Science and the Search for the Truth, with Bill Nye

What’s the best way to stay scientifically literate in a world of “alternative facts”? Bill Nye, co-host Chuck Nice, and The Atlantic’s senior editor, Ross Andersen are here to help your science skills stay sharp and offer ways to seek out the truth. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/

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.

• 0:21Bill Nye?

  Welcome to StarTalk All-Stars. I'm your All-Star host of this evening, Bill Nye. I'm joined once again by my comedic, brilliant, insightful co-host, the very funny as well as funny-looking Chuck Nice. Yes. Thanks for being here again today Chuck.

• 0:38Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 0:39Bill Nye?

  Now today Chuck, it may shock you to learn that on StarTalk we're going to talk about science.

• 0:44Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 0:45Bill Nye?

  Wait, there's more. We're going to talk about science literacy and the importance of seeking knowledge and understanding of science writ large in all its manifestations.

• 0:56Chuck Nice?

  I don't understand what you're talking about.

• 0:58Bill Nye?

  I'm talking about we're in a world where we have alternative facts. Apparently that's like a thing now. And to help us out, we have Ross Anderson. Ross is a senior editor at The Atlantic where he oversees the science, technology, and health sections. So Ross, thank you for coming and being part of StarTalk All-Stars. This is great.

• 1:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. Big fan of the show.

• 1:22Bill Nye?

  Uh, great. Uh, wow, that's great. Let me ask you this. So for me, as a human here living, a voter and taxpayer and so on, we have a real problem of people not embracing science the way we once did here in the United States. Do you have any, like, why is that? What's happened?

• 1:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, well first I'd want to ask you to push back. When you say "the way they once did," what baseline are you kind of referring to there?

• 1:51Bill Nye?

  When I was growing up...

• 1:52Speaker 03

  When was peak science?

• 1:53Bill Nye?

  Well, when I was growing up, in the 1960s... There was this amazing optimism about the future and there was this, I felt, of course I was a kid, felt this general belief that the process of science would enable you to put people on the moon, to have freeways connecting everyone in the United States, to have phone calls with video, which we got 50 years later. And these things would all be, and we'd feed everybody and we'd cause the desert to bloom by irrigating it on enormous scales with things like the California Aqueduct and Hoover Dam and Ross Dam and Grand Coulee Dam. And we did, we did all these things.

• 2:33Bill Nye?

  And that optimism, it seems to me, it feels to me, as though it's tied to a denial of science, where you now have people who are against vaccinations, you have people who don't trust in agriculture and genetically modified foods, and you have, the big thing that's going to affect everybody on earth is the denial of climate change. Now, is my perception incorrect? Am I misperceived? Do we have statistics to back up my claim?

• 3:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think there's something really interesting. I think there's a lot of things going on there. So, I do think that broadly, people are still quite optimistic about the role of science and technology and innovation in their lives and the ability for all of those fields, if they can be called fields, to make the world better. However, as you point out, when it comes to vaccines or when it comes to climate change, people seem to, suddenly, they're not taking a real kind of objective look at the facts. They seem to be, have made those positions more about identity. They've been politicized.

• 3:40Bill Nye?

  And when you say "identity," what do you mean? I am a dorky white guy from the east, so therefore I feel this way?

• 3:49Speaker 03

  It may be that, so when I, when someone asks, when a pollster asks me, let's say I don't believe in climate change, when a person asks me about my beliefs about climate change, I'm not, I don't want to speak for anyone, but it might be that I'm not going immediately to some sort of objective reading about the earth's atmosphere, and instead I'm thinking, I'm going to authority figures within a particular political movement that I ascribe to.

• 4:18Bill Nye?

  So you're expert in your, if you are a climate denial denier in this example, your expert is not a scientist, or is not the scientific community, your expert is your leader, your political leader.

• 4:31Speaker 03

  Well, I want to go to something that you said, when you said the 1960s, that there was this optimism, I wonder if there was a point of divergence where, at that point, it was more or less true that short-term business interests were broadly compatible with science. I mean, I think there's some exceptions when it comes to kind of the early Clean Air Act stuff, for instance. And now we're at a point, at least with the fossil fuel industry, where there's a real tension between sort of taking a real candid look at climate science and, you know, the stock price of ExxonMobil, for instance.

• 5:08Bill Nye?

  So people tie themselves to that, to the leaders, to the way of life of extracting fossil fuels rather than to the science? Unpack that, as we say in the business.

• 5:22Speaker 03

  Sure. Yeah, I think that political leaders make that calculus, and then there's all kinds of things that happen where, you know, political media on the right, for instance, becomes sort of driven to seek out any scrap of information that could help you sustain a climate denial position, and to magnify that, and to not say, report straight on the IPCC report or something like that.

• 5:52Bill Nye?

  Cherry picking data is an old problem.

• 5:54Chuck Nice?

  But isn't that also due to the fact that these political leaders are, um, how can I put it without? I don't want to be indelicate. Uh, aren't they in the pocket of, uh, of, of big oil? Let's be honest. So when you have, uh, when you have a convention where, uh, it's a political convention and on the floor of that political convention, people are chanting, "Drill, baby, drill." Those people don't have any, uh, inherent benefit from

• 6:25Bill Nye?

  Yeah, they do.

• 6:26Chuck Nice?

  From going drill, baby, drill. It's the political leaders that are being paid off by.

• 6:29Bill Nye?

  If you're from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, your economy depends on extraction, depends on oil and gas.

• 6:36Chuck Nice?

  Yes, but your economy can also depend, and I don't mind those people. Don't get me wrong.

• 6:40Bill Nye?

  No, he's some of his best friends.

• 6:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I, listen, I, yes. But no, I understand when you, uh, don't believe something because it hits you in the pocket. That, I'm cool with that. Okay. Because guess what? You, you're, you're feeding your family and so you say, "I don't want to hear it because I gotta put food on the table." Perfectly understandable to me. There are not enough of those people to drive the narrative. That's what I'm saying. So all the other people that join with them, they do it because of a political identity that is tied to the people who have a financial tie to the issue.

• 7:20Bill Nye?

  So do you agree with that, uh, Ross?

• 7:22Speaker 03

  So one supporting point, I think, for, uh, for Chuck's point is that big oil is to the left of, uh, kind of the Republican mainstream voter when it comes to climate change. You saw that in the Rex Tillerson hearing, right?

• 7:36Bill Nye?

  Um, it would you have- Tell us what he means. So-

• 7:39Speaker 03

  Oil executives are, are, are mostly on board with climate science to the extent that they, they kind of admit that human caused climate change is a real thing. Um, their preferred policy objectives for dealing with it might be different. They tend to kind of uniformly, uh, favor a carbon tax, uh, as opposed to some of the other things that, you know, more radical, uh, emissions cutting.

• 8:00Bill Nye?

  So what's a carbon tax? Tell us about a carbon tax.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  Carbon tax is that you you basically slap a tax on any carbon emission. So that you know, you're familiar with this idea of an externality?

• 8:12Bill Nye?

  Love the externality, yes.

• 8:14Speaker 03

  Love the externality, okay.

• 8:16Bill Nye?

  Yes. This is in economics, when you pass the price of whatever you're producing on to somebody else. You pollute the river and people downstream have to pay for it.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  Yes, so carbon emissions right now are a free externality. Um, if you run a coal plant, for the most part, you could just steam carbon into the air and and it's free. Uh, and so a carbon tax would would tax that activity.

• 8:42Bill Nye?

  And oil executives are favor this, or Ross Tyson favors this? Rex Tyson favors it?

• 8:48Speaker 03

  You know, it's, uh, they say that, yeah, I mean, we should take them at their word, right? Yes, uh, they they favor a carbon tax. How stiff a carbon tax, um, it might be quite a light carbon tax that they favor. Uh, it might be that this is sort of the best dawling tactic they've identified.

• 9:03Bill Nye?

  Yeah, I I think that's more likely. Then Chuck, but then to Chuck's point, which I think you're about to address, Ross, was people get on board with this even though they're not invested in it.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 9:14Bill Nye?

  Get on board with this point of view, rather, even though they're not invested in it.

• 9:17Speaker 03

  But the more interesting thing, I think, is Chuck's point, is that you have people for whom their bottom line actually is not affected by policy positions on climate change at all. And it is only because they have either grown up within or come to identify with a political movement that takes climate denial as sort of one of its signature badges. Um, that's why they oppose climate change.

• 9:43Bill Nye?

  So here we are, let's say we're on a science-based show, a science show that claims to embrace science literacy. How would we change the minds of these climate deniers? And it's important because, uh, the more carbon we put in the air, the more people are going to be affected, the more sea levels are going to rise, and more weather patterns are going to change, and it's all going to happen faster than it's ever happened, and so on. How do we change the minds of people? Is it possible?

• 10:09Speaker 03

  Well, I've got a three-point plan.

• 10:10Bill Nye?

  Oh, cool.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  Just kidding, just kidding, just kidding, I don't know. I don't know, it's a hard problem.

• 10:16Bill Nye?

  Well, here's what I, here's my current thinking.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  I'm glad you had me on.

• 10:18Bill Nye?

  Here's my current thinking is this so-called cognitive dissonance, where you have A worldview that's incompatible with what you're seeing. So you have this troubling situation in your brain. And you come up with a rationalization. And the more evidence that contradicts your worldview, the harder you rationalize it. You double down on your denial. And cognitive dissonance, the classics when I was in college was if you see, if one group sees the movie for free, they, the movie's okay. If another group pays money for the same movie, they tend to like it more because they're more invested in it. And then there are gradients, like people who paid less for the movie than more than the movie.

• 11:02Bill Nye?

  And so when, the more you're invested in denying climate change, the harder you deny it to keep from having this discord, this dissonance in your, the front of your brain. Singular, um, there's a, there's a region of the brain that has conflict. The conflict region.

• 11:22Speaker 03

  I do wonder, and this is, this is a strategy that, that I think has been tried to some extent implicitly, but you know, there are certain areas of science that do seem to be bipartisan, that you know, people do seem to take kind of a universal pride and say, uh, the images generated by the Hubble Space Telescope.

• 11:41Bill Nye?

  Rockets.

• 11:42Speaker 03

  Um, and, and quite a patriotic pride, right? Or rockets, or right, the Apollo missions.

• 11:46Bill Nye?

  Well, but the Hubble Space Telescope, perfect.

• 11:48Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah. And so I wonder if there's a way of integrating climate science or all kinds of science, you know, it's drilling down on the, you know, the fact that the, uh, the empirical scientific method is what gets you something like a Hubble Space Telescope. You know, that is this kind of bedrock edifice. And that's also sort of telling us this other thing over here about climate change or vaccine science, or whatever it is. Um, it's not a very good three-point plan, but it, it's, it might be a direction.

• 12:17Bill Nye?

  Well, uh, so we say all the time, space exploration, because we're on StarTalk. Space exploration brings out the best in us. And this is where you find common ground. You talk about partisanship. The example I give, examples I give everybody are Adam Schiff from bleeding heart, raving blue state California. And John Culberson from red state double down, the safest place is the state Capitol building because everybody's carrying a weapon. Uh, Culberson, those two guys agree like nobody's business on exploration of Europa, of all things, a moon of Jupiter. You gotta send a huge rocket out there and invest for years to get the mission pulled off. That's where they find common ground.

• 13:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:02Bill Nye?

  Now Culberson generally writ large is a climate change skeptic, extreme skeptic, what I would call a denier. Schiff is embraced, very concerned about it. So where do we get these two people together? Would they both have these worldviews that are just incompatible?

• 13:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I wonder if it is in, you know, the science of Venus or the science of Mars, um, where you say, "Look, the science that makes these very missions possible, you could not go to Europa unless you had a sophisticated understanding of how a planet works," right?

• 13:33Bill Nye?

  Well, there's more to it than that, or less to it than that. People, no, and the other guy's Lamar Smith from Texas. These guys have, he's got a picture from Hubble on his wall, a huge, very sharp, high-resolution color picture taken by the Hubble telescope of a star field, deep space. And yet he's a climate denier. This is surprising to us. So there's something, some, you mentioned the word identity, there's something visceral with these guys that, um, they're not, to us, on my side of it, or maybe Chuck, Dr. Nice's side of it, uh, they're not embracing the same science that, that we are.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  Well, since there's a new sort of nationalist streak in conservative politics, one wonders if, um, if the United States were to pay a severe cost in status that was legible to someone like Lamar Smith, or even just a, a, a everyday conservative voter, um, would that be an important signal? Because of our pulling out of Paris, for instance. Let's say we pull out of Paris and we're sort of the laughing stock of the world and, um, China emerges as this sort of, you know, ultra-responsible new leader of the world order. Um, you wonder if people would sort of double down in backlash, it's probably what would be more likely to happen. But there's, there's one scenario where people would kind of register that and think about, "Wow, it's a weird thing for the US."

• 14:59Speaker 03

  Not to be at kind of the idealist bleeding edge on a scientific issue.

• 15:03Chuck Nice?

  I got news for you. We are already the laughing stock of the world. So it's a little late for that.

• 15:09Bill Nye?

  Well, I mean, I do have, but you guys, just anecdotally, I have friends in Denmark, Australia, and Britain, that are just like, what are, and Japan. And what are you guys doing? They're asking, what do you, what's up with this? And um.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  But all those countries, with the possible exception of Japan, have their own kind of quite strident nationalist, right wing movements on the rise.

• 15:35Bill Nye?

  So, uh, what we want to do is bring people together. I believe we want to bring people together and address climate change in a big picture way. So if you think it's their identity, they want to be part of a movement, is there a way to influence that movement? And you had a cool idea there, Ross, where we're gonna, we're make it a national thing, a nationalist thing, that we're falling behind the rest of the world if we don't do, blank. Take it. What do we do, Mr. Edison?

• 16:03Speaker 03

  Well, here's an idea. We, uh, I'm really interested to see what NASA's promotional campaign for the James Webb Space Telescope looks like as we come closer to launch. Um, and I do wonder, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's tough to see something like this happening in the next few years, but I do wonder if there is a way to integrate planetary science or, uh, just, you know, uh, the larger NASA mission, which obviously is, as both of you know, uh, has Earth science is a very high priority, at least for the moment, um, into the publicity in the run up to that march. I have a feeling that the James Webb Space Telescope is something that people are going to be very proud of, just like they were proud of Curiosity, and just like they were proud of the Hubble Space Telescope.

• 16:44Bill Nye?

  And New Horizons, New Horizons.

• 16:46Speaker 03

  New Horizons, that's right, that's right.

• 16:48Chuck Nice?

  I think what we should do is, uh, find a way to blame, uh, Mexicans, because that really seems to resonate with people.

• 16:57Bill Nye?

  Uh, I think you're being ironic, Chuck.

• 16:59Chuck Nice?

  No, I, I think if you just say, don't let Mexico, they're stealing all of our weather. Don't let Mexico steal our weather.

• 17:06Bill Nye?

  By the way.

• 17:07Chuck Nice?

  Believe in climate.

• 17:08Bill Nye?

  The astronomical. Congress was in Guadalajara this year, which is being, the Mexican people are very proud. It's the Silicon Valley of-

• 17:15Chuck Nice?

  It's already happening. It's already happening!

• 17:18Speaker 03

  Well, maybe, maybe it'll have like Bay Area style weather in Canada before not too long and we can kind of make America cool again.

• 17:25Bill Nye?

  Oh boy.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  Bitch.

• 17:27Bill Nye?

  But this is a big problem that I really want to figure out, how do we get people to work together on this? And I guess, it's just, everybody doubles down. Is not is to, is not is to, but-

• 17:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:39Bill Nye?

  It has something not to do with science. It is, uh, it's some other human nature thing. And so, where do we, what do we do next Chuck? I know you're cynical, bitter, miserable guy.

• 17:52Chuck Nice?

  I'm a cynical, bitter, miserable guy, mostly because I'm a comic and that's, you know, really what we are.

• 17:57Bill Nye?

  And that's why you love the podcast.

• 17:59Chuck Nice?

  That's exactly.

• 18:00Bill Nye?

  So he's just, it's limitless material.

• 18:02Chuck Nice?

  And let me tell you, uh, listen, he's the joke writer in chief and I for one, uh, do appreciate that.

• 18:07Bill Nye?

  Well, thanks for your appreciation Chuck. This is StarTalk All-Star Edition and we'll be back right after this with Ross Anderson from The Atlantic. Welcome back to StarTalk All-Stars. We've been talking about scientific literacy and science education and climate denial-ism with, uh, with Ross Anderson from The Atlantic and I've been your host Bill Nye, here guest hosting on my favorite podcast, The Ones with Chuck Nice.

• 18:44Chuck Nice?

  Ah, there we go.

• 18:45Bill Nye?

  Who's my co-host here in the studio.

• 18:47Chuck Nice?

  Hey.

• 18:48Bill Nye?

  And Ross Anderson is our guest and he is a senior editor at The Atlantic. But before we get to, uh, before we get to the next thing-

• 18:58Chuck Nice?

  Which are, which will be Cosmic Queries.

• 18:59Bill Nye?

  Yes. You have a new show, Playing with Science, Chuck.

• 19:03Chuck Nice?

  Playing with Science. It's, uh, it's a StarTalk branded show where, um-

• 19:07Bill Nye?

  Branded, that's hip. That's, that's what we say in the 20, the 20 pluses.

• 19:11Chuck Nice?

  That's right. So, uh, it's a, it's a show where we take iconic sports plays and, uh, we-

• 19:17Bill Nye?

  Iconic sports plays.

• 19:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so think of like, uh, the- Immaculate reception, right?

• 19:20Bill Nye?

  This is thirty years ago.

• 19:22Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it is.

• 19:22Bill Nye?

  A lot of football.

• 19:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, a little football thing and we'll break down.

• 19:25Bill Nye?

  There's been a lot of football since then.

• 19:27Chuck Nice?

  And you know what? We're gonna get to all of that too.

• 19:29Bill Nye?

  The Fog Bowl. The Fog, where it was foggy one day.

• 19:32Chuck Nice?

  The Fog Bowl, yeah.

• 19:33Bill Nye?

  Fog Bowl.

• 19:34Chuck Nice?

  So, and you know what? That's a good idea for a show as a matter of.

• 19:36Bill Nye?

  What about the kinetic energy of a modern player?

• 19:38Chuck Nice?

  There you go. How about that? So, all of these things, you're really good at this. This is all the things that we talk about on the show.

• 19:44Bill Nye?

  The thing that amazes me about modern football players, professional players is how fast they are.

• 19:49Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so that's a show that we're doing.

• 19:51Bill Nye?

  When I was a kid, they were fast and tough and took a lot of punishment, but they go so, they run so much faster and the money's in it and.

• 19:58Chuck Nice?

  So, we actually, we actually explore that in a show where we talk about the science of sports nutrition and strength and conditioning as well as player tracking through, um, um, artificial intelligence that they use. So, um, we have like, uh, uh, we're gonna be talking to O C U Manura, San Antonio Holmes. We spoke to Glenn Tobias of the New York Jets and the, uh, Boston Red Sox, who is a nutritionist, a sports nutritionist, um, and, uh.

• 20:26Bill Nye?

  It's a fabulous show.

• 20:27Chuck Nice?

  It really is, so.

• 20:28Bill Nye?

  With that said.

• 20:29Chuck Nice?

  As a matter of fact, and we'd love to have you on to break down some of the science behind it.

• 20:34Bill Nye?

  This has been a lovely digression.

• 20:35Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 20:36Bill Nye?

  Ross Anderson, the Atlanta, senior editor at The Atlantic is here and it's time for Cosmic Queries.

• 20:42Chuck Nice?

  It is. Ross, I apologize.

• 20:43Speaker 03

  I just registered that Chuck did not invite me onto the show also.

• 20:46Bill Nye?

  Well, you can show us your sports chops.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  All right, yeah, I'm gonna work in sports metaphors for the rest of the show.

• 20:52Bill Nye?

  Why are we, why do we have inter-city rivalries? What human nature thing is that?

• 20:57Speaker 03

  I, I mean, it seems like a pretty obvious tribalism thing, right?

• 21:02Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  I feel like in, in my life, I've most understood tribalism when, you know, watching like a Laker game winner or something like that.

• 21:10Chuck Nice?

  It's, it's the safest gang war you can ever have.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:14Chuck Nice?

  Everybody lines up when they're behind their team, you got your colors and everything like that, and then they can do battle and you can be a part of it vicariously. It's wonderful.

• 21:24Bill Nye?

  Imagine that if I were down on that field, you know? I could hit that pitch. I could catch that. Sure, I could outrun that guy, that major league athlete. Sure, I could. I could kick that field goal.

• 21:36Chuck Nice?

  It's amazing, and that's-

• 21:37Bill Nye?

  And make that putt? You think that's hard?

• 21:39Chuck Nice?

  And listen, that's the great thing about it. It's like, you can be a fat guy on the couch, and when your team wins a championship, you can go, "We won."

• 21:47Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 21:47Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 21:48Bill Nye?

  Let's query, so Ross, you're gonna be on, telling us about tribalism.

• 21:52Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  I'm excited.

• 21:53Bill Nye?

  Yes, but first, a cosmic query, take it Chuck.

• 21:56Chuck Nice?

  Cosmic queries, let's get into it, and we always start with a Patreon patron, and so let's go with-

• 22:01Bill Nye?

  They pay to be on.

• 22:02Chuck Nice?

  And absolutely, so-

• 22:03Bill Nye?

  It all works here.

• 22:04Chuck Nice?

  We can be bought. We can be bought, much like your politicians, people. Okay.

• 22:10Bill Nye?

  You are just a miserable man today. Lead on, lead on.

• 22:14Chuck Nice?

  What's wrong with me? Okay, here we go. Off of Vidershen, Vidershen says, "How should I engage people in civil discussion about science if they are quick to dismiss most science based on their own biases or religious background?" So, you know, we were talking about that earlier, but he's broadening it out from climate denial to just general science, and there's a lot of general science that is rejected by people for various reasons.

• 22:46Bill Nye?

  Ross, why?

• 22:49Chuck Nice?

  Yes, Ross, why do people think that the Earth is 6,000 years old?

• 22:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's tough when, um, when you do see that signal in any kind of conversation where someone is really committed to having a very literal reading of the cosmology of a Bronze Age text, that's a tough situation to be in. One that I've found, um, some success with recently is going right at the flood story, um, by looking at, hey, you actually don't see genetic bottlenecks, um, when you look at the lineage of every single animal on Earth to two individuals.

• 23:23Bill Nye?

  Uh, no, the people, the deniers, I always spent a lot of time with those guys, you know, in Kentucky. They claim that they, they show calculations where- All dogs became wolves, became, this is all one, there's plenty of time, 6,000 years is plenty of time in their view.

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, the other one though, that I think is really good for the flood story is just pointing to the quite natural scientific explanation for why there are flood myths dispersed, you know, across cultures all across the earth. And that's because we had the end of an ice age. And so the seas rose, right? And you had all these kind of coastal cities and civilizations that were swamped. And that has a real nice hook in the climate change, doesn't it?

• 24:06Bill Nye?

  Oh, yeah. That's really gonna win hearts and

• 24:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:12Bill Nye?

  There's a climate change 10,000 years ago and that's why everybody, actually it's very cool to me. I mean, cool in a, in an intellectual way. Also kind of troubling is sea levels rise on our coastal cities today. But we gotta find common ground.

• 24:29Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's move on to Tim Shaw, who says this. "I'm worried that our progress will be dangerously slow in a world where alternate facts are something real and not simply a joke." Um, hey, way to go, Tim. Uh, "How do you go about changing someone's mind who is at a level of debating clear facts? Is it worth it to try or better to just focus on advancements of science while ignoring them?" So, Ross, how do you deal? When alternate facts become an actual consideration? How do you talk to someone? I mean, seriously?

• 25:09Speaker 03

  Is this like Uncle Bob at Thanksgiving that we're talking about? Or, or this is like a prospective voter? What do we think?

• 25:16Chuck Nice?

  Well, you know, I think both. I mean, Uncle Bob is one thing, but then when you talk about a prospective voter, you talk about how do you get true information to somebody who is, who can consume it and know the difference? So, you know, uh, that's a, that's a really, that's a problem.

• 25:34Bill Nye?

  Well, here's what happened, you guys. Enough people embraced a worldview that we have an administration that has alternative facts now.

• 25:43Bill Nye?

  So we're not reaching, we, they, it is not reaching somebody. And Ross, do you know how we reach them? Come on, man. You're a big time journalist.

• 25:53Speaker 03

  Am I? No one's ever called me that.

• 25:55Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna say, the problem, Ross, though, is that you are a journalist and you are probably the most dishonest person in the world.

• 26:04Speaker 03

  That's right. And according to Steve Bannon, I should shut my mouth right away. So I can't answer this question, actually. No, I do think that it, you know, in the years to come, I'm, obviously, in the line of work I'm in, I really want to stay open-minded and really try to persuade people of these extraordinary achievements that science has produced. But at a certain point, look, we've all been wrapped in those conversations, whether it's with family members or people you meet elsewhere, where you're just not, there's not a common body of evidence, even, you know, that any source that you bring up, people are willing to discredit or question your motives, or whatever it is. And in that

• 26:48Speaker 03

  case, it might be that we sort of have to, sadly, kind of hunker down and lean into the culture of science where it exists. And fortunately for us, not, the culture, the scientific achievement, the levers of government cannot limit that completely. You know, there's a ton, there's a ton going on in the private sector. Obviously, Elon Musk is doing lots of exciting things. And as, as you see advancements in those fields, we can all continue to celebrate those and hope that people come around.

• 27:22Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 27:22Bill Nye?

  Well, what if people don't come around?

• 27:26Bill Nye?

  I'm not joking, you guys.

• 27:27Chuck Nice?

  I know you're not joking, but...

• 27:30Bill Nye?

  Suppose we end up with tariffs on our most popular trading partner, and we don't have spare parts for cars or air conditioners.

• 27:41Chuck Nice?

  I said it, I'm going black market avocado, man. It's gonna be awesome.

• 27:45Bill Nye?

  Now, everybody knows about your plan. That's right.

• 27:47Chuck Nice?

  Oh, sorry.

• 27:48Bill Nye?

  And if you put the nice brand...

• 27:50Chuck Nice?

  The nice brand.

• 27:51Bill Nye?

  It'll slip right in.

• 27:53Chuck Nice?

  Nobody'll know.

• 27:54Bill Nye?

  So, anyway, there's potential problems, and we have to find ways to, the word I want to use is reason. With our fellow voters, but it's really, it's really a challenge. Let's take another question.

• 28:09Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is Amy Zinda from Facebook who says this. Um, and you know, but before I read this, and I, I know I'm, I'm, I'm kinda joking, I'm being a little surly. I'm not being political. I really believe that anybody has the right to hold whatever political beliefs you have. So please do not write me and say Chuck, you're anti-Trump. I'm not anti-anything.

• 28:31Bill Nye?

  Oh, no.

• 28:32Chuck Nice?

  I am not. I am not. I'm, I'm just pro-facts and pro, um, critical thinking. That's all I am.

• 28:39Bill Nye?

  It's all Chuck is.

• 28:40Chuck Nice?

  That's it. I'm not anti-anything, okay?

• 28:42Speaker 03

  Me too. I'm gonna co-sign that disclaimer and steal it for myself.

• 28:45Chuck Nice?

  There you go. So anyway, Amy Zinda says this, "Since there seems to be a growing distrust of scientific research funded by the government, and several frightening steps..."

• 28:55Bill Nye?

  What is she, go ahead.

• 28:57Chuck Nice?

  "...and several frightening steps, uh, by the new administration to quash the publishing of results and information, what are some other sources, either online or in print, for quality scientific literature that we can rely on in the coming years?" Hmm, uh, uh, it's a good question there, Amy.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  Obviously, the Atlantic.

• 29:19Bill Nye?

  The Atlantic is your main source. Because Ross Anderson's a s- s- A magazine about what?

• 29:25Chuck Nice?

  About oceans.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  The Atlantic Ocean.

• 29:27Bill Nye?

  The Atlantic Ocean.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  That's all we cover.

• 29:29Bill Nye?

  Yes, it's big.

• 29:31Speaker 03

  No, I think, uh, maybe nature, uh, is, is one that we can point people to, um...

• 29:36Bill Nye?

  The Planetary Society, planetary.org.

• 29:39Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 29:40Bill Nye?

  For all your space news, yes. Uh, this is a great question. It's, is this question of authority.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:47Bill Nye?

  With people that discount authorities or experts in fields, then you, you're really lost, or you can be lost. So, what I said to everybody, the thing about the modern world with the internet and so on is you have to learn to filter information.

• 30:02Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 30:03Bill Nye?

  So, go online, look at all the stuff and look for, see if you think it's reasonable.

• 30:08Chuck Nice?

  Wow, so, uh, you know, that's funny because our next, uh, question, uh, I don't know if this is a question or not, I think it might just, but-

• 30:15Bill Nye?

  Would it be a rabid statement?

• 30:16Chuck Nice?

  It might just be a rabid statement from Peter Allen Jacobs on Facebook. Okay, I'm just gonna be honest. I'm the one who wrote all these questions. No.

• 30:26Chuck Nice?

  No, Peter Allen Jacobs says this, he's coming to us from Queensland, Australia. He says, "The most essential invention is an internet filter which we can reliably distinguish fact from opinion from BS."

• 30:42Bill Nye?

  No such thing, man.

• 30:43Chuck Nice?

  And so, that's what I want to know. So I'm asking both of you, with the advent of fake news playing such an important role in this past election.

• 30:54Bill Nye?

  You're not political.

• 30:55Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm not political. I'm not, I'm really not. I'm really asking, I'm really asking. How, how would you, Ross, in your industry, how do you go about distinguishing fake news? Is there a responsibility to, to say like, "This is, this is not real." Like you have The Onion, right? But we all know, if you read it in The Onion, it's satire. It's not real. So how can we have something like that for actual news?

• 31:24Bill Nye?

  Ross?

• 31:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. Facebook has been experimenting with an algorithm where if enough people say that something is fake or reported as fake news, it, a little icon pops up next to it that says, "This is disputed." They, they actually, we, we wrote a piece arguing that they should buy Snopes and actually have their own kind of full-time fact-checking team inside, just to kind of get the like, the very worst of the stuff off Facebook. They've also banned, I think, something like 180 outlets already from posting. But yeah, they, they've had some success with this algorithm and, and the word is, and this is all very preliminary research, but that

• 32:04Speaker 03

  it does actually work, that, that when people see that disputed icon, fortunately. So maybe Facebook will be the ultimate honest broker in the end. They do, not a good chance of that.

• 32:17Chuck Nice?

  You scared the hell out of me just then.

• 32:18Bill Nye?

  Well, the thing about, but the, but the crowd...

• 32:23Bill Nye?

  Crowdsourcing, crowd review, has some value when you have enough people going on. But you at The Atlantic, you try to be a mainstream journalist, right? You are a mainstream journalist and you have standards of research and so on.

• 32:36Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 32:37Bill Nye?

  So, how many people, when you write a story of 2,000 words or so on, how much research are you guys, do you do traditionally?

• 32:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, like for instance, I've been working on a sort of 9,000-word climate change feature for our April issue for the last, you know, six, eight months that took me to Siberia. And it's been copious amounts of research, talking to climate researchers and people in Russia and everything in between. I can't really get into the details, but...

• 33:09Bill Nye?

  Because you'd have to... What did you see in Siberia?

• 33:11Speaker 03

  I can't say, but we also have just a devoted fact-checking team for whom I am eternally grateful. It's amazing to publish a piece that has rigorous fact-checking behind it, the way we have in the magazine, is just a wonderful feeling. It gives you really solid ground to stand on.

• 33:31Bill Nye?

  How much energy do you guys put into denying the fake news people? Do you get, I guess you have letters to the editor that you filter and so on?

• 33:43Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 33:44Bill Nye?

  But do you guys plan to discredit fake news outlets kind of thing?

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think for us to take a swing at it, and I don't want to speak as though The Atlantic has some exalted position in the world of media, but for us to kind of deem it worth our time, it has to achieve a certain level of popular currency for us to take. I mean, if we were, we just don't have the staff to be, for instance, sifting Facebook all day, kind of looking for specious claims about science, and it would take up all of our time, because there are a lot.

• 34:15Bill Nye?

  There are a lot. And speaking of take up all our time, Ross, we'll be here, this is StarTalk All-Stars. I'm Bill Nye with Chuck Nice and Ross Anderson from The Atlantic, and we'll be back right after this.

• 34:36Bill Nye?

  Welcome back, welcome back to StarTalk All-Star Edition. I'm your host this week, Bill Nye, along with the brilliant and insightful Chuck Nice. And this week, nicely said, this week, our guest is Ross Anderson, who's a senior editor at The Atlantic. We're talking about science literacy. And I gotta tell you guys, I feel like we go over the same ground over and over. That we are scientifically literate, we are well researched, and those other people, those other people are not. But I just don't know how we're gonna reach them, because it's important to reach them. We're all in this together. And this is the Cosmic Query portion of the show.

• 35:17Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 35:18Bill Nye?

  So let's take a question, and look at it from a scientifically literate, embracing the other side point of view. Take it Chuck.

• 35:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I'm gonna give you a good challenge on that one. Drew Huber from Facebook says this, "Are there still scientists that are using alternative facts to claim that climate change is not real?"

• 35:42Bill Nye?

  Well, there's the cherry picking of data. Ross, you deal with this all day, I take it.

• 35:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. You do have people who will, for instance, point to a particularly heavy snowstorm in California, or a cold day in January, and say, "Oh, see, yep, nope, climate's not changing, just like we thought."

• 36:04Bill Nye?

  Senator Inhofe showed up on the Senate floor with a snowball. We laugh, but he, and the people that vote for him at some level, think he's on the right track.

• 36:16Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Stunning. That is absolutely stunning.

• 36:20Bill Nye?

  There are fewer snowball days than there used to be. That's something to consider. But it's confronting people, or embracing people, or becoming partners with people who have doubled down on ignoring scientific, what seem to be provable scientific facts. Let's try another query.

• 36:40Chuck Nice?

  All right, John Clemens from Facebook, "Is social media making us dumber?"

• 36:43Bill Nye?

  StarTalk on your electric phone, your handheld device, StarTalk's enriching your life and making you that much smarter. Right, everyone?

• 37:03Bill Nye?

  Ross, you deal with, you used to be a print magazine exclusively. But how much of, what fraction of your business is online now?

• 37:13Speaker 03

  Oh, I mean, the vast, vast, vast majority of it. I mean, we, we publish maybe 10 to 15 pieces in the print magazine monthly and we publish maybe 40 or 45 articles a day on the web.

• 37:25Bill Nye?

  Oh wow, it's a factor of 100 thereabouts. So, do you feel that there's a, people who follow you online don't accept your reporting as accurate? Do you have the pushback because it's social media and it's dismissed as being, as making us dumber?

• 37:44Speaker 03

  Um, sometimes. Well, I think there's a couple of things going. First of all, I want to say that of, of course, like any human being, uh, we, beings, we make mistakes. Um, and, uh, we regret them and we try to be really transparent about correcting them, uh, and as quickly as possible. Um, but yes, uh, as far as social media making people dumber, I'm, I'm just not, I feel like any totalizing narratives around social media and it making us smarter or dumber are usually sort of themselves dumb. Uh, it's, it's obviously a nuanced phenomenon. I don't know about you guys, but I've been, I mean, I've found social media making me smarter in all kinds of ways. I feel more kind of in touch with what's happening, uh, in the world on a moment to moment basis. Now, whether, what that's doing for me is-

• 38:27Bill Nye?

  But I remember, uh, Gil Scott-Heron with "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." Turns out it is being, if you have a revolution, it better be on Twitter, or it's not happening.

• 38:36Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 38:37Bill Nye?

  So, uh, to that end, imagine how much more difficult it would have been, no matter how you feel about these ladies, who, how much more difficult it would have been to organize the Women's March without social media.

• 38:50Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 38:51Bill Nye?

  With social media was, uh, millions of people showed up in several cities, dozens of cities. And, uh, how do you, Ross, do you have any opinion about this proposed science march?

• 39:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, so, uh, one of the responsibilities of my job is not to advocate for uh, political activism of any sort, but um, we'll be watching it with interest.

• 39:16Bill Nye?

  Yeah, okay, alright, okay. Let's take another query, Chuck.

• 39:19Chuck Nice?

  Alright, uh, this is OI Ocha. Uh, OI is how you spell the first name, I don't know how to say that.

• 39:27Bill Nye?

  Oi.

• 39:28Chuck Nice?

  Oi?

• 39:28Bill Nye?

  Oi Ocha.

• 39:29Chuck Nice?

  Oi Ocha, there you go. If people can't use facts and reasoning to make well-informed votes, and there's little hope of improving that situation.

• 39:37Bill Nye?

  It's the theme today.

• 39:40Chuck Nice?

  I'm telling you, this is-

• 39:41Bill Nye?

  Today on Everything Sucks Star Talk Radio.

• 39:44Chuck Nice?

  I'm telling you, and I'm just, I'm going through pages of this-

• 39:48Bill Nye?

  I've got stacks of them.

• 39:49Chuck Nice?

  I've got stacks of them.

• 39:50Bill Nye?

  Is there a payoff phrase there at the end?

• 39:52Chuck Nice?

  Well, the payoff is, um, should we consider changing the way we vote?

• 39:58Bill Nye?

  Well, this is, hey, uh, Ross Anderson, you know, the, no matter what else happened, this is the second time in my lifetime, I guess it's the fifth time in my lifetime, that, uh, the popular vote did not determine who became president. Uh, is, do you think there is any way ever that the Electoral College would be modified in any way?

• 40:21Speaker 03

  Um, it sounded like that questioner was referring more to, uh, should we be selecting out people who-

• 40:29Bill Nye?

  Are stupid.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  demonstrate some capacity for, uh, evaluating judgments, uh, scientific evidence to vote, and I would say absolutely not.

• 40:37Bill Nye?

  Absolutely not.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  Uh, ugly history to, uh, ideas like that. Um, but, uh, Electoral College reform, uh, I'd probably want to bring on one of my colleagues from, uh, the political section-

• 40:50Bill Nye?

  He's blushing, he's blushing everyone.

• 40:51Speaker 03

  But it's interesting, it's an interesting idea.

• 40:53Bill Nye?

  Well, everything's interesting, do you think it's possible?

• 40:56Speaker 03

  No, not in the near term.

• 40:58Bill Nye?

  And would it be any better, or would it just be... The Electoral College, as I understand it, was created to prevent New York and Pennsylvania from having too much influence.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm, right. I think Trump has a good point, too, when he says, "Look, I didn't campaign on that." Uh, it's a... The campaigns would have looked totally different. It's not the case that, "Oh, if we had run for a popular vote, Hillary would have easily won by 3 million." He would have lived in Texas, for instance.

• 41:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but he also said that the Electoral College is a disaster, so...

• 41:30Bill Nye?

  And also, he thought it was genius.

• 41:31Chuck Nice?

  Right, and then it's the best invention ever, uh, once he won, so...

• 41:37Bill Nye?

  And also, Mr. Anderson, do you have any... Are you allowed to express an opinion about interference in the election? And by that, I mean, of course, the direct interference possible by Russia. The influence of the FBI with these spurious emails, or redundant emails at the last minute. And then, more importantly, the suppression of voting, where you try to create laws and gerrymandering that makes it... makes certain people's votes, um, ineffective, or not influential the way they would be otherwise.

• 42:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think, uh, since we're on... This is a science show. Uh, I would say that it seemed to me that you moved, uh, in order of strength of evidence, uh, when you listed those. So I think there's excellent evidence that people's... that there's been suppression of voting rights, uh, in particular places for obviously politically motivated reasons. Um, uh, and I certainly have no reason to doubt the assertions of the entirety of the intelligence community that, you know, uh, Russia seems to have interfered, um, with this election. But, uh, you know, I think we have to assign a proper credence to that, given that, you know, that evidence actually has not been published and hasn't been vetted by journalists. We are sort of taking intelligence, uh, officials at their word.

• 43:02Bill Nye?

  See there, Chuck, you can't get that point of view without a guy from the journal, from the mainstream media. It's fabulous.

• 43:08Chuck Nice?

  I think it's great.

• 43:09Bill Nye?

  Now, uh, let's get one more query, and then, pretty soon, it's gonna be time...

• 43:14Chuck Nice?

  For the lightning round. And, uh, so, let's make it a really quick one. I don't think it needs a... Uh, this is Bob Farrell from Facebook. "When did StarTalk turn all political? What a bummer."

• 43:27Bill Nye?

  When did it to, this is your show, I'm trying, I'm a guest host. We're trying to, but here's the, here's the scientific question about politics.

• 43:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 43:36Bill Nye?

  Uh, how did we get here? It's a surprising thing where we have what would nominally be called anti-science movement that is very popular. And why is that? What is, what has happened with the mainstream science community that, uh, things have changed? Or seem to have changed? Ross?

• 43:57Speaker 03

  Oh, man. Um, yeah. I think it's interesting that no one identifies as anti-science.

• 44:03Bill Nye?

  Hi, my, my mani-science, this is my, here's my business card. Oh, you're right.

• 44:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. So it's, it's, it's not a, I mean, people, for instance, uh, much opposition to vaccines is a matter of alternate, of people saying that, you know, scientists, uh, are in fact the ones who are ignoring evidence. Um, so maybe that's something that we can, um, it's, it's a comfort to me, albeit a small one in, in this, uh, in these weeks, uh, that, um, people are still appealing to science as an authority.

• 44:37Bill Nye?

  Are you, how do you mean? Like in the case of vaccinations, they're appealing to?

• 44:43Speaker 03

  Uh, I mean that, it would be all, like, it would be really distressing if people were just outright saying that actually, science is worthless, it tells us nothing, uh, of interest on these subjects, instead of actually the scientists that I listen to, or, you know, this particular data.

• 45:02Bill Nye?

  Yeah, it's.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  People are appealing to the same intellectual standard.

• 45:04Bill Nye?

  Uh, see, there you go.

• 45:06Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:07Bill Nye?

  Yeah, the, my authorities are better authorities than your authorities. And, uh, this idea that the authorities on the other side are part of a conspiracy is remarkable.

• 45:17Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 45:18Bill Nye?

  And, uh, and so we'll see how that shakes out. Let's get another query. Are we in the last five minutes?

• 45:23Chuck Nice?

  I think we are.

• 45:24Bill Nye?

  It's lightning time, it's lightning time.

• 45:26Chuck Nice?

  Lightning time, okay, here we go. Uh, this is Robert Lane. If everything is made of energy, then everything that was or will be is already here. If humans are made of energy, where is all the energy coming from to increase the population?

• 45:39Bill Nye?

  Oh, like dude, that's like so out there.

• 45:44Bill Nye?

  The reason humans are able to live on the earth is we have energy from a nearby star, the sun, and we grow food. Yes, there's internal energy in the earth that moves tectonic plates around, which has a great effect on the carbon cycle and so on. But the primordial energy that created the sun came from the big bang. And do you know why we had a big bang? Nobody knows why!

• 46:05Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 46:06Bill Nye?

  So some people are very troubled by that. And there's this huge unknown. Other people think, wow, that's cool. Let's find more, let's learn more about that. Let's do astronomy and agronomy and agriculture and physics and chemistry and change the world. I digress. Take it. One more question.

• 46:27Chuck Nice?

  There we go. This is Jess Woods from Facebook. Dear Bill, how can we effectively teach the youth and educate others about topics such as climate change, evolution, when we are encountering resistance at the same time?

• 46:44Bill Nye?

  Well Chuck, it's easy. You watch Bill Nye the Science Guy while you're in school.

• 46:48Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 46:49Bill Nye?

  You watch Bill Nye Saves the World on Netflix. You listen to Ross Anderson at The Atlantic, and you listen to Star Talk and turn it up loud!

• 46:59Chuck Nice?

  Bingo. I like it.

• 47:01Bill Nye?

  Minute and a half Chuck, let's go.

• 47:03Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. Let me see. What are the odds of Neil and Bill reaching out to the administration to propose realistic goals for manned space exploration?

• 47:16Bill Nye?

  So this is what we want to do at the Planetary Society. We want to have humans orbiting Mars in 2033 without increasing the NASA budget at all. With the people that are coming in to NASA with the Trump administration is very reasonable, we can move that to orbits earlier. And by orbits, I mean orbital opportunities 2028. Here's what we want out there, everybody. Let's not have a reset on human spaceflight. Let's use the existing hardware. The Orion Space Capsule, CTS-100, the SpaceX's Dragon Capsule, let's use the existing stuff and advance space science and exploration. In the meantime, everybody out there, let us

• 47:59Bill Nye?

  continue the search for life with robots on Mars and Europa. A discovery of life on another world would change this one. Planetary.org will tell you all about it.

• 48:10Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 48:11Bill Nye?

  One last question Chuck.

• 48:12Chuck Nice?

  This is Hugo from Facebook says, "Can you demonstrate that the term 'alternative fact' is just a marketing-type rebranding of the term propaganda?"

• 48:20Bill Nye?

  Take it. Ross.

• 48:21Chuck Nice?

  Ross.

• 48:22Bill Nye?

  12 seconds. Propaganda.

• 48:25Speaker 03

  Um, uh, where to begin?

• 48:28Bill Nye?

  He laughs out loud. You've been listening to StarTalk All-Star. We have, uh, this week's guest has been Ross Anderson from The Atlantic. He's a senior editor. Chuck nice, funny, as well as funny-looking. And I've been your guest host, Bill Nye. Listen to StarTalk. Turn it up loud. Thank you all very much.