Making Science Cool, with Jeff Goldblum

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice chat with Jeff Goldblum about Jurassic Park, science, and more—joined by Bill Nye, a paleomammalogist and other experts.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey StarTalkians, Neil here. You're about to listen to an episode specially drawn from our archives to serve your cosmic curiosities. Check it out. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My co-host tonight is comedian Chuck Nice. Hey, hey! Chuck in the house!

• 0:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tweeting a Chuck Nice comic. Thank you, sir, yes. And also joining us tonight is a colleague of mine at the museum paleontologist Ross McPhee. Ross!

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Ross!

• 0:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, boom!

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're curator of mammals right here at the American Museum of Natural History, and you travel the world digging up fossils to learn about extinct animals. Is that like what your business card says?

• 1:02Speaker 01

  It should. It should. That'd be a good line.

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, very good. So, thanks for joining us on StarTalk. We're featuring my interview with geek actor Jeff Goldblum. And he plays scientists with a swagger, right? From the blockbuster film Independence Day and, of course, in Jurassic Park. So, I asked him how his sort of iconic scientist character in Jurassic Park came to be. Let's check it out.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Well, it was beautifully scripted, you know. I'm sure you read Michael Crichton's book.

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  You know, and then Steven Spielberg, and they'd written a beautiful script. So, it was really that character. But I did try to influence, I did have this idea that, you know, I could hip it up a little.

• 1:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, right, because there's swagger, you know.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  I tried.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Swagger isn't always in the script.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, it was maybe a little bit. Richard Attenborough has that line, you know, "I bring a scientist, you bring a rock star." So, somebody calls me a rock star. So, I thought, hey, I have license to shop for a jacket that I think will be right. I kind of had, tried lobbying for a few articles of clothing.

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What year was that? That was 90?

• 2:11Speaker 01

  93.

• 2:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. That may have been the first ever... Badass geek person portrayed in movies. I mean, think about that.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Well.

• 2:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you are, brilliant mathematician.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're glib, you're clever, you've got philosophical points.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're good-looking, and you got a little, kind of, you got presence. This was breaking stereotypes, I think.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so too, and it's important. I'm sure you have feelings about this. I'm passionate that smart people not be undervalued.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, smart people have feelings too, and they have attitudes and things that are never, not previously ever explored.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Right, and their contribution of intelligence is in itself sexy and valuable and...

• 3:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good point, intelligence as a point of sexy.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're using geeky, I see now, you're, because you're using geeky to kind of agree with the conventional thinking of geeky, smart is geeky. I don't, I don't call a smart person a geek, you know. Geek is originally the term, is usually, it originally comes from circus life, you know. Geeks were the people who bit, for entertainment, bit heads off of live chickens.

• 3:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know that.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Well, I think that's where it comes from, and then it became, you know, a smart person. But, you know, the next logical step is the movie Idiocracy.

• 3:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Where anybody who can read a little bit is called, "Oh, you're a sissy," or "You're a geek," you know, that's where that goes.

• 3:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 3:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a future where there was the dumbing down of the population of the world.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  We see where that goes and could go further. No, no, we must uphold and champion, as you do better than I do, intelligence as beautiful, sexy, powerful, virile.

• 4:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, did he, did he, did he pull us off in the movie?

• 4:11Chuck Nice?

  I don't know, man, I think, I think he's super sexy, you know what I mean?

• 4:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 4:15Chuck Nice?

  Did you notice his reaction, though, when you, when you said he was sexy?

• 4:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I said, "Good-looking."

• 4:20Chuck Nice?

  You said, and he was like, "Mm."

• 4:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Ross.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What was your reaction to Jurassic Park when it came out?

• 4:33Speaker 03

  Implausible, but great.

• 4:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Impossible?

• 4:36Speaker 03

  Implausible.

• 4:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not impossible.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  Oh, well, you want to make a fine distinction. You're not going to bring dinosaurs back with ancient DNA.

• 4:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're such a spoiled sport.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  So what? The show, as science fiction, emphasis on fiction, was fantastic. In fact, science, in a real sense, did play a role. Things were explained. It wasn't just assumed.

• 4:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, right. There was that descriptive section where they talk about evolution and embryos and this sort of thing. So that had some academic value.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think so.

• 5:09Chuck Nice?

  No, you don't, Rob.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know.

• 5:13Chuck Nice?

  I don't know why you...

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just the way he said that.

• 5:15Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. You just let us know exactly how you really felt.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Here's what I liked about Jeff Goldblum. He put the badass in glasses. Thank you. Thank you.

• 5:30Chuck Nice?

  That's called bad glass.

• 5:33Speaker 03

  So professional scientists have the reputation that they can't talk to the public, right? You've got this guy, quite in contrast to...

• 5:40Chuck Nice?

  Rock star.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. But I don't think that's true. And I think it's increasingly true that we're very interested in talking to the public. And whether that comes through from interviews like this that we're going to have, or through movies, there's an interest, there's practically even a need for people to be better informed about science. It's just interesting. And that's the point.

• 6:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how about the part where they're just dusting a fossil and the fossil just pops out of the ground?

• 6:13Speaker 03

  It can happen.

• 6:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really? Because I've seen videos of you guys. That's a hard thing, getting a fossil out of the ground.

• 6:18Speaker 03

  It can be. It really depends. So if you're talking Cretaceous dinosaurs, it's mostly going to be rock. Jackhammers are the sorts of things that you need most of the time. But I deal with much more recently extinct organisms and...

• 6:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like the ones from the movie The Ice Age? Right?

• 6:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. Perhaps not cartoon characters. I was thinking more 10,000 B.C.

• 6:45Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 6:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 6:47Chuck Nice?

  Not as much fun as the little squirrel with the nut, but that's okay.

• 6:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You had saber-toothed tigers then, didn't you? No?

• 6:56Speaker 03

  Ten thousand years ago, we certainly did.

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  There are many species that have disappeared.

• 7:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We were coming out of the Ice Age. So, I just arrived at this museum when Jurassic Park came out. So I only got sort of bits of the mood and emotion. Did we see institutionally a rise in public interest towards dinosaurs after Jurassic Park came out?

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Absolutely. You know, up until that time mammals sort of ruled in paleontology. Dinosaurs were seen as kind of an evolutionary dead end. But with Jurassic Park and the animations showing that dinosaurs were, in some cases, extremely athletic, able to move around at great speed and things like that, bite lawyers. This really changed things.

• 7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So since then, what are some big discoveries? In the last 20 years, let's say?

• 7:47Speaker 03

  For things that I'm working on, the biggest change, I guess, would be moving not away from bones, but toward genetics. So that we're able to get ancient DNA from things that are not too old and do increasingly a lot with them. We're learning a heck of a lot about species that are no longer with us as to basic physiological processes and things of this nature that we never would have guessed we could get.

• 8:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just from bones?

• 8:16Speaker 03

  From bones. There'd be no way.

• 8:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in Jurassic Park 1, there's the now-famous line uttered by Jeff Goldblum, which was, "You scientists are so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop and think if they should." So let's start out with Jeff's reaction to the ethical implications of that line. Check it out.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  It's very interesting. I want to talk to you about that and canvas your feeling, because I'm interested in seeing what I can contribute to that conversation.

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would be nice, because you started it.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  So maybe you can help me, maybe before I leave here, you can even enhance my thinking about it. So here's what my current thinking is that... Well, I'll just tell you. What's happened in this last, in this next version that's coming out without ruining anything, we talk about some issues that came up in the one 25 years ago. I talk again about science and ethics.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Issues, I like that, how polite.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dinosaurs eating people, we call these issues.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Well, that's true, but especially these issues that I am thinking about and my character talks about, which is ethics around science and all that. That line in the one 20 years ago, maybe now we wanna tweak it a little bit, where there's no ambiguity in what we're saying, which is that there's, we shouldn't deprecate science at all. We shouldn't indict science at all. And we tweaked my little speech, so I say something about, whether it's still in the movie, glorious science. I say something about the wonderful investigative curiosity and the continuum of the scientific approach is a wonderful thing, but it's the exploitation and the non-ethical use of it for profit,

• 9:55Speaker 01

  screwy entertainment, cheap entertainment, heaven forbid militarism, et cetera, nationalism, you know, et cetera, that must be fought with every breath in our body. Something like that.

• 10:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All of those thoughts went through my head when I heard you utter that line 20 years ago.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Really? Except you, one could think, hey, scientists, yeah, these scientists, these Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein's, they gotta be, you gotta watch those guys.

• 10:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I said to myself, he's blaming scientists.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Oh, good.

• 10:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in that first one.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Which I don't wanna do now, right?

• 10:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said, scientists don't actually have the power that you think. Their actual power comes from governments and legislations and funding sources that have priorities that go beyond what a scientist does in the lab. And then they decide how they wanna use it. But I said, all right, it's a movie, we gotta let the line go.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, but now...

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I said to myself at the time.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Yes, see if you like, I don't know if you've seen it yet, but see if you like this new one, where I think we're clearer and we tweaked that, so, don't blame science.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ross, how do you feel about the urge of some to blame science for the fallout of the applications of science in the world?

• 11:11Speaker 03

  Here's how I feel about it. It's yin yang. You want progress? Progress comes from science. Can it be misused? Of course it can. And there is nothing that an individual can do except be well-informed on what the issues are. So when this kind of misuse does come up, like in weaponization of space, that people speak out against it, that they're an informed electorate.

• 11:34Chuck Nice?

  I'm blaming scientists.

• 11:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 11:37Speaker 03

  Well, you can do that.

• 11:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I saw him do it.

• 11:40Speaker 03

  But it's like this young man said, they're powerless. Their products are used by people who do have power.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So do you have issues with Goldblum movies for this reason?

• 11:51Chuck Nice?

  No! I just love the fact that he called getting eaten by dinosaurs "issues."

• 11:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Ross, in your field, do you have controversial ethical issues going on right now? And I think specifically about, because you said now it's a genetic analysis, not just what bones fit together in a puzzle. So how about cloning, gene editing, that sort of thing?

• 12:16Speaker 03

  Here's the idea, that we can now go into the genome, to the genetic material of a species, and alter it in a way that is favorable to us, or perhaps favorable to the organism, it depends on what the problem is. So in a way, you're playing god. Now, that brings up all kinds of issues about what the heck you think you're doing. My view of it is, nature by itself is not subject to human ethics. It's not that there's good and there's bad, it's just the way it is.

• 12:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It just is.

• 12:48Speaker 03

  But to the degree that we interfere with nature, which is inevitable, given the numbers of us on the planet, you have to ask the question, where do you want to stop? And where I personally want us to stop... Is to intervene as little as possible in the parts of the planet where we haven't made a complete screw up. So that includes parts of the ocean, it also includes parts of the continents where humans are not as ubiquitous as they are in most other places. Make those sanctuaries, make them safe, keep us out.

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No humans allowed. No humans allowed. Beautiful, that's beautiful. Yeah, that's very nice. Yeah.

• 13:42Speaker 04

  I'm Nicholas Costella and I'm a proud supporter of StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  De-extinction, would you bring back T-Rex? The dodo bird?

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Or none of the above? I think the world has to work for everyone. Nice, very important. I think that's a good credo. Very important. The world should work forever. Let's make a world that works for everyone, whatever works means. And I think we can, we know what that means. Nothing mysterious about that. Works for everyone. So, in thinking just about the, and this is not to poo-poo my successful participation in the successful franchise, but, no, no. Well, my character says this is a bad idea. It's a bad idea. Evolution had its say. Darwin is a hero of mine. Evolution had its say and the dinosaurs went out from the universe. That's their shakes. A story that the universe told and now it's our turn and like that. And yes, especially, you want to bring it back for...

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Because you want to make an amusement park? You want to sell some tickets? Because, you know, I would say no. I would say no about that certainly. Now, if it's just pure knowledge, like splitting the atom, is there something about resurrecting that means we could bring back everybody who's ever died? I guess. Or every species that's ever been. Then, you know, we'd have to talk about that. But before we get into dinosaurs, aren't there, aren't the, aren't elephants, aren't all the species, not only the beautiful human species, but every other species, aren't they infinitely mysterious and magical and worthy of our respect and awe and protection? Elephants, you know what we're doing with elephants? That are, if we're just talking about,

• 15:49Speaker 01

  hey, we like dinosaurs because they're big. So we have big creatures here and in the oceans and all the creatures there. Shouldn't we tend to those first and make sure that we protect them? Not put them in zoos, not make money off of them, but just make sure we all, that it works for everybody?

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we all get along.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  That would be my moral instinct. I'm no doctor.

• 16:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you played one on.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  I played one on TV.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Very nice. Very nice.

• 16:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ross, you specialize in this, among your multiple specialties that I know of. One of them is extinction and de-extinction. So tell me how de-extinction would work.

• 16:33Speaker 03

  Very simply, de-extinction is the idea of bringing back species, populations, that are no longer with us because they disappeared. So think woolly mammoths, we've been talking about woolly mammoths as a good example. The last of them died out on continents about 10,000 years ago. There were remnant populations on islands until about 4,000 years ago, but they're gone. And the question accordingly is, were we responsible? A lot of people think so. So do we owe it to woolly mammoths to the degree that we can bring them back to bring them back?

• 17:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we were accountable. Whereas we're not accountable for the death of T. rex, so let him stay dead.

• 17:13Speaker 03

  That's right. Well, it goes beyond that.

• 17:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's right. Did you hear? He said dead. That's right.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  It goes beyond that because ancient DNA, which is the building blocks that you'd have to use for the experiments to bring the animals back, has a life of no more than a million years. So you're not going to go back 66-plus million years and bring back the dinosaurs. That was always the fundamental problem with Jurassic Park.

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so let's just imagine, if we could bring back T. rex, should we?

• 17:45Speaker 03

  What's it gonna do? What's its ecosystem function? It's gonna need lawyers. Okay. What else is it gonna do? And the answer is nothing. It has no place.

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're right. It'll be in a zoo.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  It has no... Yes, exactly. So it's going to be an exhibit, like we have here at the American Museum, except everything here is dead and stuffed, which is a difference.

• 18:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you might consider, Britton, if we are entirely responsible, our cave, our troglodyte ancestors are responsible for the extinction of the woolly mammoth, you feel some guilt there, I guess.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  Well, that's the ethical question.

• 18:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See, I don't think we should bring it back because here woolly mammoth, they were thriving during the Ice Age. We're gonna bring it back just in time for global warming. What the hell is that about?

• 18:33Chuck Nice?

  They will be so uncomfortable! My god, it's hot. What have you done with the place?

• 18:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, yeah, right. So Chuck, would you bring back animals, Chuck?

• 18:46Chuck Nice?

  I would bring back animals, but quite frankly, I like food. And so, as a foodie, I would only bring back those that are delicious.

• 18:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, well, how would you know what was delicious?

• 18:58Chuck Nice?

  I don't know. That is why I have a little game that I would like to show you right now, where Ross will tell me if these animals are delicious.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are they tasty?

• 19:06Chuck Nice?

  Are they tasty? Could we bring it back? To eat it.

• 19:15Chuck Nice?

  My first submission would be the glyptodon. All right, first of all, I will tell you. Wait, is that a real, Ross, is that real? Is that real?

• 19:24Speaker 03

  Yes, it is. It's a gigantic armadillo. That lived in South America, some also lived in North America. Some of them were upwards of 2,000 kilograms, so 4,000 pounds.

• 19:34Chuck Nice?

  4,000 pounds. So a ton.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  Yes, these are big armadillos.

• 19:39Chuck Nice?

  Yes, right.

• 19:41Speaker 03

  Now, what would it be like for Chuck? I think it would be a lot like eating a tennis racket, frankly.

• 19:45Chuck Nice?

  Damn it.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  If you just look at the beast, you can see that it's very heavily armored.

• 19:50Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  There's bone sort of everywhere.

• 19:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:54Speaker 03

  Like a little tank.

• 19:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  And in order to support that mass.

• 19:58Chuck Nice?

  It needs really tough tissue. Big bones.

• 20:00Speaker 03

  Really tough, yes.

• 20:01Chuck Nice?

  And tough tissue. That's good deduction. So it's not good. It's not good to eat. So there you go. And so I don't want to. But could we bring it back?

• 20:07Speaker 03

  The last of them died out about 10,000 years ago. It's within reach of ancient DNA.

• 20:11Chuck Nice?

  So that's a yes.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  That's a yes as to could we? And then we go Jeff Goldblum to say should we?

• 20:17Chuck Nice?

  Ooh. I don't know, an animal that looks like Epcot Center? I think I want to bring it back.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  That's good.

• 20:26Chuck Nice?

  All right, here's my next one. Megatherium.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  Okay, Megatherium.

• 20:31Chuck Nice?

  Megatherium.

• 20:33Speaker 03

  This is now getting very serious in body size. This could be upward of 4,000 kilograms. So we're talking the size of the largest elephants that are on today. What I need to say is that this is a sloth. You know about tree sloths, right? Those are the only sloths that are still with us. They come in at 5 kilograms, so 11 pounds. This guy, a couple of orders of magnitude larger.

• 20:55Chuck Nice?

  Jeez.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  I think more tennis racket, more than anything else, but.

• 20:58Chuck Nice?

  Once again, not a good, doesn't taste good.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  Well, I don't know.

• 21:03Chuck Nice?

  But easy to catch is a sloth.

• 21:09Chuck Nice?

  So can we bring it back?

• 21:12Speaker 03

  It's the same as the glyptodon. Died out 10,000 years ago. There's ancient DNA. I've worked on its ancient DNA. It's there to work on.

• 21:19Chuck Nice?

  It's within reach. Right on.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  The question, boy.

• 21:22Chuck Nice?

  But don't worry, Megatherium, we're gonna take our time bringing you back. Here's the last one. Last one, go. And we talked on it, we touched on it. The woolly. Should we, first of all, how would a woolly taste? And I mean, if we were part of its extinction, I can only hope that we were eating it.

• 21:41Speaker 03

  Well, you know, there are stories when these carcasses appear in places like Siberia, as they do from time to time.

• 21:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When they emerge from a receding glacier or something?

• 21:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, where they melt out of riverbanks, that's the communist way. There are stories of people, and dogs in particular, of having had a steak or two. Now, I personally have never done that, nor would I want to. I mean, think about it. This is... Something has been dead 10,000 years. This is the worst road pizza you can imagine.

• 22:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, my buddy Bill Nye the Science Guy has some thoughts on Jurassic Park-style de-extinction. Let's check it out.

• 22:23Bill Nye?

  We're all fascinated with dinosaurs. That's part of why the movie Jurassic Park was such a hit. It's a classic and classic science fiction. Now, keep in mind that science is not inherently good or bad, it's a process. But, let's face it, in science fiction movies, we want to see scientists doing something dangerous. And those scientists are usually evil. But what if we could really do that Jurassic Park DNA thing? And bring back an extinct species to de-extinct some extraordinary animal? Well, I guarantee you, we'd learn a lot about biology, we'd learn a lot about evolution and ourselves. But is it a good idea?

• 23:06Bill Nye?

  What if we accidentally produced a population of vicious predators who would think nothing of biting your head off and chewing you up and spitting you out? Now, that really would be scary. Fortunately, that technology is a long way off.

• 23:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, up next in my interview with Jeff Goldblum, we discuss the butterfly effect when StarTalk returns.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  This is StarTalk.

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. We're featuring my interview with actor Jeff Goldblum. And I asked about his character in Jurassic Park, where he evokes the concept of chaos theory. Let's check it out. Did you have to do any homework to justify, as an actor, using the word chaos in a sentence?

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Oh, you know, chaos itself, or chaos theory.

• 24:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chaos theory.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  That I was talking about in that movie. You know, I did my due diligence. I'm nothing if not conscientious.

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  I'm a good worker. My dad was a work ethic person. He was a doctor. Yeah, I read that book and whatever else I could get my hands on in the time I had. And tracked down a couple of pioneering, high-class, I was told, practitioners.

• 24:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Devotees and...

• 24:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you delivered the line with some panache.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I knew enough to pretend like I can't... You know, when you play these parts, you realize, hey, I could never... I'm not a brain surgeon. These people have... I'm not an astrophysicist. But I can be curious, and I do enough in the time, from the time I get the part, to try, do my best at pretending well, so that I can credibly, you know, say, whatever I say.

• 24:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think you pulled it off.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Well, thank you.

• 24:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And chaos, what I think in modern times, it's been... The word has less currency today than it did, you know, a couple of decades ago, unfortunately. Because it's still a force to be reckoned with.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Is it, is it?

• 25:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the world.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Oh, good.

• 25:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. Chaos theory is you can model a system that's very complex. You put in the initial conditions and watch it go.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 25:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it makes a cloud, or in the case of weather, you can make wind patterns.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  And the butterfly effect of cars.

• 25:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's what it comes down to, right? And suddenly you say, okay, let me change these initial conditions by the tiniest amount.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And see if I can change the result by a little bit. So you change by a tiny amount, you get a completely different result.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Can you imagine us in our lives, when we say, hey, should I make this decision? Should I have that impossible burger now?

• 25:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The contingencies of branch points in our lives. So, I guess that's a kind of a chaotic analog. You don't know how different your life would be from that one little change.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  If you've been one little thing.

• 25:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, joining us to help make sense of chaos in chaos theory is economist Raphael Chapp. Welcome.

• 26:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a faculty member at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, and you teach a course called Chaos Theory: Complexity, Emergence, and Chaos.

• 26:12Speaker 06

  Right.

• 26:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how do you explain chaos theory to your students?

• 26:15Speaker 06

  Right, so in ordinary speech, chaos means disorder, lack of rules, lack of order. But chaos theory is a bit more subtle, and it gives us a new understanding of dynamical deterministic systems. Dynamical means you have variables, they change over time. Deterministic means if you know everything about the state of the system,

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At any time.

• 26:38Speaker 06

  At any time. The equations unambiguously tell you what happens next, and only one thing can happen, so there's no room for randomness. And yet, these systems can sometimes behave in ways that are, seem to be, appear to be random and unpredictable. Some examples of chaotic motion, the drip of water in a faucet, the oscillation of a double-rod pendulum, the motion of a moon of Saturn called Hyperion, it's a little rock that just moves erratically. But also climate, weather.

• 27:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So these are very diverse manifestations of chaos theory in our lives and in the world.

• 27:21Speaker 06

  Indeed, you can find it in many places.

• 27:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you teach economics.

• 27:27Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 27:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we don't want to hear that there's chaos in economics. We don't want to know that. Please, my 401(k) is as tentative as it is.

• 27:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So tell me about the butterfly effect.

• 27:38Speaker 06

  So the sensitivity to initial conditions, in popular terms, that's called the butterfly effect. That's really what has captured our imagination, and it comes from the title of a paper. by a gentleman named Edward Lorenz, who presented this paper at a conference in the early 70s. And the title was, "Does the flap of a butterfly wing in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?" But the idea that's captured here is really the fact that a very seemingly inconsequential event, right, a butterfly with the wing, can have a really huge impact in another side of the world. It's very poetic. That's the butterfly effect.

• 28:19Chuck Nice?

  Hmm. Is that, which is why I hate butterflies. Hate them. They're nothing but tiny little colorful bats.

• 28:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Ross, does chaos play a role in extinction? Could there be some series of events that just go out of control and gone as a species?

• 28:36Speaker 03

  Well, I don't think that it's necessarily as ordered as as Rafael was just talking about, but it could be similar in some ways. So let's go back to dinosaur days, since that's what we've been talking about. About 75% of everything living at the time disappeared. But that means 25% survived.

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're talking about the 65 million years ago?

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. So who is that 25%? It's all over the place. So, for example, crocodiles survived, whereas a lot of other groups that are reptiles, including everything except birds, disappeared. Why should that be the case? Why should everything that's sort of on the wrong side of the fence or the wrong side of the railway tracks, in the case of dinosaurs, have disappeared? You had dinosaurs by the end of the Cretaceous, 66 million years ago, that were the size of chickens, as well as the Tyrannosaurus. So size is not the issue. There was something going on there physiologically, so they didn't make it, the birds did. And there were feathered dinosaurs that were not avian. My point is that people like me

• 29:44Speaker 03

  spend a lot of time trying to sort out logically why these things disappeared. And maybe the logic is not there, that these catastrophic effects were so general that in some cases you just have bad luck, and in other cases you made it for similar reasons that you had good luck, but it had nothing to do with anything else.

• 30:07Chuck Nice?

  I'm sure the dinosaurs are very happy to hear that right now. Sorry, guys, you just had bad luck.

• 30:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Rafael, people generally think of chaos as something bad. Like you said earlier, we want to avoid chaos in our daily lives. But is there a way to think of chaos as something good?

• 30:25Speaker 06

  I think the reason that chaos is bad, we tend to think of that as something bad, is because order gives us a sense of security, safety. And there's an old philosophical idea of chaos. For the Greeks, it was this state of the world before creation. So it was a real placeholder for the mystery of the universe. Everything that makes us uncomfortable, we put that label on it. In terms of our daily lives, chaos is everywhere, in simple systems.

• 30:58Speaker 06

  It doesn't have to be a lot of variables. And it can also, it can be found everywhere. So you turn on your faucet in your bathroom, the water, that's chaotic. In your bathtub, it's chaotic. In your kitchen, you whisk some egg whites, that's chaotic. You take some dough, you fold it and stretch it, that's chaotic. Your brain, your brainwaves. Believe me.

• 31:26Speaker 06

  I'm so with you.

• 31:29Speaker 06

  Your heart rate. If it becomes chaotic, you're in trouble. You have a heart attack.

• 31:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what you're saying is we are living with chaos on the assumption that it's bad, but in fact, it's a fundamental dimension of life itself?

• 31:42Speaker 06

  Well, there's the question of the implication of the butterfly effect in our daily lives, in our decisions.

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Going forward, yeah.

• 31:50Speaker 06

  You know, one interpretation could be, if the long-term consequences can be predicted, it doesn't really matter what I do. So like, I can do whatever. Or you could think about it in terms of, well, seemingly inconsequential things that I do in ordinary life can actually change the world, right? They can matter a great deal. They can be that bifurcation of the world into a different future. So that puts a lot of pressure on us, right? It can be nerve-wracking and maybe paralyzing.

• 32:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it's good pressure. It's a pressure... That you ought to be able to confront in life. Otherwise, you're a victim of your future rather than a master of it.

• 32:27Speaker 06

  Right.

• 32:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Raphael, thank you for joining us on StarTalk.

• 32:30Speaker 06

  Thank you so much.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  We must learn how to resolve differences nonviolently. And even though the universe may be a violent place and a hostile place, we shouldn't, like Independence Day, figure out how to arm ourselves and survive against the hostile universe. We should revolve as a species, as a peaceful species.

• 33:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  However, what will happen before the Martians come?

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me double-check when the Martians are coming. What will happen before the Martians come is that an asteroid will come.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we will need the power, the wisdom, the energy, the financing to deflect the asteroid, lest we go extinct, as did the dinosaurs.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  So that's my question. So, when they're developing the bomb, maybe they didn't think about it then, but there is a use. You think you could, are you saying that with a nuclear weapon, you could...

• 33:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are multiple ways you can... If you want to destroy the thing in space, yes, a nuclear weapon is our best understanding of how to do that. But if you want to have it not hit us, you don't need to destroy it. You just deflect it.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Okay, but with this technology...

• 34:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, there's kindler, gentler ways, too. You just sort of shove it a little.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It doesn't take much, and if you do it early enough, that gentle push can completely mis-earth.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  So interesting.

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Joining us to discuss defending Earth from asteroids is planetary astronomer Kelly Fass. Kelly, welcome.

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for joining us. You're a program manager in the Planetary Defense Coordination Office at NASA Headquarters. That sounds really badass. You're protecting Earth. Somebody's got to do it. It's a tough job.

• 34:50Speaker 07

  But somebody's got to do it.

• 34:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Somebody's got to do it. So what is NASA doing to defend the planet? And against what? Against asteroids or anything else?

• 34:58Speaker 07

  Well, against near-Earth asteroids, the one that end up in our neighborhood. Like you mentioned, you want to do something early. And so the first step in doing that is to find them before they find us. And so NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office supports efforts that survey the skies, looking for near-Earth asteroids, cataloging them, but also calculating their orbits to figure out where they're going to be in the future. As you know, two bodies in the same space at the same time is not good.

• 35:27Speaker 07

  And then also looking at mitigation possibilities. Should it become necessary to get them before they get us?

• 35:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you sound confident because you're like, okay. But we have funding to detect them, but not funding to deflect them, correct?

• 35:41Speaker 07

  Well, it's actually, there are studies.

• 35:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a no.

• 35:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a no? That was a no. Very much a no.

• 35:50Speaker 07

  No, that's not. Actually, the DART mission is a NASA mission in development.

• 35:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  DART.

• 35:57Speaker 07

  DART. It stands for the Double Asteroid Redirection Test. And it is in development to demonstrate a mitigation technique. So that should it become necessary to do it one of these days, we'll at least have looked at how that technique performs. And in this case, it would be the kinetic impact technique. I mean, you had mentioned, you know, if you could do this early, if you find them and you know well ahead of time, you don't have to deflect it a whole lot in order for it to miss Earth in the future.

• 36:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how likely are we to detect a bad asteroid early enough?

• 36:35Speaker 07

  Well, that's the thing. The larger near Earth asteroids, one kilometer and larger in size, the ones that would have global consequences.

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 36:45Speaker 07

  The nice thing is, they're the low hanging fruit. There are fewer of them, they're larger, they're easier to find, and probably have a better handle on that population. But it's the...

• 36:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For once, it's worked in our favor.

• 36:58Speaker 07

  Right.

• 36:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Yeah, the big, bad ones are easy to detect, yeah.

• 37:01Speaker 07

  But as you get smaller and smaller, there are more and more of them, and it's harder and harder to find them. And so when you're talking about a size range now that 140 meters and larger, let's say, that could have regional impact should it hit Earth. That population is estimated to be more like 25,000. And after 20 years of surveying the skies, even though capabilities have gotten better with telescopes and doing this from the ground, there still are about two-thirds of that population left to be found. And so that's the thing, you know, being concerned about what we have yet to find. So that at least there are some things in the toolbox, you know, should this become an issue.

• 37:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ross, you study extinction. And so of the other five, there have been multiple extinction episodes, but five major ones if I count...

• 37:50Speaker 03

  The big mass extinction.

• 37:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The big mass extinction. How many of those are implicated asteroids as a source?

• 37:56Speaker 03

  Well, it's interesting. When it was first proposed with evidence in the early 1980s, people started thinking, okay, it wasn't just the dinosaurs. It was the same sort of thing again and again. We'd have these extraterrestrial visitors that blew the place up. But then...

• 38:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't mean aliens, you mean asteroids?

• 38:14Speaker 03

  In this case.

• 38:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  But it didn't work out that way. So you have two problems. You've got big extinctions without any correlated or obvious impact or anywhere. And you've also got impactors, some of which must have been very large in size, that didn't do anything.

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you have a smoking gun with no damage.

• 38:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that's awkward.

• 38:35Speaker 03

  That's very awkward. So now the thinking is going to Earth processes, particularly the release of tremendous amounts of lava, tremendous amounts of magma.

• 38:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Super volcanoes.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  Super volcanoes, along with all the noxious gases. So you've got widespread poisoning of both the air and the sea. And that that's the thing that has driven at least some...

• 38:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Earth's trying to kill us. NASA can't help that.

• 39:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Independence Day, it was aliens that were coming to destroy the Earth. And Jeff Goldblum and I discussed the idea of contacting aliens that could be hostile. So let's check it out. You don't give strangers in the street your email address, much less the return address to Earth to aliens.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, but wait a minute.

• 39:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, there's no but wait a minute to that sentence. That's a totally good sentence. That requires no modification.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Well, but sir, but doctor, let me see. We, we, yes, that's what we do, and I wouldn't, I agree, I wouldn't.

• 39:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't do that. They're your own species.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna tell him my.

• 39:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're your own species.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 39:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  But we're a funny species, and that's interspecies, I don't know, especially the, the aspiration to make contact.

• 39:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's huge.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Yes, can't we forego that paranoia, which may not, which we know on Earth between ourselves is justified?

• 39:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's justified because there's someone who you don't know who could do harm to you.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, but if they, if they wanted to do harm, they could do so much harm that we can't do what we did on Independence Day. There's no, I would not build up our nuclear forces, because who knows what. So I would not use it as a reason to weaponize and to further, you know, you know, fund our, our weaponry. No, I think we have to err on the side of, hey, here we are. I don't know, what, what do you think? I mean, you're an expert. I'd say, I would say, if I was gonna make the, it was up to me, I'd say, yeah, here we are, here we are, here's our address, here's everything about us, you know, here's all our diseases, here's my medical records, here's my tax records, whatever you wanna know.

• 40:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kelly, Kelly, what does NASA's planetary defense think about the several occasions, and surely more to come, where we beam the return address of Earth out into space with the attempt to contact possibly hostile aliens? And we know they're hostile, because every movie, except Spielberg's E.T., has him sucking our brains out.

• 41:07Speaker 07

  Well, that's what I was gonna say. I've, I've seen Independence Day, and I've seen enough science fiction movies to know that it's a really bad idea.

• 41:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you agree it's a bad idea.

• 41:14Speaker 07

  I agree it's a bad idea, but at least as far as NASA's planetary defense coordination office is concerned, we're concerned about the asteroids, about the hard stuff, and not about the squishy stuff with tentacles. That's somebody else's job.

• 41:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, up next in my interview with Jeff Goldblum, we discuss cultivating a curious mind. And Jeff expressed deep passion and interest in science and learning in our conversation. And I asked him where that curiosity began. Check it out. As an academic and as a scientist, I deeply respect curious minds. Where does that come from?

• 41:51Speaker 01

  I'd be remiss if I, well, when I'm with somebody like you, who would I be, shame on me if I didn't start to bubble with a little curiosity? You're a fountain. When you're right near the fountain, don't you get a little thirsty?

• 42:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fountain of curiosity.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Well, there you go. So, my curiosity, well, I think it's in us if we don't snip it off and undermine it and sabotage it.

• 42:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it just never left you?

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Something like that, yes. I see my kids, I got a three-year-old and a one-year-old, two boys.

• 42:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Well, it's in, it must be in us. They're not so special, I don't think, but boy, they go from one...

• 42:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And until they're three,

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  half their curiosity would kill them. So it's up to you to prevent them from checking out the edge of the cliff.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  That's our main job, to keep them safe. It's a very...

• 42:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. And then when they're five, six, seven, then they can be on their own with reduced risk of them having their curiosity kill themselves. Many parents over-constrain their curiosity.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, over-constrain their curiosity for safety reasons.

• 42:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For safety, yeah. They think even something that we're just... Or for, they don't want to break something. When, oh, the child is playing with a plate, oh, don't touch that, you might break it. Maybe there's something to be learned if it breaks. It makes a sound, something is hard, but then it's in a million pieces. The pieces can cut you. There's knowledge there.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  Somebody told me that we think, we adhere to this thing called RIE, R-I-E, which is, yes, don't you teach them?

• 43:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  They're doing physics, they're doing something.

• 43:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let them do it.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  They're doing something you don't even understand.

• 43:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Free-range children.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  All of that, yes. But after that, why do I show them so that they can really? Well, I would show them, what I would show them is the entire series of Cosmos. I would show them you before I showed them any other so-called wisdom literature or other. I'd say, this is where you are, this is who you are, and this is what we know about...

• 43:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our place in the universe.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Ross, we have a mildly privileged position being experts in two fields that are intensely fascinating to children.

• 43:54Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 43:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dinosaurs and space. So, why do you think that is?

• 43:58Speaker 03

  Big?

• 44:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 44:01Chuck Nice?

  Big is good.

• 44:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 44:02Chuck Nice?

  I saw that movie.

• 44:07Speaker 03

  That's why people love elephants and don't love rats. I do, of course, but...

• 44:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Part of me thinks that kids like our respective fields because they respect anything that can eat them. So their favorite dinosaur is gonna be T-Rex and their favorite cosmic object is gonna be a black hole. Both of them will eat you.

• 44:25Speaker 03

  It's a very depressing view, but I get it.

• 44:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kelly, you have any thoughts on that?

• 44:30Speaker 07

  Certainly, there's always this curiosity about something, someplace that we want to go. And so space, it's obvious, especially since you can see so much.

• 44:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 44:38Speaker 07

  You just go outside and you look.

• 44:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 44:40Speaker 07

  So you can't help but just want to go to a place that you can see and you can't reach.

• 44:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So would you agree that kids

• 44:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  who don't lose their curiosity as adults

• 44:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  are scientists? Or rather, that scientists are kids who never lost their curiosity?

• 44:56Speaker 07

  Oh, they're certainly kids.

• 45:00Speaker 07

  And we're certainly kids that absolutely haven't lost their curiosity.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I feel like I'm a superannuated kid all the time because I work in a place like the American business.

• 45:09Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, I ain't never heard a kid use the word "annuated."

• 45:13Chuck Nice?

  Mother, mother, I'm feeling quite anannuated right now.

• 45:17Speaker 03

  Stick with me, I'll improve your reputation.

• 45:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ross.

• 45:21Speaker 03

  No, but you and I do have privileged positions because we work in a place here that is absolutely devoted to understanding the most complicated, the most interesting, the most diverse kinds of phenomena that people have ever dealt with. And that is a beautiful place to be in if you have that kind of attitude, where everything is novel, everything is interesting.

• 45:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Jeff Goldblum, to my surprise, brought a copy of one of my books to the interview. The book he brought was Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.

• 45:54Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 45:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so he asked about my inspiration for writing it. Check it out. It's everything...

• 46:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spiritually and intellectually mind-blowing in the universe that I've collected into that moment.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Yes, and I love your... And, because I've heard you on other... At other times, besides what I think you touch on in this. Do we need, in order to be creative, inspired, spiritual, feel grateful, feel uplifted and nobled, connected with each other, poetical, musical? Need we go any farther than the... Than the facts that have here... That have already been uncovered by you and your friends, by science? And what's going on around us? No, of course not. We don't need to make up things, or believe in things that are just fun to believe in, just because we're lazy and we don't want to kind of investigate a little bit.

• 46:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I agree with everything you just said. And I can either add, neither add nor subtract from it.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  I love you.

• 47:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just some, some parting thoughts on our show today. Dinosaurs were around for hundreds of millions of years, in some form or another. Until

• 47:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  all the ones we celebrate, especially the ones with big teeth, all went extinct 65 million years ago. So in fact, they were around for longer before they went extinct than the time that has elapsed since they went extinct. So... If they didn't go extinct 65 million years ago, there's no reason to think they wouldn't still be here today. But what happened?

• 47:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We fear asteroids, yes. But an asteroid takes out the dinosaurs, pries open an ecological niche, enabling our mammal ancestors to evolve into something somewhat more ambitious than the rodents that they were at the time. So I think about it, wow. Can asteroids be all that bad? Can extinction be all that bad? "We have the technology, we have the intelligence to avoid that fate.

• 48:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can do better than the hand that nature deals us. We can deflect an asteroid. We can develop a viral serum. We can be good caretakers of the Earth that we are borrowing from our descendants.

• 48:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Until that day comes, our extinction is inevitable."