Communicating the Science, with Alan Alda

Neil deGrasse Tyson explores the craft of getting people excited about science with legendary actor and award-winning science communicator Alan Alda, comic co-host Matt Kirshen, neuroscientist Heather Berlin, primatologist Natalia Reagan, and Bill Nye the Science Guy. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/communicating-the-science-with-alan-alda/ Photo Credit: © 2018 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association.

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.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to the hall of the universe. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And tonight, we're featuring my interview with actor and American treasure Alan Alda. And he's probably best known for starring in the TV hit series MASH from the 1970s. It went for 10 years. And he's appeared in more than three dozen movies since then. What you might not know about him is that he's also a vocal advocate for science communication and in sharing the wonder of science with the world. So let's do this.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So my co-host tonight is comedian Matt Kershaw. Matt, welcome back to StarTalk. You host a podcast called Most Likely Science? It's Probably Science is the name, Neil, and you always do this. And I also have an old time friend of StarTalk, Heather Berlin. Heather!

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heather Berlin, she's a neuroscientist and professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital here in New York. And you also hosted several educational programs over the years. So you got your, you got street cred in what we're doing here because we're discussing my recent interviews with Alan Alda. So Alan and I sat down together for a one-on-one chat at the 92nd Street Y, which is a community center in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. And we had a lot of fun on stage talking about his new book and about science communication. So let's check it out.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Well, let's go. Thank you. Good night.

• 1:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Keep the applause when you get them.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Might as well stay and do something.

• 2:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta run with that. I just wanted to comment that this illustration of you has slightly more hair than you currently have.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  But yeah, I usually do my interviews on the radio where I still have my hair.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Alan, it is an honor and a privilege to be on this stage with you. You're native to the area, right? You're a homegrown New Yorker?

• 2:26Speaker 01

  I was born in Manhattan, on 32nd Street and 3rd Avenue.

• 2:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  First time I ever got a hand for being born.

• 2:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, in K through 12, did you have any particular science influences? A good or a bad experience with a math teacher or a science teacher?

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Well, I got polio when I was seven. And so, after that, I had to have a tutor for a while and my parents kept me tutored until the 7th grade. And I had a teacher I didn't like too much. This isn't scientific, except for the fact one day I was drawing a nude figure for the pleasure of the person next to me.

• 3:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For the person next to him, yes.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  And he wrestled it out of my hand and I was really pissed at that, you know? So, when April Fool came around, April Fool's Day, I prepared him a sandwich to eat and luckily, my goldfish had just died.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  So I put the goldfish between two slices of Wonder Bread and gave him a snack. I didn't expect him to actually eat it. I thought he'd lift it up and look at it and say, "Oh, April Fool." But he put it in his mouth and bit on it. And now I'm looking at him and he's got this tail hanging out of his mouth. And I thought, "I gotta tell him before he swallows that." And then I remembered the picture and I thought, "Ah, screw him."

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this was kind of like a science experiment?

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really was.

• 3:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What to do with a dead goldfish?

• 4:02Speaker 01

  But I did do experiments as a kid, you know? When I was 6 years old, I had a card table where I would mix things, mix my mother's face powder and toothpaste to see if I could get it to blow up.

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, did you then put it either back in the toothpaste tube or back in the powder tube?

• 4:20Speaker 01

  No, no, but I once opened up her watch to see how it worked inside, what made the hands go around. And I couldn't get the case back on, so I bit it.

• 4:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, to try to squeeze it back together?

• 4:31Speaker 01

  To squeeze it back together and I left tooth marks so she knew who did it.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  So I was a good scientist, but not a good criminal.

• 4:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Yeah, I think regardless of what the results of an experiment turn out to be, what matters is the curiosity that led to it.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Right, because whichever way it goes, isn't this right as a scientist, whether it goes the way you hoped it would or not, you've made some progress along some path and you've kept your curiosity alive.

• 5:02Matt Kirshen?

  That was great. I loved the start of the clip because you could see the struggle that I believe always goes on in your mind between genial host and scientist. Because you're like, on the one hand, you're like, "Welcome guest", and on the other hand, "I observe that you are bald".

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's not the amount of hair he had, it's just the comparison of the actual amount of hair to the illustration.

• 5:23Matt Kirshen?

  Which is a more important scientific analysis. It's his hair over time.

• 5:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 5:29Matt Kirshen?

  The variation.

• 5:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes. But that's a current book, so I think the illustrator is just lying. I wonder, Heather, is it, in your experience or just in general, do you think it's common that some people develop a kind of scientific curiosity by taking stuff apart that they can't put back together, like watches?

• 5:48Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, I mean, I think we're all born with this innate curiosity, you know, to understand the world around us. And as we develop, unfortunately, we tend to lose that curiosity because, you know, our prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed until we're about 25. And before it's fully developed...

• 6:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And for boys, it's not until they're 40.

• 6:05Heather Berlin?

  Like about 80. Ever, ever.

• 6:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ever, yeah, not ever.

• 6:10Heather Berlin?

  But that kind of is what puts the filter on, you know, and says, "Okay, that's, that behavior isn't, you know, conforming to social norms". But when you're a child, anything goes and you're very open to experience and curious. So you deconstruct things and you ask lots of questions. And I think the really important thing is how do we keep that curiosity alive when we're adults? And I think scientists are really good at that, is always asking questions, always wondering and asking, and even when you get an answer...

• 6:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're adults who never grew up from our childhood.

• 6:38Heather Berlin?

  Pretty much.

• 6:38Matt Kirshen?

  And that's one of the things I love about that clip is you and Alan both describing what's essentially a prank as, "Oh, this is science. We were doing a science experiment".

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's just a matter of perspective, is what you're saying.

• 6:51Matt Kirshen?

  It is, it is. The man is a scientist.

• 6:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I wondered, after that introduction with him, whether there might have been sort of some parallel universe where he might have become a scientist instead of an actor. I just asked. Let's check it out. So if you had this curiosity, was there some fork in the road where you say, "I could be an actor, or I could be a scientist"?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  No, never, no. I was lucky enough to go, I followed my nose. And what I seemed to be good at, I tried to do more of. Although, it's a little crazy for an out-of-work actor. I went nine or 10 years, and we were married and had three children, and I still wasn't making a living acting. But I knew it was for me somehow.

• 7:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's how you know it's love.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know what I figured out early on? That I wanted to act with people I respected, in material, I loved, in front of an audience that got it. And that's all I wanted. It didn't matter to me where that would be or how much money I'd make doing it, as long as I could earn a living.

• 7:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a very pure goal.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Well, I really felt that way. And then I wound up doing that for 11 years on MASH, and it was a wonderful experience.

• 8:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Heather, you saw MASH when it came out. Were you a fan of the show?

• 8:16Heather Berlin?

  Well, I mean, I was probably watching Sesame Street around that time. How old do you think I am?

• 8:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me! It reruns then.

• 8:23Heather Berlin?

  I saw the reruns, yeah. You know, my father is a doctor, and so I kind of always grew up in that kind of medical world. And then I remember when I first saw MASH, this realization that I always had envisioned doctors as being this very austere and serious, and you know, they're doing surgery and they're very focused. And they do that, they were just bantering and telling jokes and making light of it. You know, that these doctors are people too. And also how they use comedy in the face of tragedy as a coping strategy. You know, I thought that was brilliantly done. And this show, I mean, it was, it led the way for all these other shows, like ER and the rest of it. I mean, it was really ahead of its time.

• 8:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this show was on, I think, for 10 seasons. It was nominated for more than 100 Emmys. The show won 14. He won five of them. So it was a highly celebrated and decorated show.

• 9:08Matt Kirshen?

  Funny you mention his Emmys there, Neil, because it's game show time!

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's this with you and the game show?

• 9:16Matt Kirshen?

  They love a game show, look at them.

• 9:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, alright.

• 9:19Heather Berlin?

  Oh wow.

• 9:20Matt Kirshen?

  It's Alan Alda trivia time. All that and a bag of chips.

• 9:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All that, okay, alright.

• 9:27Matt Kirshen?

  We've got some Alan Alda facts or non-facts.

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, alright.

• 9:32Matt Kirshen?

  See if you can work out which ones are true. He didn't sign on to play Hawkeye until six hours before the pilot was shot.

• 9:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh. You know, that's so precise in its delivery of information, I'd say it has to be true.

• 9:47Matt Kirshen?

  It was actually six and a half hours. Ah, no. You are correct, that one is true.

• 9:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, alright, alright.

• 9:56Matt Kirshen?

  He apparently didn't want war to be a backdrop for lighthearted hijinks. He wanted to show that war was a bad place to be.

• 10:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that was his resistance.

• 10:03Matt Kirshen?

  That was his resistance.

• 10:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Until that last moment.

• 10:06Matt Kirshen?

  Fact number two, is Alan Alda the step cousin of Rick Moranis?

• 10:11Heather Berlin?

  I'm gonna have to say false.

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're saying false?

• 10:14Heather Berlin?

  I am.

• 10:15Matt Kirshen?

  Neil, are you?

• 10:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh...

• 10:19Matt Kirshen?

  Agreeing?

• 10:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Again, that's so precise, I'm gonna have to say yes.

• 10:24Matt Kirshen?

  Neil, I'm afraid you are wrong, you are correct.

• 10:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 10:28Matt Kirshen?

  That one is false, no one is a relative of Rick Moranis. He just came into existence.

• 10:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're still studying, still studying his genome.

• 10:36Matt Kirshen?

  As a perfect being.

• 10:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 10:38Matt Kirshen?

  Okay, is Alan Alda the first person to win an Emmy for acting, writing, and directing?

• 10:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heather.

• 10:46Heather Berlin?

  Um, maybe true, maybe true.

• 10:49Matt Kirshen?

  It's a very specific answer. Uh, Heather again has taken it.

• 10:55Matt Kirshen?

  He did, and he once did a cartwheel down the aisle. Possibly the most gymnastic guest we've had, right?

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Younger days.

• 11:01Heather Berlin?

  Are you gonna do that when you win an Emmy, Neil?

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know, no, no, no, I'm not, no, no, no. So, let me ask you, Heather, is there a... He listed three ingredients that helped him find his compass point. What was it, people you respect, material you love, and an audience who gets it? So, do you think that that should or is also the key ingredients for science communication?

• 11:30Heather Berlin?

  You know.

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An audience who gets it?

• 11:32Heather Berlin?

  I'm gonna have to say often it's the opposite.

• 11:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so you're saying it's not a prerequisite that they get it in advance. It's your duty to make them get it by the time you're done.

• 11:42Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, and it's not always material you love also because it's, you know, trying to debunk pseudoscience isn't the most interesting thing to do as a scientist, but I think it's a duty.

• 11:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, coming up next in my interview with Alan Alda, we actually learn how to learn when StarTalk returns.

• 12:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. We're talking about the art and science of science communication, featuring my interview with actor and science lover Alan Alda. I asked Alan about the origins of his lifelong interest in science. Let's check it out.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  I was interested as a very young man in spiritualism and mental telepathy, and I've read hundreds of books on the subject and did experiments. And I was reading a book that was supposed to be... The story was that it had been dictated by a man who was dead 200 years already to a living person through a medium. And he said, "This is how matter is made. It's made of three constituent parts. Ask any physicist." And I said, "I don't recognize this, but there's a physicist who lives across the street. I'll ask him." I said, "Does this make sense to you?" And he said, "I don't know. I haven't heard of anything like that." So then I said, "Well, I'll look in Scientific American. They ought to know."

• 13:08Speaker 01

  And I started reading every article, and then I was introduced to this whole new way of thinking.

• 13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A universe of inquiry.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Based on evidence, based on observation. And I gave up what I thought was lacking in evidence, and I got excited by this quest that science was on to understand how the universe works and how they could understand the deepest things with the tiniest bit of information. They could extrapolate, but not in a crazy way, not just making things up. Not science fiction, but scientific evidence. And it was just so exciting to me.

• 13:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Heather, he transformed in this moment, seeing that evidence mattered.

• 13:53Matt Kirshen?

  This is interesting, because I presume like, just as real scientists, neither of you has ever had scientific theories that you've got from ghosts.

• 14:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, none of mine have come from ghosts.

• 14:05Matt Kirshen?

  Just checking.

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just wanted to verify, right.

• 14:08Matt Kirshen?

  You don't do ghost-based research, so he chose the right path there, going from like, ghost messages to real science.

• 14:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so, let me not even say it's the right path, it's just he discovered what the wrong path was, because it was not supported by objective evidence, and he got excited about it. So Heather, when you sort of discovered the scientific method, did you get excited?

• 14:29Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, I mean, I thought, wow, it was a way to get away from this subjectivity and tap into something bigger and greater than myself, like trying to uncover these truths of the universe through this method.

• 14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That apply to us all.

• 14:44Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 14:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So then, why doesn't everybody get that excited?

• 14:47Heather Berlin?

  You know, I think a lot of people think of science as done for and by other people, like they're not a part of it. So my husband's a science communicator, and he's a rapper, but he raps about science, and he'll talk about findings in neuroscience and say, "We discovered this, and we discovered..."

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your husband's a rapper communicator?

• 15:05Heather Berlin?

  Rapper, science communicator, yes.

• 15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, is that the first time that sentence has ever been uttered in the history of the world?

• 15:10Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, there's absolutely no need for the word "A" rather than "V" to make that description. He's one of many rapper-science communicators out there, but like, he's one of the better ones.

• 15:23Heather Berlin?

  But he'll talk about neuroscience findings in my field and say, "Oh, you know, we discovered this," and I used to call him out, like, "Why are you saying 'we,' you know, you didn't discover it?" And he said, "No, I mean, we as like, the collective we, as like, humanity, you know, as mankind," and then I kind of took a moment.

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He wanted a piece of the action.

• 15:38Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, he did, but you know, I think if we all think about it as it's this unifying, that it's discoveries meant for all of us, it's not like these scientists over there doing this separate thing, and it's a way for us to uncover, you know, these realities.

• 15:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting you say that, because the moonwalkers, when they toured the world, people would come up to them and say, "We did it." These are people from other countries. So there was a collective "we" in the accomplishment of our species.

• 16:07Matt Kirshen?

  And there's truth in that, because none of those accomplishments could have happened without the collective accomplishments of all of humanity.

• 16:16Matt Kirshen?

  Like you couldn't have put humans on the moon if it hadn't been for the discoveries of mathematics by the Greeks and the like everything leading up to that point

• 16:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 16:25Matt Kirshen?

  combined to make it happen.

• 16:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so do you know, did I ever tell you my summary of the scientific method? It's, it's very simple. Do whatever it takes to not fool you into thinking something is true that is not, or that something is not true that is. That's it. Do whatever it takes.

• 16:41Heather Berlin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we are susceptible to these

• 16:43Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, and also, I mean, our brain, our, our brain is just in, interpreting reality in different ways. You know, we have these visual illusions all the time, it's just one example. So what we're perceiving in our mind's eye does not necessarily correlate with reality. We're completely biased. So the scientific method is amazing because it's a way to get around that. You know, to be objective and get away from our own personal biases.

• 17:05Matt Kirshen?

  But here's, I think, I think part of the problem is the way science and the scientific method is presented in pop culture isn't how it really works. Like you're real scientists and the fact is science is generally a, is a painstaking and methodical and careful process.

• 17:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that, right.

• 17:23Matt Kirshen?

  Newton probably thought for years about what makes the universe move and then, but then he went, ah, they'll never get that. I'll just say it was an apple. Oh, an apple hit my head and that's how it just got, but you know, that's how, when you watch mo, any movie in which a scientist is presented, that, that's how it's delivered. Because it's not as fun to watch years of careful measuring and testing and retesting.

• 17:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Heather, I wonder, because Alan mentioned pseudoscience as a, as a first step towards him recognizing what is and is not true. Is that a common, I mean, pseudoscience relates to what you think is true and how your brain is duped

• 18:02Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 18:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  into thinking so. And you study the brain. So is this a common pathway that people take to find real science?

• 18:10Heather Berlin?

  Often, it starts out with a, a belief, a pseudoscience belief. Even with studying the neural basis of consciousness, let's say. I mean, it started with dualism, right? Descartes was, you know, I think, therefore I am, and there was this separate mind. And He thought that it came together in the pineal gland, that the soul came down and met the body through a gland in the brain, but it was something separate. And as we started to understand more about how the brain works, there's less and less room for this sort of belief.

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you made a bigger story than I even thought. Because he's giving his personal story going through pseudoscience. You're giving the larger story, where some of our deepest understandings of how the mind works had their origins in pseudoscientific thinking.

• 18:55Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, I think most science starts out like that. We have some vague idea or concept, and then we start honing it and honing it and honing it. And the more we discover the reality, the more we can separate out the pseudoscience from what's real. I mean, it's both on a grand scale and also personally for me. I mean, one of the reasons that I became a neuroscientist is because I had this fear of death. And, you know, I thought if I...

• 19:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now you don't have a fear of death?

• 19:19Heather Berlin?

  Well, no, I mean, I still don't want to die. But now she knows why she has that fear.

• 19:25Heather Berlin?

  That's crucial. Well, I thought, you know, can I, even if I die, do I still have some sort of mind that I can still exist?

• 19:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does your soul persist?

• 19:34Heather Berlin?

  Right, does my soul persist? And then, you know, where does the soul come from? Oh, the brain, how does the brain make our thoughts? And as I started delving deeper and deeper, this idea that a soul that will go on, I started to lose that belief. But I became fascinated and in awe by how the human brain works and how it gives us this capacity to understand ourselves.

• 19:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And his version of that experiment was reading Scientific American, which took him to a whole new place. Well, speaking of Scientific American, Alan Alda's next great TV project after MASH was as host of the PBS series Scientific American Frontiers. And he hosted that for over a decade. And what does he do? He meets scientists and asks them questions, and he brings a sort of a childhood curiosity into the lab. And so I asked him about the success of that series. Let's check it out.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  We did something that's not usually done on that kind of a show. These weren't conventional interviews. I didn't go in with a list of questions. I went in just with curiosity and my own natural ignorance. I had plenty of that to go around. You know, curiosity plus ignorance, I think, is a good combination.

• 20:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a brilliant combination, yes.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  And you gotta know that you don't know.

• 20:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  That's really helpful. But that led to just a conversational approach. And if I didn't understand them, I didn't pretend I did. I just kept after them until I got it. And that changed them. That made them look at me in a personal way. The tone of voice became personal. The language they used, the terms they were using were not technical terms anymore because they had to make me understand.

• 21:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sure they weren't thinking, "How do I get this guy out of here as fast as I can? Let me try hard to get him to understand."

• 21:17Speaker 01

  They would sweat bullets. They'd think, "You don't get it yet? That's not it?" Okay, because we had, you know, we shot a lot of stuff and then cut it down to where I looked like I got it an hour sooner.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  But one scientist was wonderful. She was really wonderful and conversational with me. And then she remembered that this was just like a lecture she gave. And she turned away from me and looked into the camera and started lecturing the camera. And her tone of voice changed completely. It wasn't personal anymore. The vocabulary changed. I couldn't understand what she was saying. So I coaxed her back with questions. She came back to me. And then we got warm again, and it was conversational. That was a real lesson, that if we don't make this contact and really observe each other, let the other person in, it's not gonna be, it's not gonna lead to something lifelike happening. It won't be alive.

• 22:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Matt, ignorance is usually something people don't like to admit to.

• 22:21Matt Kirshen?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So on your podcast, is ignorance a part of how you run the show?

• 22:26Matt Kirshen?

  Well, we put probably in the title for a good reason. And yeah, absolutely. Like, we're lucky enough that we have this listenership that is half-science people who like comedy and half comedy people who like science. And what we encourage and what often happens is every episode, we get emails and some of them are, "Hey, here's something interesting that you should talk about on the next episode." And then the other half are, "Here's what you got wrong on the last episode." And that's wonderful. Like, it's really exciting when we talk about earthquakes and then a seismologist writes in to go, "Well, here's how it really is." And we get to give their explanation of what we got wrong.

• 22:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what it means is you are honest enough and candid enough to actually celebrate the fact that your ignorance was corrected.

• 23:06Matt Kirshen?

  I think so. And I think there's a line to be drawn, though, isn't there as well? Because I think you can be too proud of ignorance, too. Like, "Ah, I don't know anything. Ah, this stuff's all mumbo jumbo to me." But I think there's sort of creative ignorance. There's sort of inquisitive ignorance, where we're like, "Yeah, I don't know this stuff, but please tell me." And like, I think Adam puts it perfectly. Just keep telling me until I tip over from ignorance to knowledge.

• 23:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As opposed to brazen ignorance.

• 23:32Matt Kirshen?

  There we go, yes.

• 23:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where you don't know what you're talking about, but you think you do, and you're up in somebody's face about it.

• 23:36Matt Kirshen?

  Are these science-y professors with their big words and ideas? Yeah, no, we're like, "No, tell us, because we don't know." And your field is full of equations, which, again, that's, I think, one of the things you do well, is you are great at converting those equations into understandable ideas for the general populace. So, like, for example, what does a scientist mean by E equals mc squared?

• 24:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are describing the equivalence of mass and energy in the universe. They're two sides of the same coin, even though in our lives, we experience them as something different from one another.

• 24:14Matt Kirshen?

  And that's great. And for F equals ma, going back to a previous generation.

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's Isaac Newton. Yeah, yeah. Force equals the mass of an object times the acceleration. So this tells you how much force is required to accelerate an object of a given mass.

• 24:30Matt Kirshen?

  And, uh, so, okay, switch it up.

• 24:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isaac Newton.

• 24:33Matt Kirshen?

  What would a non-scientist mean by, uh, Netflix and chill?

• 24:37Heather Berlin?

  I have it. I got it.

• 24:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, because that's an equation. Netflix and chill.

• 24:41Matt Kirshen?

  Exactly, but that's a layperson's equation.

• 24:43Heather Berlin?

  Oh, a scientist would say, care to copulate under recreational pretenses?

• 24:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh.

• 24:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, so what works at the bar? That's what I wanted to know.

• 24:59Matt Kirshen?

  It depends on the bar. And Neil, I believe your tweets are amongst your most effective. I think you've got an example for us.

• 25:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, do I? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I just had this thought. In a mirror, you can only kiss yourself on the lips. It's just one of these fundamental truths of the world.

• 25:18Matt Kirshen?

  It is, no matter how much you try and turn at the last minute.

• 25:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you can't fake delight being, you know?

• 25:26Heather Berlin?

  Profound, profound, Neil.

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, up next, Alan Alda, American icon, will explain what it means to actually listen to one another for change on StarTalk.

• 25:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk from the Hall of the Universe of the American Museum of Natural History. We're featuring my interview with actor Alan Alda. And that interview was held live on stage at the 92nd Street Y, right here at New York City. And Alan showed me an exercise he does to help teach science communication. Check it out.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  The mirror exercise is a very basic improv exercise where I'm looking in the mirror and you're my mirror. And you have to be totally in sync with me. Whatever, however I move, you can't let there be a lag, because there's no lag with a mirror. It's exactly the same.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except for the speed of light time delay.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  If anybody notices that, we're dead.

• 26:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a superhero person.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and what this is so good at implanting in people's minds as they begin to study communication is it's the leader's responsibility to make sure that the follower is following. You lead me now.

• 26:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Little fast, I can't follow.

• 27:12Matt Kirshen?

  That is awesome.

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I got Matt Kirshen here, my comedic co-host, Matt.

• 27:16Matt Kirshen?

  Hey.

• 27:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I got Heather Berlin, neuroscientist. And joining the panel, I have Natalia Reagan. Natalia, welcome.

• 27:24Speaker 04

  Thank you, thank you for having me.

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is not your first StarTalk rodeo?

• 27:29Speaker 04

  No, not my first rodeo.

• 27:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're an anthropologist and also a comedian and a writer? I'm just curious about something. There's... Weren't you part of an improv troupe?

• 27:38Speaker 04

  Guilty, guilty as hell.

• 27:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because improv, you gotta do some of this, right?

• 27:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, oh god, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, you know, living minds. It can be pretty painful sometimes.

• 27:47Matt Kirshen?

  That was your first time doing the mirror? You've done it plenty, right?

• 27:49Speaker 04

  Oh god.

• 27:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's my first time doing it, yeah.

• 27:51Matt Kirshen?

  You missed the perfect opportunity to kiss Alan Alda on the lips.

• 27:57Speaker 04

  I would have paid good money to see that.

• 28:00Speaker 04

  But it is a way to connect with your audience. And a big part of improv is getting your partner to say yes and. It's all about yes and, yes and. And when you're dealing with an audience, you want your audience, when you're connecting with them, to say yes and, yes and? Like, what's next? You want them to keep up with you. And a lot of academics and teachers, lecturers, already do improv. Because, you know, they're always having to adapt to what their audience is. If you're teaching a group at JPL about astrophysics...

• 28:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jeff Repulsion Labs.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Exactly. You can talk about, you can use them big words. Where if you're at a, you know, monster truck rally, or a town hall meeting, or a high school, you have to speak in their terms. And that doesn't necessarily mean talking down to them. It just means speaking their language.

• 28:45Matt Kirshen?

  So, there's a guy in Los Angeles, his name is Ori Amir, and he's a neuroscientist and comedian. And he put a bunch of comedians in an fMRI scanner and made us come up with funny captions to cartoons to work out what was firing when jokes created. And I was one of those people, so we have, I believe...

• 29:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, really?

• 29:03Matt Kirshen?

  This is my brain.

• 29:06Matt Kirshen?

  This is my brain trying to come up. And the way the experiment works was we had to... It was basically a caption competition. It was come up with a funny punchline to these captions. And then as a control, both think of an unfunny caption and think of nothing.

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, does that mean that if that part of your brain were damaged, you would stop being funny?

• 29:24Matt Kirshen?

  I think... I mean, some people on the internet would argue that it was damaged a long time ago. But, but yes, I believe so.

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heather, do you... can you...

• 29:31Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, so what they found, and they actually looked at professional comedians and amateurs as well, and found there were some differences there. But in general, when comedians are spontaneously creating, they get increased activation of what's called the temporal occipital junction, or TOJ there, which has to do with cross-referencing information, right? And also, so making these novel associations between ideas.

• 29:51Matt Kirshen?

  And that makes sense, because generally, a punchline... I mean, the sort of logic of a joke is it's often finding a logical connection between two...

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Otherwise unassociated things.

• 30:02Heather Berlin?

  Exactly. And then you have activation in the medial prefrontal cortex, which is sort of the thinking about, trying to get at that connection. And the amateurs actually needed more prefrontal cortex activation in order to come up with a funny punchline. And finally, you have activation in what's called the nucleus accumbens, the pleasure center of the brain. And in comedians, they actually had that activation before they were about to say something funny, even before they even knew what it was gonna be. They're getting a little bit of dopamine.

• 30:27Matt Kirshen?

  That definitely makes sense.

• 30:28Heather Berlin?

  That makes so much sense.

• 30:29Matt Kirshen?

  My girlfriend calls me out on this sometimes. Like, I'll be sitting at dinner or whatever, and she'll go like, "You've got your 'you just thought of a funny' tweet face."

• 30:40Matt Kirshen?

  And that's exactly what that is. That's like, "I'm about to say a funny."

• 30:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Alder, of course, had no access to FMRI. So he didn't otherwise have this kind of backdrop to think about how to communicate science. He came to communicating science through his field of acting. And so I asked him about his training as an actor and how that shaped his modes of communication in real life. Let's check it out.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  You don't say your line because it's in the script.

• 31:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  It is in the script and you remember it. But you say it because the other guy does something or says something that makes you say it.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Compels you for that to be the only thing that belongs in that moment.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Exactly, and the energy that comes out of that, the way it just came out of you because you were finishing my sentence and you were reacting to what I just said. That energy is real. It's not mechanical, whereas if I said to myself, "Now I'm gonna be very energized when I say this line." And I get very energized and it sounds like somebody's talking into a garbage can somewhere. Whereas if I really let myself respond to you, my performance exists in your eyes. It comes out of what's coming from you. If I let myself be changed by you. And that got me interested in the idea. It's a little radical, maybe not everybody can go for this. That I don't think we're really listening

• 32:00Speaker 01

  unless we're willing to be changed by the other person.

• 32:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, some part of you has to be susceptible.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, not, that doesn't mean you're gonna change, but you're willing to change. If it really is something that strikes you, that really hits you. But if you say, "This person doesn't know anything. This person doesn't believe what I believe. I'm not even gonna, I'm gonna let them finish talking and then I'm gonna tell them the real story."

• 32:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not communicating.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Not communicating, it's not listening. It's just waiting for your turn. It's dueling monologues.

• 32:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Maita, you create product.

• 32:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is your knowledge or evidence that people are listening?

• 32:51Speaker 04

  That's an excellent question. For me, like Alan mentioned, for me, I wanna make sure we never insult the audience. And I feel like your field and my field have something in common because humans are obsessed with two things. Ourselves, anthropology, and our place in the universe. And we're at a time when we have, scientists have an ethical responsibility to teach the world what we know. You know, I can talk to people about how... If you look at the human genome, there's not very much variation within our species. Therefore, we're one big family. And you can take a step back and look at the earth and say, "Look, it's a beautiful, blue, green, brown orb with no lines between countries." So it's an excellent time to really have that discourse, have that conversation, make the eye contact, and not talk down to each other.

• 33:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. So Natalia, thank you for joining us on this segment of StarTalk.

• 33:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Up next, actor Alan Alda explains his theory of the existence of dark empathy in the cosmos when StarTalk returns.

• 33:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk from the Coleman Hall of the Universe. We're featuring my interview with award-winning actor and science communicator Alan Alda. And he explained a communication term that he coined called "dark empathy." Let's check it out.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  It's a little like dark energy.

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A little like dark energy. What is that?

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Well, in that dark, in the same way that dark energy is the opposite of gravity. And gravity's pulling us in to some cozy connection, and dark energy's pushing us apart to more distance. It's a little like that. A lot of people consider empathy to be the same thing as sympathy or commiseration, to be on the side of the other person, doing good. Some people have said, "The more empathy you have, the better a person you are." I don't think so. I think it's a tool, and it can be used in a good way or a not-so-good way.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  It's an essential tool, I think, for communication, because you've got to know what's going on in the other person's head to communicate with them. However, it's a tool for good communication, but it's also a tool for working against people. For instance, bullies know what you're feeling, and they can twist your feelings and make you hurt. And they do it because they can read you pretty well. They know just how far to go.

• 35:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you saying bullies would make good psychologists? Is this what you're saying?

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Well, some may be. I don't know. So here's an example, that's like in a marriage, right? Guy is up late, it's after midnight, his wife's already in bed. And he notices, there's a huge pile of dishes in the sink. And he thinks, I guess I ought to do something about that. What are the odds, that he'll do something? Not so great, but maybe if he uses a little empathy, and he says, "What's my wife gonna feel like, when she wakes up tomorrow and sees those dishes in the sink?" And he actually connects with her feeling of dismay. Chances are, he might wash the dishes.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  And chances are, he might find out doing the dishes is foreplay.

• 36:20Matt Kirshen?

  That's beautiful, isn't it?

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, I guess so.

• 36:23Heather Berlin?

  My husband does the dishes every night. It's true though, no, but it's true, it's true.

• 36:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I do the dishes, like, half the time.

• 36:33Heather Berlin?

  Alright, that's not bad.

• 36:34Matt Kirshen?

  But you commit to it.

• 36:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Heather, were you a bully?

• 36:39Heather Berlin?

  No, no.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you could have been, because you're a psychologist.

• 36:41Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, no, we use our powers for good, not evil.

• 36:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 36:47Heather Berlin?

  Well, I mean, you know, being able to have what we call theory of mind, you know, understand what another person is thinking, and get into their skin.

• 36:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you learn that?

• 36:58Heather Berlin?

  There's some, it's too much.

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some people are really good. Some people are really good, and others, really not good.

• 37:04Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, I mean, there are people, you know, on autism spectrum, or with autism, who have great difficulty understanding what other people are thinking. So I think, there's a genetic predisposition.

• 37:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So clearly then, there are parts of the brain that serve this.

• 37:14Heather Berlin?

  Absolutely, yeah, I mean, we know that there are certain neural circuits that are involved in theory of mind. And we can give people theory of mind tests, and watch what parts of the brain light up.

• 37:22Matt Kirshen?

  So psychopaths don't, aren't able to empathize with people?

• 37:26Heather Berlin?

  Psychopaths don't care. So they might know what you might be feeling and they might not.

• 37:32Matt Kirshen?

  And what's the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath?

• 37:34Heather Berlin?

  They're the same thing, they're different names.

• 37:36Matt Kirshen?

  Okay.

• 37:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but wait, but in that, in that vein, if a sociopath or psychopath, they're really messing with you. Doesn't that mean they have empathy? To know that what they're doing fully messes with you? Empathy shouldn't mean they're nice to you. It means they understand you on a level that they can exploit that knowledge.

• 37:58Heather Berlin?

  Understanding how a person works or their motives or whatnot is different than feeling another's pain. Right? An empath would really be like, you know what? If I do something maniacal to you, it might make you feel bad. And I know what that might feel like. I don't want to do that.

• 38:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, actor Alan Alda actually founded a school and it's called the Alan Alda School of Science Communication. And you know what he does? He uses acting and improv to improve the communication skills of actual scientists or graduate students. And so we discussed the connection between learning and these other talents that he brings to the table. Let's check it out. You have a particularly acute sense of comedic timing and comedic sensibilities. And personally, I have found that when people smile, I think they're more eager to learn. And that must have been something very important.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  That's an interesting thing you said. Would you go into that a little more? What do you mean by that?

• 38:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who's the interviewer? Can I? Would you let me interview you? What?

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Well, I'm curious. Why do you say when they smile, they're... What gives you that impression? That's an interesting thing to say.

• 39:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, I've found that if something makes you smile, you come back for more of that because you enjoy the feeling of having smiled.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  That's good. That's great.

• 39:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You seek more.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  I have a similar feeling that when we're laughing, we're vulnerable. We're seldom more open and vulnerable than when we're laughing. And I think, and I've interviewed some, uh, some science teachers, professors, who, especially one I talked to when I was writing the book, who said he feels his secret weapon is humor. When he gets them laughing, they're, they're more absorbent.

• 39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Absorbent.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  You know, for the information.

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I get that.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting. I mean, empirically, I agree with that.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's your experience.

• 39:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, oh, definitely, definitely. And it happens that I find the universe to be a hilarious place, so.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  That's funny. I'm really glad I'm stuck on Earth. Because, to me, stars and supernovas and all that stuff out there, they are fiery cauldrons of destruction, as far as I'm concerned.

• 40:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Indeed, they are. Yes.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  So, I don't want to go to Mars. I don't want to go no place. I want to stay right here.

• 40:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you want to go to Mars if one of those asteroids is headed towards Earth?

• 40:29Speaker 01

  No, I want you to get something to push it out of there.

• 40:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that'll.

• 40:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, coming up, Bill Nye the Science Guy, my good buddy, gives us his thoughts on sharing the wonders of science when StarTalk returns.

• 40:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back. This is StarTalk. Tonight, we've been getting schooled in science communication in my interview with actor, comedian, and educator Alan Alda. Let's check it out.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  You know what's interesting about communicating science? There was a study done, I think at the University of Pennsylvania, where they studied what were the most commonly emailed stories in the science section of the New York Times. You might think they were about health, about medicine, fitness, things that affect our bodies every day. The most emailed stories were about the wonder and awe found in confronting the universe. That sense of wonder and awe, we all have. We go out at night, we look at the stars.

• 41:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're telling me?

• 41:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You forget who's interviewing you?

• 41:52Speaker 01

  And he said I had comic time.

• 41:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ladies and gentlemen, join me in thanking Alan Alda.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Thank you, thank you so much.

• 42:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alan Alda. That's wonderful. He's amazing. So Heather, what are your thoughts on the future of science education?

• 42:13Heather Berlin?

  Despite, you know, what might be going on politically, I think that we are in a kind of renaissance of, I mean, you know, being-

• 42:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But why isn't it catching on in science policy?

• 42:23Heather Berlin?

  I know that there's a lot of anti-science sentiment, you know, in this country that gets a lot of play, but if you look at the other side of the coin, I mean, look at the science march that we had. I mean, all these people, when have we ever had a science march before?

• 42:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, never, yeah.

• 42:36Heather Berlin?

  So, I mean, I'm optimistic.

• 42:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we never really needed it.

• 42:39Heather Berlin?

  Right, yeah. I agree. That's true too. But I mean, the future is getting more people, it's grassroots, you know, it's now we have the internet, we have a place for nerds to go, where, you know, when I was growing up, there was no place, right?

• 42:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 42:52Heather Berlin?

  So I think that-

• 42:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We had no community.

• 42:53Heather Berlin?

  Exactly.

• 42:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was the woods.

• 42:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, before we wrap up this episode of StarTalk, let me catch up with Bill Nye the Science Guy, my buddy, and just to hear his thoughts on communicating science.

• 43:08Speaker 05

  Greetings from the beach out here in Cali. Now, science communication is what guys like Alan Alda and Neil and I do to get people like you excited about the world around us. And when I stand on the beach, I can't help but think about the cosmos and our place within it. The ocean is vast, but the cosmos is somehow vaster. Just how vast it is is hard to understand. But I had quite a communicator for a third grade teacher. Mrs. Cochran told us, "There are more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand on a beach." And

• 43:50Speaker 05

  I remember thinking, "That is incredible. How could there be that many of anything?" But it turns out, that was an underestimate. Modern astronomers estimate there are about 100 times as many stars as there are grains of sand on the earth. Beach and deserts combined. When I think about that, I am humbled and empowered. I am overwhelmed and relaxed, both at the same time. The key is communicating that. Back to you, Neil. Good luck.

• 44:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks, Bill.

• 44:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'm old enough to remember where you would go all day, and no matter what channel on television you turn, there was no science there. So it was easy at the time to think of science as this subject you were taught in school. And then when you're done, you move on to other topics. And that science was something separate and distinct from anything you might care about. I celebrate in modern times the fact that any time of day or night, you can channel surf and land on science programming. There are science podcasts. There are entire movies based on actual science premises.

• 45:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With marquee actors and marquee directors and marquee budgets. For me, the greatest value is to see that science is not this silo that you can walk around. Science is everywhere. It is not simply part of life. It is not simply part of the universe. It is life. And it is the universe. That is a cosmic perspective. You've been watching StarTalk.

• 45:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. As always, I bid you to keep looking up!