-R-S. It, it, and the story opens with this scientist who kills his son, or something like, yeah, kills his son. And then, you know, he calls the police, I murdered my son, the police show up, and he's basically mated with a female chimp and had an offspring and killed it. And now he's on trial. For, for what? For murdering what? Is it, is it a human, or is it a, okay. So that, that, that got into the charac- you know, what are the characteristics of a human? This is back in the day, you know, are chimps humans, and do they have tools, language, reason? Um, you know, that kind of thing.

• 40:33Speaker 05

  But, you know, as, as, um, as Jeremy Bentham pointed out, as I, I talk about in The Moral Arc, that it isn't can they reason, or can they talk, can they feel and suffer? So always our moral consideration for other animals, including possible hybrids or a clone would be, you know, are they gonna suffer by us bringing them into existence? If they have a good life, then why not?

• 40:53Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 40:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so then we can diversify the very species that we ever considered to be human.

• 40:59Speaker 05

  I mean, if we explore space...

• 41:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'd be like X-Men, if you have other kinds of...

• 41:03Eugene Mirman?

  That would be really fun. And nothing ever goes wrong in the X-Men universe, so I would like more of that.

• 41:11Eugene Mirman?

  Wait, so would this creature be able to...

• 41:13Speaker 05

  He has a point.

• 41:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he's got a good point. I retract, I retract it.

• 41:16Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, would it be able to learn and speak and sort of, it'd be...

• 41:19Speaker 05

  Well, that's what, I mean, what Richard is after there is, well, what can they do? Do they have language or not?

• 41:25Eugene Mirman?

  Can they throw parties?

• 41:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the morality is not whether you did that experiment, the morality is, the product of that experiment needs to be reckoned as someone who is a part of the citizenry of the system.

• 41:39Eugene Mirman?

  Right, let's give him a seat in the House of Representatives. I think that would be a reasonable and fair thing to do.

• 41:44Speaker 05

  They may be a little smarter than the current...

• 41:46Eugene Mirman?

  They might.

• 41:47Speaker 05

  But same thing with the mammoths, I mean, we shouldn't bring them back if we don't have any place to put them. They can't live a normal life.

• 41:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 41:53Eugene Mirman?

  Well, we can hunt them.

• 41:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we're winding down our time capsule show here on StarTalk, but first, let's remember one of your favorite episodes. Comedian Eliza Schlesinger joined us as my co-host when she reached into our galactic grab bag of cosmic queries and we answered some of your fan questions.

• 42:15Speaker 06

  You know how long I've spent staring at the cosmos, wondering where my Uber is? I've spent a lot of time in space.

• 42:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That brings to mind, if space travel becomes a thing, we would need Uber spacecraft.

• 42:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 42:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be interesting.

• 42:29Speaker 06

  College kids all over the place, just like, "I got a great way to make some money."

• 42:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep.

• 42:33Speaker 06

  And there's no collisions.

• 42:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, actually, it's much harder to collide if you're moving in three dimensions than if you're only moving in two.

• 42:40Speaker 06

  I say this all the time. Say this all the time.

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a profound fact. So, think about traffic jams. You're in a traffic jam because you're on a road and you can't go over or-

• 42:50Speaker 06

  A single plane.

• 42:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not only in your single plane, on a road, you're on a one dimensional path.

• 42:54Speaker 06

  Right.

• 42:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? Typically, there's more than one lane, though. Regardless, if you're stuck in traffic, all you have to do is go above or below. Introduce another dimension, you can pass all the traffic like this.

• 43:03Speaker 06

  And that's why we need space cars.

• 43:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Space cars.

• 43:05Speaker 06

  In this future, they always have them going through buildings.

• 43:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know. That was my future that we tried to come up with and failed.

• 43:11Speaker 06

  Like, oh, good. Like, so the fifth element was your idea? All those cabs and stuff?

• 43:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Flying cars. We, you know, we've been dreaming of flying cars since the 1950s.

• 43:17Speaker 06

  I know. And it will be a thing, and it's gonna be terrible.

• 43:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But a flying car is no different from having a lot of bridges and tunnels.

• 43:23Speaker 06

  Right.

• 43:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It allows you to go above and below.

• 43:26Speaker 06

  It's a lot different in that there's nothing holding you to where you are. You've got a bridge, you have to stay on that bridge. A flying car is just like, let's just be-

• 43:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  However, if the, if the engine breaks of a flying car, you are a falling brick.

• 43:36Speaker 06

  True.

• 43:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the difference between being on a bridge or in a tunnel.

• 43:39Speaker 06

  Right. Okay, so there's pros and cons. We'll say this-

• 43:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in fact, I think we do have flying cars, they're called helicopters.

• 43:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, but-

• 43:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're really noisy.

• 43:45Speaker 06

  Helicopter is so expensive. Guys, that's how I got here.

• 43:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 43:49Speaker 06

  I've actually had that thought. I'm like, is there a way to get a helicopter? And I feel like these statistics for helicopters, I feel like they crash a lot.

• 43:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, because when the motor goes out, it's, you know, in a plane, if the engines die, it's a glider.

• 44:01Speaker 06

  For, yeah.

• 44:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And a helicopter, if the engines die-

• 44:03Speaker 06

  Straight down.

• 44:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It goes straight down.

• 44:04Speaker 06

  Shouldn't be an option, that the engines die. Like, that just shouldn't be an option.

• 44:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shit happens, right?

• 44:09Speaker 06

  Right? So they're gonna have to have, like, uh, like meteoroid insurance, or like asteroid insurance.

• 44:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, if you, if you're flying through space and you get hit by one, yeah, that-

• 44:17Speaker 06

  Like farmers, like, we better cover that.

• 44:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be one, that'd be, I hadn't thought about that, but yeah, yeah, you could be hit by a micrometeorite going five miles per second. That would ruin your day.

• 44:25Speaker 06

  Yeah. Debris from, like, our last space shuttles?

• 44:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That happens too.

• 44:28Speaker 06

  Engine part. It's a daisy. Okay, fair enough.

• 44:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what do you have?

• 44:32Speaker 06

  Okay, so do, do I do the, uh, Patreon page?

• 44:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's your first time doing this. I hope it's not your, I hope it's not your last time.

• 44:38Speaker 06

  I hope it's not my last as well.

• 44:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we'll be the, the, we'll judge that.

• 44:42Speaker 06

  We'll be the judge of that. That's why I gave you the doe eyes, trying to flirt my way, which has not gotten me far. Okay?

• 44:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, go for it.

• 44:48Speaker 06

  These first?

• 44:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, so what happens, we have our, our- Patreon supporters.

• 44:52Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 44:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, one of the guarantees they get is if they ask a question for Cosmic Queries, then we get to ask their question first.

• 44:58Speaker 06

  Okay, so I'm gonna ask this one because there was so, I'm gonna read it with the emphasis and the enthusiasm and the fervor that I feel they wrote this with.

• 45:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good, go for it. Feel, feel them.

• 45:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, also I'm thinking this person's also a fellow Jew. You're not Jewish, I am. Okay, here we go. Uh, from Michael Cohen in Augusta, Georgia. Which is weird that there's a Jew there. Hello, Dr. Tyson! This question burns in my mind. I asked NASA and wasn't satisfied with their answer.

• 45:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 45:25Speaker 06

  If light can't escape a black hole, then doesn't that mean that the escape velocity of a black hole beyond the event horizon exceeds the speed of light itself? Could black holes be the exception to the speed of light as we know it? Thank you! At Cosmic Cohen.

• 45:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, that was, that was beautiful.

• 45:42Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 45:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was totally, you embodied whoever that Cohen person is.

• 45:46Speaker 06

  I omitted the fact that you missed use "then" instead of "then." No big deal.

• 45:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did I say "then"?

• 45:50Speaker 06

  Oh no, he did.

• 45:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 45:51Speaker 06

  Pointing out the one part that I understand, which is literature.

• 45:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Be nice, he's the one Jew in Augusta, Georgia.

• 45:56Speaker 06

  And represent. Okay, that was the question about.

• 45:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, so it's, uh, the question is stated accurately. There are two ways to think about the black hole. One of them is that beyond, inside the event horizon, the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. That's kind of a classical way to think about it. But what has actually happened is the spacetime curvature has basically closed in on itself. There is no path out of the black hole that you can take, no matter what. And so, not even a beam of light can get out. So, that is all true. You can't get out. By the way, just because the speed of light required, just because to get out of a black hole requires you travel faster than light, doesn't mean that you are. And so.

• 46:38Speaker 06

  Doesn't mean you can't.

• 46:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, doesn't mean you can. Right, right, right. So, we're all cool. Relativity is fine.

• 46:42Speaker 06

  It's really hypothetical, because you physically can't do it.

• 46:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 46:46Speaker 06

  So it's all in theory.

• 46:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There is no known law of physics or observation that would enable you to escape a black hole.

• 46:51Speaker 06

  Not even if you take the subway.

• 46:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. So, so, yeah, yeah. So, I'm, I'm disappointed that they couldn't get a good answer from NASA. I wonder where they asked.

• 46:59Speaker 06

  I feel like NASA was like, "Please stop tweeting at us." Like, "The Russians are hot on our tail. We've got bigger things to deal with." Please stop. Here's a mug and a hat.

• 47:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How did you know that?

• 47:08Speaker 06

  Because they're always hot on our tail. Haven't you been to the movies? Okay. Would you like a real question?

• 47:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, anything. Yeah, give me whatever you got.

• 47:15Speaker 06

  Okay. Um, this one's, is The Martian based on a true story? I'm just kidding. That's fine. Uh, okay. This one's a good one.

• 47:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not authorized to answer that question.

• 47:25Speaker 06

  I saw that movie and I was like, I guarantee if I tweet this, people will be like, oh my God, I thought so. I read the book. All right. This is from Jeff Gerchen. Uh, at Jeff Gerchen. Does space smell?

• 47:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, yeah. So I, I once tweeted an answer to that question. So somebody is not a follower.

• 47:43Speaker 06

  So you know what? Go back and look it up. Because you're lazy and there's no lazy in space. There's no lays in space.

• 47:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's what happens. Uh, smell is a chemical phenomenon and it involves molecules interacting with your, your, your olfactory glands and in the vacuum of space where there are insufficient molecules to trigger that. No, you're not smelling a damn thing.

• 48:05Speaker 06

  So it has to do with the molecules outside and inside. It's not just.

• 48:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The molecules are outside, they come inside and then you have smell what was outside, right? You're inhaling. So now here's a way to smell something. If you face the sun and the sun starts singeing your, your, your skin on your face, then you'll, then it'll burn and then you'll smell the burning flesh.

• 48:27Speaker 06

  How long are you facing the sun though?

• 48:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um.

• 48:29Speaker 06

  And how close? Are you saying?

• 48:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're close enough and you make the, yeah, it'll, you'll, you'll get singed and you'll smell, you'll smell the, the singed outer skin layers.

• 48:39Speaker 06

  That's horrific.

• 48:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, you want to smell something in space. That's how you smell something. You've been listening to Startalk Radio and I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Join us next time when we kick off a brand new season eight with more science, more comedy and more pop culture. Thanks for being with us all year. That's all for now. And as always, I bid you to keep looking up.