StarTalk at BAM – Science is Everywhere (Part 1)

Science really is everywhere. From the Big Bang to quantum mechanics to free will, we explore it all featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson, comic co-host Chuck Nice, physicist Brian Greene, neuroscientist Heather Berlin, and rapper Baba Brinkman. Recorded live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/startalk-at-bam-science-is-everywhere-part-1/ Photo Credit: Elliot Severn.

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

• 0:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Brooklyn in the house.

• 0:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome. Everybody hear me? Welcome. Did you hear that? There you go. Brooklyn in the house.

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for coming out and giving us your Friday night. This is a special presentation of StarTalk, StarTalk at BAM. And in this presentation, you're gonna get three versions of what our StarTalk franchise is all about. The first one lasting 30 minutes is StarTalk.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk flagship, alright, where I am the host and we have special guests talking about special topics. We then go to another 30 minutes featuring StarTalk All-Stars. And that's where we have a cadre of counterparts to me who are experts in other fields of science. And they each have their own sort of radio show with a comedian, similar format, but they get to do it their way. StarTalk All-Stars, you'll get a sampling of that for 30 minutes. And then we will end with one of our favorite new franchises of StarTalk, StarTalk Playing with Science, which is all about the science of sports. And tonight, we're gonna talk about the physics of figure skating.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we'll get back to that in a minute. But right now, we will begin StarTalk at BAM. I'll bring out my comedic co-host, the one, the only Chuck Nice. Come on out.

• 2:07Brian Greene?

  What's up, buddy?

• 2:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, man.

• 2:08Brian Greene?

  How are you, man?

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is my man.

• 2:10Brian Greene?

  Hi, Steven. It's good to see you.

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very cool. And so, tonight, we're gonna talk about the physics of the early universe. And I realized, this whole event was introduced as a radio love fest. But he didn't say it right. You gotta say, "a radio love fest." You gotta do that right.

• 2:34Brian Greene?

  Yeah, exactly. I think you just made the universe pregnant.

• 2:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love fest. Let me introduce a colleague and a friend, one of the smartest people on Earth, theoretical physicist, Brian Greene, everybody.

• 3:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Brian Greene, best known for sort of popularizing concepts like string theory and the multiverse.

• 3:12Brian Greene?

  You just made string theory pregnant, man.

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your bestselling author, The Elegant Universe, a beautiful book. That person read your book. Right there. That person read your book.

• 3:28Brian Greene?

  I know, the rest of you are just posers.

• 3:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that was followed with Fabric of the Cosmos.

• 3:35Brian Greene?

  Yep.

• 3:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A beautiful book. Hidden Reality was a third book. And then you are a co-founder of the World Science Festival.

• 3:42Brian Greene?

  That's right.

• 3:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A co-founder... It's a bit audacious to call it the World Science Festival?

• 3:47Brian Greene?

  Well, we're gonna call it the universe, but, you know, pulled it back to world.

• 3:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's just great. It's the World Science Festival held in New York. That's just, I'm just saying, it's a...

• 3:56Brian Greene?

  Also in Australia, so it is world in that way.

• 3:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. All right. And co-founded with your wife.

• 4:02Brian Greene?

  That's great.

• 4:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very good. Smart man.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How to keep that marriage going.

• 4:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 4:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Brian, what, there was recent news of the earliest star ever formed in the universe. So were you on top of that story?

• 4:23Brian Greene?

  Been following it, yeah.

• 4:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, because what we know from, as astrophysicists, is you get the Big Bang, got that, okay? Then you have the cosmic microwave background, got that. But nothing's formed yet. You gotta make stuff that you can recognize in modern times, and there's this long period, hundreds of millions of years, where nothing is happening. And so we call that the cosmic dark ages. Did I say it right? Dark ages. And, let me hear dark.

• 4:51Brian Greene?

  Dark ages.

• 4:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there you go. You give them a B+?

• 4:54Brian Greene?

  I'm gonna give them a B+. I'll work on it, I'll work on it.

• 4:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so the dark ages, before the first stars had formed. So there was the hunt, the eternal hunt, can we find that first star? And a recent news announcement said what?

• 5:09Brian Greene?

  Well, there's now evidence that those first stars may have formed about 180 million years after the Big Bang, and it's hard to find them because they're not actually sitting out there waiting for us to see them directly. You have to find an indirect test to see their presence by virtue of their impact on their environment. And in a very clever experiment, that's what was done.

• 5:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how'd they do that experiment?

• 5:33Brian Greene?

  Well, you mentioned the cosmic microwave background radiation, right? I think, I mean, just, people know what that is, it's just here, yeah.

• 5:41Chuck Nice?

  No, I mean, even if, listen, because, you know, there are some people, like, at home, listening, that may not know. So, you know, I'm just saying, you know, for their sake, maybe you should tell them.

• 5:55Brian Greene?

  So this is, this is heat left over from the Big Bang. The Big Bang's very hot, as the universe expands, it cools down, but the heat doesn't disappear, it's still there. And indeed, we can see that heat coming to us through powerful satellite-born telescopes today. Now, that is a fantastic discovery in its own right, that won the Nobel Prize, the discovery of the microwave background radiation, but now imagine this.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's won the Nobel Prize twice.

• 6:23Brian Greene?

  That's true, yes, absolutely, yeah. The initial discovery and then a more refined version.

• 6:27Chuck Nice?

  I gotta tell you, that's very good.

• 6:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the same.

• 6:31Chuck Nice?

  The same thing, just like. Five years later, oh my god, that was so, we should give it to him again.

• 6:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give it to him again, right. So, no, it was a badass thing we found in the universe.

• 6:44Brian Greene?

  Yeah.

• 6:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 6:45Brian Greene?

  And it was found by mistake, right? Oh, so you do know about this, man, you said mistake before I did.

• 6:50Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I didn't mean to.

• 6:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, so, so, how, so how did the, the cousin of my background tell us this?

• 6:59Brian Greene?

  Well, the, the theory was that when these initial stars formed, they would be very large, much larger than the sun, and very hot, and they would have emitted a lot of ultraviolet radiation. And that radiation would have had an impact on the environment. A lot of hydrogen around, it would have ionized the hydrogen. Why does that matter? When you cause the hydrogen to change in that way, it has an impact on the microwave background radiation that otherwise would have passed through it.

• 7:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Passed through it with no incident.

• 7:29Brian Greene?

  With no incident.

• 7:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now it's got, it's, it's been perturbed.

• 7:32Brian Greene?

  That's right, now, actually, some of it gets absorbed, which means when we look out, there should be missing parts of the spectrum.

• 7:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 7:39Brian Greene?

  That are being absorbed by this hydrogen, which itself is being affected by these early stars.

• 7:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we're not seeing the stars themselves, we're seeing us some kind of smoking gun of the stars?

• 7:49Brian Greene?

  Yeah, we're seeing a shadow in some sense of the stars.

• 7:51Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my god, it's just like the Russia investigation.

• 8:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, I didn't tell you the reason why we, we have such Big Bang expertise?

• 8:07Brian Greene?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is because we have both independently appeared on the Big Bang Theory.

• 8:13Brian Greene?

  That's true, actually.

• 8:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, I was only on once, were you on once or?

• 8:16Brian Greene?

  Only on once, yeah.

• 8:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, they didn't invite you back?

• 8:17Brian Greene?

  No, they didn't.

• 8:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they didn't invite me back?

• 8:19Brian Greene?

  Not by you either.

• 8:21Chuck Nice?

  Welcome to my world.

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I, I, I thought you did really well.

• 8:26Brian Greene?

  I thought you did really well.

• 8:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I, I, I'm so not an actor, and I, I depend on people allowing a little latitude for that cameo, non-actor, delivered lines.

• 8:37Brian Greene?

  Yeah.

• 8:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, you say, okay, they're not really an actor, but we'll, we'll, we'll let it slide. You were good.

• 8:42Brian Greene?

  Well, thank you, I appreciate that.

• 8:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And plus, Sheldon gave both of us a hard time.

• 8:46Brian Greene?

  He did.

• 8:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 8:47Brian Greene?

  He told me that I should give up physics and consider reading to the elderly, but he said, don't read your own books to the elderly.

• 9:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he was pissed off that I was an accessory to the demotion of Pluto.

• 9:06Brian Greene?

  Oh Pluto, yeah.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he said Pluto was one of his favorites.

• 9:08Brian Greene?

  And you told him to get over it.

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, to get over it, yeah, yeah, yeah, but that it's, but he scripted to just get angry, so he just got angry.

• 9:17Brian Greene?

  Yeah.

• 9:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I couldn't rely on a natural response.

• 9:20Brian Greene?

  That's because he's not real.

• 9:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Brian, so this early star, does it tell us something backwards towards the Big Bang that we should know about?

• 9:35Brian Greene?

  Well...

• 9:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're a Big Bang guy.

• 9:36Brian Greene?

  Yeah, it does, I mean, the curious thing is that the signal is stronger than the theory predicted, so the signal's there in the sense that you've got this missing part of the spectrum.

• 9:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have people saying, "What would a first star look like? Let's map it out." Now you compare it, and now we got something stronger than that.

• 9:54Brian Greene?

  That's right.

• 9:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that means you gotta go back and recalculate what?

• 9:56Brian Greene?

  You've gotta tweak the theory, and people are suggesting that dark matter may play

• 10:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You see how we did that? Key role. You gotta tweak.

• 10:04Brian Greene?

  Tweak.

• 10:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 10:05Brian Greene?

  Right.

• 10:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I don't know what he's cooking up, what he, he just tweaking stuff.

• 10:09Brian Greene?

  But the tweak also kind of spilled over into the dark matter, so I'm not sure what this means.

• 10:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 10:16Brian Greene?

  I don't know what either of you are talking about, that's fine.

• 10:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what of the Big Bang do you have to tweak in order to allow our hypothesis to match the objects?

• 10:28Brian Greene?

  Well, it may be that the dark matter interacts with ordinary matter in a way that differs from the conventional description. This is very speculative, we're right at the beginning of this kind of experiment.

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At what point do you say, "I need to tweak my theories," and at what point do you say, "I need to throw out my theories"?

• 10:47Brian Greene?

  Well, that's the art, that's the art of science, you know, and, you know, some people criticize scientists for sticking to theories long after the data seems to suggest that they really need to move on. People say that even about string theory, they're wrong, but...

• 11:04Brian Greene?

  Yeah, so it's an art, and it's a personal choice.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've to his face, just to be clear. Because I'll say this again publicly. But I did really say this to his face.

• 11:14Brian Greene?

  Oh snap.

• 11:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I asked Brian, I said, "Brian, I remember y'all from like from the, I'm that old, from the 1980s. Spring theory was being born." And I said, "Wow, this is great. A new understanding of the universe. General relativity married with quantum physics. A marriage that Einstein died trying to find. How soon will you have this?" He said, "We're about five years out." About five years. And then 10 years later. Uh, how, how far, what we down, another five years? And then 10 years after that. Just another five years.

• 11:46Brian Greene?

  I'm consistent, hey.

• 11:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait. So then it's like the year 2018. Brian, how about?

• 11:53Brian Greene?

  About five years, I'd say something like that.

• 11:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How close are you to this? And it's like, so then I said, I said, "So, so Brian, why?" He said, "What's a hard problem?" So then I said, "Or, every one of you working on this problem is an idiot."

• 12:11Brian Greene?

  He did.

• 12:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I said that to his face. "Brian."

• 12:14Brian Greene?

  I'm gonna go with hard.

• 12:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At what point do you, no, I said that, you know, jokingly. At what point do you say, "We're simply not smart enough to even answer the question we ourselves posed?"

• 12:30Brian Greene?

  Yeah.

• 12:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or do you just say, "It's hard." Because Einstein figured out general relativity, basically by his lonesome, in 10 years after he had special relativity.

• 12:40Brian Greene?

  Yeah.

• 12:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you got, how many dozens of you guys? And...

• 12:43Brian Greene?

  Yeah.

• 12:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For 35 years.

• 12:46Brian Greene?

  Yep, yep. Well, look, I gotta tell you, the reason I accepted to be on the show tonight is...

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, what?

• 12:54Brian Greene?

  I'm finally willing. No, here's, here's the situation. If we were not making progress, then I wouldn't need you to tell me to give it up, right? I don't believe in reincarnation. I think you live once, and I don't want to spend my life working on a theory if I really don't think it has the promise to reach the goal that we have set for ourselves.

• 13:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're honest with yourself?

• 13:15Brian Greene?

  I'm totally honest, and but you need to...

• 13:16Chuck Nice?

  We have so much in common, because I don't believe in it, because I don't want to be a turtle.

• 13:25Brian Greene?

  Okay.

• 13:29Chuck Nice?

  No, you said I don't believe in reincarnation. For some reason, I think I'm coming back as a turtle.

• 13:32Brian Greene?

  I hear what you're saying, yeah, I got it.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh!

• 13:34Brian Greene?

  Yeah.

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we both missed that.

• 13:35Brian Greene?

  Went like this.

• 13:35Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:36Brian Greene?

  You know.

• 13:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and you're the astrophysicist.

• 13:42Chuck Nice?

  Because they got it.

• 13:43Brian Greene?

  But here's the thing, before...

• 13:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They did not get that.

• 13:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh, they got... Did you not get that?

• 13:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was thinking...

• 13:51Chuck Nice?

  Stupid people, you knifed!

• 13:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I was thinking, the turtle was a reference to sort of the Hindu on the back of an elephant, and the elephant's standing on turtles, and his turtle's all the way down.

• 14:03Chuck Nice?

  See, that's why you got doctor in front of your name. And I tell dick jokes.

• 14:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So... Well, back up, so...

• 14:20Brian Greene?

  Where were we?

• 14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know exactly where we were.

• 14:22Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry, go ahead.

• 14:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know exactly where we were. So, what I'm asking you, as a theoretical physicist, leading theoretical physicist, we have an observation, an astronomical observation, and it forces you to go back and re-tweak. Are you tweaking Big Bang? You tweaking quantum physics? You're tweaking... What are you tweaking?

• 14:41Brian Greene?

  Well, in this particular case, you really are tweaking something that we yet don't understand fully, which is dark matter. So that's ripe for being tweaked. But look, there are other things...

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dark matter is like mysterious gravity of the universe, and we have no idea what's causing it.

• 14:54Brian Greene?

  But I'll give you another example, which has happened recently, right? There've been measurements of the rate of the expansion of space. And those measurements, very recently, are seeming to be incompatible with earlier measurements done in a different way.

• 15:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This had a whole other recent result.

• 15:10Brian Greene?

  A whole other recent result, exactly. And this one, if it's correct, this is one that could really change our understanding of the early universe dramatically, right? In order to get the measurements that are done on the expansion of space, looking at the microwave background radiation, and those that are coming from looking at supernova explosions, to get those compatible, right now, is going to require... Perhaps tweaking the dark energy. It may require tweaking our understanding of the gravitational force. I mean, there are many things that may come into that particular reconciliation.

• 15:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tweak our understanding of the gravitational force itself?

• 15:46Brian Greene?

  Yeah, I mean, whenever you talk about dark energy, right? Everyone knows what dark energy is, yeah?

• 15:52Chuck Nice?

  Well, I'm just saying, some people at home may not.

• 15:56Brian Greene?

  Right, so this energy-filling space that we believe yields a repulsive gravity that's causing the universe to speed up in its acceleration.

• 16:04Chuck Nice?

  When it theoretically should be slowing down.

• 16:09Brian Greene?

  That's right, ordinary gravity pulls things together. It should be slowing down. The shock that we got in 1998 is that it's not slowing down in the rate of expansion. It's speeding up.

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Against the wishes of gravity.

• 16:21Brian Greene?

  And, well, here's the thing. We didn't understand gravity well enough. Gravity can not only be attractive, it can be repulsive. And that really wasn't taken into account until about 1998 when it comes to cosmology. Now, the possibility is, maybe this outward push is itself getting stronger over time.

• 16:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so that means thinking it was one thing would be an incomplete understanding of that phenomenon.

• 16:46Brian Greene?

  Yes, and that's what science is.

• 16:48Chuck Nice?

  Which would actually change everything.

• 16:50Brian Greene?

  But that's what science is.

• 16:51Chuck Nice?

  Which is why you have to tweak string theory.

• 16:55Brian Greene?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if it affects gravity, then every moment of our models from the Big Bang forward would have to be rethought. Put back in the computers, say, "Now, what are you going to give me with this new understanding?"

• 17:11Brian Greene?

  Literally, because these equations are so complex, there's so many features that come into play, that you have to put it on a computer and simulate and see what happens.

• 17:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now, does that affect any thinking of what's going on?

• 17:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Before the universe began.

• 17:27Brian Greene?

  Well, I mean, people play with those sorts of ideas. But it's hard to know if that question even makes sense, right? It makes sense to say, what happened before you were born? What happened before the Earth formed? Those sorts of phenomenon certainly were preceded by something else in the universe. But the Big Bang may have been not just the beginning of the universe as we think of it as stuff. It could have been the beginning of time itself.

• 17:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This past Sunday, we aired our, my interview with Stephen Hawking. Went to the dude's office in Cambridge. And one of, I asked him, what was around before the Big Bang? He gave an answer and nobody understood the answer.

• 18:02Brian Greene?

  Yeah.

• 18:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now, you check it out on, if you don't get, so, so.

• 18:07Brian Greene?

  I have no idea what he was.

• 18:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What was he saying?

• 18:09Brian Greene?

  I have no idea. I haven't seen the podcast.

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta watch the show!

• 18:12Brian Greene?

  Yeah, I will. Yeah, you didn't, you didn't prep me on this one.

• 18:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no.

• 18:16Chuck Nice?

  Allow me, allow me to explain what he was saying.

• 18:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, no, but you can give me two or three ideas that people have about what preceded the Big Bang?

• 18:31Brian Greene?

  Absolutely.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whether or not they're your idea.

• 18:32Brian Greene?

  Yeah, I mean, uh, one idea is that the Big Bang may not have been a unique event. There may have been many Big Bangs, giving rise to many universes.

• 18:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are one of those.

• 18:44Brian Greene?

  And we're, and we're just one of those, sort of like a, a cosmic bubble bath of universes. And we're just one bubble expanding in that larger landscape of reality. If that's the case, then our Big Bang was not the beginning of everything. It was just an interesting event that we hold dear because it gave rise to us. But there would have been a time before it that wouldn't have been any more exotic than the time now.

• 19:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A time measured by some methods we have yet to divine, because every method of measuring time exists within this universe.

• 19:15Brian Greene?

  That's right. So, um, the notion of a time going across all of the universe is a very difficult idea to make mathematical sense of.

• 19:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like a meta-time.

• 19:25Brian Greene?

  A meta-time of some sort, but people don't fully appreciate. But that wouldn't be time. It wouldn't be time to be experienced. You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. So, in this universe, the fact that we can say that the universe has an age of whatever, 13.8 billion years, is only because our universe is highly symmetric. You look at one chunk of the universe over here and another chunk over here, and on average, their properties are the same. And if that weren't the case, there would be no notion of time across even our universe.

• 19:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because of this symmetry of appearance you're saying, we can justifiably say we are all experiencing the same age of this universe.

• 20:01Brian Greene?

  That's right.

• 20:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if we had looked over there, and stuff was being born, and over here, stuff was dying, out of proportion. We would be forced to say, there's not one coherent time across this spacetime continuum.

• 20:13Brian Greene?

  Right. You see, because Einstein, as we're all familiar with, taught us that if you're moving, time ticks off at a different rate. If you're near a black hole, time ticks off at a different rate. So, you should ask yourself, when people say the universe is 13 billion years old, according to which clock? Right? If those clocks are moving, or if they're near a black hole or a strong gravitational field, they'll tick off time at different rates. And the way we get out of that conundrum is what you're saying. The overall uniformity means that on those clocks, that are experiencing basically the same physical conditions, they're gonna experience time the same way.

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love your clock pantomime.

• 20:50Chuck Nice?

  I love it too. Man, I have never in my life wished that I smoke weed more than I do right now.

• 20:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So...

• 20:57Chuck Nice?

  Now I know why they do it, man.

• 21:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we gotta land this plane. So, two final questions. So, if we're asking, what was around before the Big Bang? You say, maybe there was this bubble bath of Big Bangs. Then, that just pushes that question a little further. What was around before the bubble bath?

• 21:24Brian Greene?

  Or, it may push it infinitely far back. That's a possibility too.

• 21:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Turtles all the way down.

• 21:28Brian Greene?

  So, it could be turtles all the way down. But the other idea that does come out of string theory initially, is that maybe our universe is a slice of space, floating in a larger cosmos. Right? Higher dimensions of string theory allow for that freedom. So, our universe is like a slice of bread in a big cosmic loaf, that may have other slices, which would be other universes. I bring that up because there's a theoretical description...

• 21:54Brian Greene?

  I'm gonna ignore these guys. So there's a...

• 22:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We were good at... Now we're like slicing the bread.

• 22:06Brian Greene?

  All right, here.

• 22:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now slice the bread, I got you.

• 22:08Brian Greene?

  Right.

• 22:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With this, the bread loaf universe, go.

• 22:10Brian Greene?

  Exactly. And there's a way of describing the Big Bang where it's actually arising from the collision of these two universes. It's normally called the Big Bang, or it's called the Big Splat, right? So it's a little more evocative way of thinking about it. In which case, before the Big Bang, before the Big Splat, would just be these two giant sheets of space slamming into each other.

• 22:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they create a yet a subsequent Big Bang.

• 22:33Brian Greene?

  That's right. It's a cyclic universe. It happens over and over and over again through these collisions. So then what's before our Big Bang? It would just be an era of the universe, similar to this potentially, but was just a different part of the cycle.

• 22:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So therefore, and my last question to you. The very distant future universe, where we're accelerating at whatever rate it is, does what you're saying now affect that very distant universe?

• 22:59Brian Greene?

  It can, absolutely. Because if, for instance, we're talking about a cyclic universe...

• 23:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but my slice of bread is getting bigger.

• 23:05Brian Greene?

  Your slice of bread is getting bigger, but that other slice may be coming toward you. So a trillion years from now, we may get hit again and be completely obliterated.

• 23:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How will we know if another slice of bread is coming towards us?

• 23:15Brian Greene?

  That's the thing, we won't.

• 23:19Chuck Nice?

  All I know is I am hungry right now.

• 23:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Brian Greene, thank you for totally fucking with our heads here tonight.

• 23:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Brian Greene.

• 23:31Brian Greene?

  That's awesome stuff, man. Thank you. It's phenomenal.

• 23:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So hang on for a second.

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're gonna wrap up this part of the show before I hand the baton over to neuroscientist Heather Berlin, one of our StarTalk All-Stars. And while she comes out, but before that happens, we are going to have a special musical interlude.

• 23:57Brian Greene?

  Oh.

• 23:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Musical interlude.

• 23:59Brian Greene?

  Oh, sweet.

• 24:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are going to have a special performance by Baba Brinkman. Baba Brinkman, come on out!

• 24:08Brian Greene?

  All right.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  Baba, you're a science rapper. I am a science rapper if such things do exist. That's a thing. It's a thing now. You will demonstrate that now. Let's all hope so.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  Alright.

• 24:32Speaker 03

  They gave me one song to demonstrate that science rap exists. And all this physics stuff is gonna mix with neuroscience. And pretty soon, we're gonna start talking about free will. And as a rap artist who's been at this for over a decade, you gotta get into freestyle. So I'm about to do a freestyle interpreting a lot of what was discussed for this last half hour. And I want you to think about this. Either every word they said and every word I'm about to say was predetermined since our Big Bang on our slice, or there is some kind of free will possible. Hit it.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  Now, I'm from Western Canada. When I was a young rapper, picturing myself on MTV. This is the rap I always pictured myself kicking. Listen to this lyric, it isn't freestylist written. I wrote it of my own free will. It was my decision, every intimate constituent. Part of it was deliberate. I considered how to script it and how to stand and deliver it. I wanted to get up on stage and do a lot of damage. And talk about how all the universes were like a big sandwich. And I could just step up here and do some things that are drunk on beats. And find out why astrophysics makes people feel hungry. That was forethought, but that doesn't mean nothing comes before thought. Look at the source of your thoughts. You might find the doors blocked.

• 25:53Speaker 03

  If every decision is made in a part of my brain that's invisible to me, that's will, but with a subliminal origin. I'm not thinking it's too free. See, I break it down. I show you the freestyle basics. You can't see me, all you can see is the imprint of my radiation. See what I'm saying? That's the way that I spit it with freestyle bars. Looking for me is looking for in the universe the first star. But what am I doing here? Why am I choosing to bust the rhyme? Am I a puppet on a string who could not have done otherwise? A slave to my subliminal abomination? The reptilian forces with no self-control Up in my neocortex, I can't stop I'm stuck here trying to bust raps I could no more stop than Neil could shave off his mustache I'm trying to figure that out Maybe perhaps it could happen

• 26:37Speaker 03

  But we're all stuck up in this quantum bubble bath I can't stop believing in the option to choose I couldn't stop if I wanted It's down to the molecules I choose Words and deeds, not wants and moods Freedom is like a muscle It's only strong when it's used I can't stop, well I probably could But I probably shouldn't Cause right now I gotta kick a rap And make it really good And maybe, maybe interpret everything That they talked about a second ago Alright, let's do a little rewind Y'all people could be checking the flow See, I'm gonna drop this and say everything clearly I'm five years from stardom Like Brian explaining string theory It's about to happen Any second is coming next Every word I spit is peer-reviewed Something you can check like the literature

• 27:20Speaker 03

  It's a freestyle now as I spit it at you Indeed, that's the place that I take it Breaking down the basics, yeah Check it out, freestyles, people always felt them I'm gonna get on the Big Bang Theory So I could get dissed by Sheldon, yeah One day, that's about to happen, that's the cameo Bubba Brickman coming through right now With nothing but a damaging flow Yeah, check it I'm gonna have to come sparking it I'm cooking It's not gonna get the same reaction As it did with Neil when I say "Is there a house full of Brooklyn?" No, I screwed it up, that's okay I'm just blazing them, that's the way that we say it Where I come from I'm Canadian, trying to bust the rap So I'm gonna say a shout out to the plaid shirt right there Me and him are repping the lumberjack some Can't stop believing in the option to choose I couldn't stop if I wanted

• 28:05Speaker 03

  It's down to the molecules I choose Words and deeds, not wants and moods Freedom is like a muscle It's only strong when it's used Well, I could stop I can stop if I want. The question is, why would I want to stop? I could stop, it's just not recommended. At least not till this song is ended. Because I spent a lot of time training my brain to rhyme at the drop of a dime. That's the kind of freedom I could claim as mine. Freedom isn't a metaphysical state at the level of atoms. It's a collection of talents. Each of us can develop and manage. Freedom evolved. Evolution gave us the building blocks. Absolute freedom, maybe not. But more than a digger waspin', more than prefrontal cortex lesion patients living today.

• 28:49Speaker 03

  I'll take the freedom I've got over the non-freedom of Phineas Gage. Freedom is having a brain that can reject options, detect imposters, dodge sucker punches like boxers. Freedom is having a brain that can navigate obstacles in a continuous exploration of the adjacent possible. A brain that's free enough to recognize goals and pursue them and recognize the reasons why, even if it's prone to illusions. Freedom, if you've got that kind of mind and it's at fault, congratulations. You can now be tried as an adult. Free will, it's similar to freestyle. It's a learnable system that's deterministic deep down. But even if every syllable has a physical cause, freedom is just the belief that I should still get some applause.

• 29:43Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 29:43Speaker 04

  Oh my god!

• 29:46Chuck Nice?

  Well done.

• 29:50Chuck Nice?

  Fantastic, man.

• 29:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Baba.

• 29:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you gotta run, because where do you gotta be?

• 30:00Speaker 03

  Okay, so that was a piece from an Off-Broadway production I'm doing. Hip-hop theater, very inspired by Hamilton. It's called "The Rap Guide to Consciousness", and it's all neuroscience, cognitive psychology.

• 30:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're performing that tonight? You gotta leave here tonight to perform that?

• 30:13Speaker 03

  The show starts in 45 minutes.

• 30:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, get the hell out of here at the Soho Playhouse.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  Soho Playhouse, hope y'all can come see it.

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dude!

• 30:20Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me here, I appreciate it.

• 30:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love you, man. All right.

• 30:24Speaker 03

  Thank you, Neil.

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Baba Brinkman!

• 30:34Chuck Nice?

  That guy's my favorite rapper now. Jay-Z, suck it.

• 30:41Chuck Nice?

  I ain't never heard Jay-Z say anything about his prefrontal cortex.

• 30:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's some good vocabulary running down there.

• 30:50Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man, that was serious, man.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, he did that in rehearsal.

• 30:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 30:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And 5% of it was the same. The rest was completely invented in that moment.

• 31:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it was unbelievable.

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's a dude talking about my mustache?

• 31:06Chuck Nice?

  See, he knew better than to do that in rehearsal.

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So our next segment is gonna be StarTalk All-Stars, where I take a backseat and we bring on the host, one of our many talented StarTalk All-Stars, neuroscientist Heather Berlin. Heather, come on out.

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Heather, it's your show.

• 31:40Heather Berlin?

  Okay.

• 31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go for it.

• 31:42Heather Berlin?

  All right, Neil, you can take a backseat and, uh...

• 31:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I don't think so.

• 31:48Heather Berlin?

  You don't know me very well, Brian. You don't know me very well. So, welcome to StarTalk All-Stars at BAM. I'm your host, Heather Berlin. I'm a cognitive neuroscientist. I'm based here in New York at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. So Neil, Brian, thanks for being my guests tonight. And we're gonna...

• 32:07Chuck Nice?

  And Chuck, forget about you.

• 32:17Heather Berlin?

  You're just ingrained in my mind. We've become one. We've become Chuck, my co-host, for bringing all of the wonderful scientific insights and comic relief. Thank you for being here.

• 32:27Chuck Nice?

  So wonderful of you to say.

• 32:32Heather Berlin?

  So we're gonna talk a little bit about the intersection between neuroscience and physics. Talk a little bit about consciousness, time, and free will. So we're just gonna keep it light. Light and easy.

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Free will.

• 32:47Heather Berlin?

  Yeah. So...

• 32:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not free willy. Right. Free will.

• 32:52Heather Berlin?

  It's not that kind of show. We are gonna...

• 32:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a movie.

• 32:58Brian Greene?

  I took that reference differently.

• 33:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a movie.

• 33:01Chuck Nice?

  You know what's funny? I was thinking that. And I was like, nah, I better not say it.

• 33:06Heather Berlin?

  I told you, we are one. You're like my subconscious that I just kind of try to keep it day, but it keeps coming up.

• 33:12Chuck Nice?

  That's a very good plan, actually.

• 33:16Heather Berlin?

  So actually, Brian, you once tweeted, you said, "Free will is the..."

• 33:21Brian Greene?

  Wait, you're gonna quote a tweet of mine?

• 33:23Heather Berlin?

  I am quoting a tweet.

• 33:24Brian Greene?

  In front of this guy over here? That's like saying I play baseball in front of Babe Ruth, right? It's like saying I write music in front of Mozart, right?

• 33:31Chuck Nice?

  All right, go ahead.

• 33:32Heather Berlin?

  Your tweets matter. Your tweets matter.

• 33:34Brian Greene?

  Thank you.

• 33:35Heather Berlin?

  Free will...

• 33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All tweets matter, yeah.

• 33:37Heather Berlin?

  Not all tweets. Not all tweets.

• 33:41Chuck Nice?

  Blue tweets matter.

• 33:46Brian Greene?

  I had to do it, I'm sorry.

• 33:47Heather Berlin?

  You got some red tweets in the house. Okay, so you said, "Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future." So...

• 34:01Brian Greene?

  I had to say that.

• 34:02Heather Berlin?

  You were compelled. It was determined from the Big Bang. What does physics have to say about free will?

• 34:11Brian Greene?

  Well, it's not definite, because we don't fully know the laws of physics. But the laws of physics that we currently have at our disposal... Have no opportunity for intercession by human will, right? I mean, we are a collection of particles governed by laws that you can write down and fit on a T-shirt. And those laws don't at any point in the evolution of the particle say, "Hey, can you like tell me now what to do, person?" They just determine the future based upon what things were like in the past.

• 34:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Brian, can't there be an emergent property of that collection of molecules that we can call free will? Just because, because the emergent property, if you know emergence, it's a feature of an ensemble that cannot be deduced by the study of the individual.

• 35:01Brian Greene?

  Like ants.

• 35:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like ants. You study one ant, you say, "Hi, ant," you'll shake your hand. You have no idea that a thousand ants together are going to make an ant mound.

• 35:09Brian Greene?

  Right.

• 35:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or a thousand termites make a termite mound.

• 35:11Brian Greene?

  Right.

• 35:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or that birds will flock. You have no way to predict that.

• 35:15Brian Greene?

  So that one ant sounds like Woody Allen.

• 35:17Heather Berlin?

  If free will doesn't exist at the level of physics, in other words, if it doesn't exist at the level of physics, could it not exist at the level of biology or say psychology?

• 35:27Brian Greene?

  That's right. So it's a very good point, and it really depends on what your definition of free will is, right? Normally, the intuitive definition is, things could have been different, and I could have made a choice for things to turn out differently. And if that's your definition of free will, does that resonate with your perspective of free will? Then I don't see any way to square that with the laws of physics. Because anything that you do is your particles executing some kind of motion, and the motion of your particles in your brain and your body have no opportunity to allow you as a conscious being to direct them. What force could possibly that direction come from? Is it the electromagnetic force? Well, that one we understand from Maxwell.

• 36:12Brian Greene?

  Is it the gravitational force? Hmm, we understand that one from Einstein. Is it the nuclear forces? Those we understand from the standard model of particle physics. What force could you possibly exert on your particles that goes against or goes beyond those that emerge from the equations of physics? That's the issue.

• 36:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could our free will thrive in the probabilistic description of quantum physics?

• 36:34Brian Greene?

  No.

• 36:37Brian Greene?

  Not as we currently understand it. And that's a natural place.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't make me fight you here on the stage.

• 36:42Brian Greene?

  We've done this before.

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we did, actually, yeah. I grabbed this lapel on stage once.

• 36:46Brian Greene?

  But we both were wrestlers in high school. Different weight categories.

• 36:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, very different weight categories.

• 36:51Brian Greene?

  But, um, but, uh, so, so it's, it's, I should have said it's possible, but I consider it highly unlikely. So, so there is a puzzle right now in quantum physics that has been on the table for 50, 75 years. And we don't know the answer to this puzzle. And that's why I have to couch my remarks with a little bit of uncertainty. And that puzzle is this. Quantum theory says that you can only predict the probability of one outcome or another, right? 50% chance electron here, 50% chance there. Yet, when we measure the electron, we always find it either here or there, right? One or the other. So how do you go from the fuzzy probabilistic haze of many possibilities to the single definite reality that we all experience in everyday life?

• 37:35Brian Greene?

  We still don't know how to bridge that gap. So within that, if consciousness somehow plays a role in picking out one outcome from the probabilistic haze, then sure, then free will might come for the ride as well.

• 37:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. So you just said, you just said, probabilistically, the particle can be here or there.

• 37:58Brian Greene?

  Yes.

• 37:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you measure it, it is only in one place.

• 38:02Brian Greene?

  Yes.

• 38:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So my act of thought

• 38:05Brian Greene?

  Yeah.

• 38:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  is I want to go, I want a cheeseburger. That's the particle in this state. And I'm gonna say, I want a cheeseburger, bam! The particle's there.

• 38:14Brian Greene?

  See, that's the part I don't buy, right there, you see? Because...

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why are you poking your...

• 38:20Brian Greene?

  Because it's random. There's nothing that you did to pick one outcome because you wanted it, because you willed it, because it was your desire. And yet, your intuition is you had the cheeseburger because you chose it. If it comes from a random process, it's like throwing the dice. And throwing the dice to get an outcome is not what we mean by free will.

• 38:41Heather Berlin?

  Okay, wait. You physicists.

• 38:45Chuck Nice?

  Sorry.

• 38:47Heather Berlin?

  I'm gonna give you a neuroscientific perspective.

• 38:49Chuck Nice?

  Oh, good.

• 38:50Heather Berlin?

  Okay. So, from a neuroscientific perspective, first of all, what's happening at the quantum level doesn't really scale up to whether a neuron fires or not, right? I mean, that indeterminacy. But from experiments that we've done, starting in the 80s, Benjamin Libet did studies where he said to somebody, "Whenever you feel like it, just press this button." And he measured brain activation. And he found, and he said, even before they actually pressed the button, because that takes time to make the movement, "Just let me know where this little dot is on the clock when you feel the first inkling of the intention of wanting to move." And then what he found is about 350 milliseconds before a person even had that conscious intention, there was a gearing up of brain activation, right?

• 39:31Heather Berlin?

  So then, leap forward to current times, we do neuroimaging experiments where we can say to a person...

• 39:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just so that people know, you measure people's brains for a living.

• 39:40Heather Berlin?

  That's my job. That's what I do, yes.

• 39:43Chuck Nice?

  I would be no help to you.

• 39:51Heather Berlin?

  It's my unconscious here again. He's always button in and, you know. We need you, we need you. But you can measure it using a FMRI, which looks at blood flow to different parts of the brain.

• 40:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Functional magnetic resonance imaging.

• 40:04Heather Berlin?

  Basically, looking at blood flow as a proxy to neurons fire. The blood is gonna go where the neurons are firing because they need energy. So we can say to you, "Okay, just choose left or right, or that hamburger or not."

• 40:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cheeseburger.

• 40:15Heather Berlin?

  Cheeseburger, sorry, cheeseburger.

• 40:17Chuck Nice?

  He chose to put cheese on that burger!

• 40:23Heather Berlin?

  We can say, we can predict up to 10 seconds before you even have the conscious inclination of your intention, which you're going to go, left or right, or cheese or no cheese, right? So at that level, I like to say, "Yeah, sure, we have free will, but we're just not conscious of it, right? The brain is making these decisions all the time, and we have this illusion of free will." But the question really is, is why do we have this illusion? Why did we evolve this illusion? Is it important? If we didn't have it, would it change our behavior?

• 40:54Brian Greene?

  Yeah, I mean, it strikes me that it gives us that sense of control that presumably, out in the savanna, you know, 50,000 years ago, 100,000 years ago, made the difference between surviving and not. If you're invested in how things turn out and feel that your decisions can affect how things turn out, you're more attentive, you're more engaged. It's something that matters to you more, and presumably, something like that or some parallel story like that suggests why we have this illusion.

• 41:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're less likely to be eaten.

• 41:25Brian Greene?

  Yes, that's the point, that's the point.

• 41:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you both agree with one another, with each other, that from physics point of view, it's deterministic. You didn't use that word, but I'm putting it in your mouth.

• 41:40Brian Greene?

  It's okay.

• 41:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 41:41Brian Greene?

  Yeah, I mean, it's okay on the radio and live show, but I...

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so Heather, so your results are consistent with his, basically?

• 41:50Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think from both a physics perspective and a neuroscience perspective, we come to the similar conclusion that it's an illusion, that free will is an illusion, even though we really feel like it's not. And actually, studies have been done, which when you tell people that free will is an illusion, and you start giving them subsequent tests, they're more likely to cheat on a math test, they're more likely to act unethically. So the fact that we have this belief, those who have had it actually are better able to survive in the system along the line.

• 42:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're more likely to behave.

• 42:21Heather Berlin?

  We're more likely to behave.

• 42:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If we think we're in control.

• 42:23Heather Berlin?

  However, we also have evolved there to be cheaters, right? And they can win. And so if we were all cheaters, no one would win. But if we all...

• 42:30Brian Greene?

  Just ask Tom Brady.

• 42:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Chuck, he looked so deflated at the end of that game, right?

• 42:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was sad.

• 42:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Heather, is there a...

• 42:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me ask you a blunter question.

• 42:57Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 42:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does it even matter if... That you know this, if we all feel like we have free will? I want to believe that I go to school and get a good job and behave and I want to believe all that.

• 43:10Heather Berlin?

  Well, I...

• 43:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you tell me I shouldn't believe it? That if I... If one day I end up in prison, that was predetermined from the Big Bang?

• 43:16Chuck Nice?

  And wait, just as...

• 43:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're saying yes to that?

• 43:18Chuck Nice?

  But wait, as an addendum to the... As an addendum...

• 43:22Brian Greene?

  If you're gonna do what you're gonna do, there's nothing I can do to stop you.

• 43:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if I kick your ass right now...

• 43:29Brian Greene?

  That's it.

• 43:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was predetermined...

• 43:30Brian Greene?

  Then it was meant to be.

• 43:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the Big Bang.

• 43:32Brian Greene?

  It was meant to be, my friend.

• 43:37Chuck Nice?

  I don't know how this got so sexy.

• 43:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, Brian, kicking one's ass is not a literal stick your ass in someone's to kick.

• 43:47Heather Berlin?

  Well, I...

• 43:48Chuck Nice?

  But wait...

• 43:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the hood, it means just winning a fight.

• 43:52Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 43:57Chuck Nice?

  But that predetermined...

• 43:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, Brian was born and raised in New York City. So, went to Stuyvesant High School. So he's homegrown.

• 44:03Chuck Nice?

  Oh, nice.

• 44:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Homegrown.

• 44:06Chuck Nice?

  But wait, that predeterminedism that you were just talking about. Okay, let's say for instance that you do accept that and then that leads to fatalism. Was that also predetermined? So the fact that you were given this information that, well, I'm not really in charge of my own decisions. My brain is making these decisions based upon these neurosynaptic transitions that happen within my mind. And so I just let that happen and then I say, okay, because of that, I don't give a damn about anything. And I just let it all go. Was that predetermined?

• 44:35Brian Greene?

  Yep.

• 44:36Heather Berlin?

  Well, do you?

• 44:39Heather Berlin?

  But also to put it in perspective...

• 44:41Chuck Nice?

  Sorry, man. Okay. God, I'm gonna shoot myself tonight.

• 44:46Brian Greene?

  But the, but the, but you see-

• 44:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I gotta just let the record show. Chuck put out a really awesome question right there, and it just got a one-word answer. You could've at least stretched out your answer.

• 44:57Brian Greene?

  I'm, I'm, well-

• 44:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give a guy a break, you know?

• 44:59Brian Greene?

  No, I'm happy to. So, so, you know, often people, when they encounter these ideas, and you must've heard this too, people say, "Okay, then I'm not gonna do anything, I'm gonna sit on my couch, and what does it matter?"

• 45:07Chuck Nice?

  Fatalism.

• 45:08Brian Greene?

  Right? But you see, that's a mixing of two distinct views on one question. You see, if you think that you're making a free choice to sit on your couch, then you feel like, "Well, now I am going to give in to this, and I'm just gonna sit there." But if you do that, it was determined. So, exactly what you're asking. If you choose to sit on your couch, it's not that you made a volitional choice, it was set in place. And if that's what was gonna happen, that's what's gonna happen.

• 45:35Chuck Nice?

  So, but then, by, by that particular, uh, uh, measure, all information that we receive then predetermines everything that we do. That's really what you're saying.

• 45:46Brian Greene?

  Yes, absolutely. Uh, and, and moreover, but, you know, to just give this a little bit more color, I think, you know, your view, Heather's view, and Baba's view-

• 45:55Chuck Nice?

  Don't explain her view!

• 45:56Brian Greene?

  Okay, I won't then. But, but what I heard Baba say.

• 46:01Chuck Nice?

  Now, let me tell you something, Brian. Let me tell you something. I'm predetermined to say that!

• 46:08Brian Greene?

  We spoke about this thing before we came out. But, uh, but Baba's, Baba's description, I think, really, uh, at least helps me, when I think in those terms, which is, it's not that free will is the intuitive one that we're talking about here. Free will really is the fact that we're able to carry out this amazing spectrum of behaviors. We can walk, we can talk, we can sing, we can come up with ideas. The fact that they had an earlier cause, maybe even back at the Big Bang, to me, it doesn't take anything away from creativity. It doesn't take anything away from originality. It doesn't take anything away from having a sense of authorship over your own actions, because you're the most immediate cause of those actions. They emerge through you, through your particles. Your particles in your brain are confi-

• 46:53Brian Greene?

  Figured in such a way that when certain stimuli hit your body, you said and do certain things. The fact that it's determined, who cares?

• 47:01Heather Berlin?

  So there's different views of free will. There's not just determinism and non-determinism. There's compatibilism.

• 47:08Brian Greene?

  Which is what that is.

• 47:09Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, and compatibilism is saying that the world, it is deterministic, but we also have free will within that because of these probabilities. And the other question, getting to what you were saying, is that, so then people throw their hands in the air, "Okay, if there's no such thing as free will, then I can do whatever I want. I can go murder someone. It doesn't matter, it was predetermined." However, however, we have also...

• 47:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  However, Chuck.

• 47:33Heather Berlin?

  Evolved. However, that's really important. We have evolved the capacity to have self-control as other animals. But in particular, we have the largest percentage of prefrontal cortex than any other species, which is the part of the brain that has that ability to control our innate impulses. So we hold people accountable for their actions to the degree to which they have the capacity to have self-control. Therefore, children are less responsible for their crimes than adults or people who have prefrontal lesions or severe psychiatric illness.

• 48:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because children don't have a fully developed...

• 48:04Heather Berlin?

  Prefrontal cortex. Until about the age of 25.

• 48:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And for guys, it's 35.

• 48:09Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, it's a little bit, a little bit more.

• 48:12Brian Greene?

  Or perhaps 70.

• 48:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, we gotta wrap it.