A Universe of Inspiration (Repeat)

Explore how science has inspired art through the ages, from Leonardo da Vinci to computer games, when Neil deGrasse Tyson interviews artist Peter Max. With co-host Lynne Koplitz and guest Bill Nye.

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.

• 0:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Today, we're going to talk about the universe as it inspires the creativity of artists. Artists throughout time and artists of all kinds, not only painters but sculptors and the like.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  That's very interesting.

• 0:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've liked it because I've, you know, scientists, we hang out together and sometimes we're not appreciated as much as we would like to be for whatever reasons. And occasionally, we see some of what we, our handiwork, reflected in the creativity of artists themselves, and we say to ourselves, "Maybe we're becoming mainstream."

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Maybe we're creative and we're not nerds.

• 0:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, well, no.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Let's take credit for that. Okay, I'll take credit for it too.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, actually, I saw enough of this happen, so a few years ago, I wrote an essay for Natural History Magazine called "The Universe as the Artist's Muse."

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Dude, you have a family. Do you ever not, you're always writing, you're like, "I wrote a book about that."

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, because I got, what I do, okay?

• 1:14Speaker 01

  That inspired the symphony I wrote.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So...

• 1:17Speaker 01

  You're great, Neil. I'm happy that I get off the couch, but that's great.

• 1:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, no, it was an essay because I was impressed by how often I was being called by artists to get the latest image from the Hubble telescope, where they wanted to find out the latest understanding of the Big Bang, or black holes, or Mars, so that they can paint a scene, something inspired by it.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  I mean, even as a comic, you know, artists tend to look at, we're people, all artists, whether it's writer, comedian, or visual artist, you know, we tend to look at the whole world. We look at everything, over, under, in, out.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I agree. I just don't think science was in that portfolio until recently.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Well, science is part of the world.

• 1:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is definitely part of the world. In fact, it shapes the world. And so, I think science has come a long way in terms of being felt by the general public. And so, let's see what Bill Nye has to say.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Oh, Bill Nye.

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill, he's my boy, Bill. You know, Bill is, Bill, he's got to set the tone.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  He's a shaky little manic man we love.

• 2:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill, give it to me.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  Hey, Bill Nye, the Science Guy here. When you think of a planet in your mind's eye, what do you see? Many of us see Saturn. But no one could envision such a thing until astronomers, starting with Galileo, drew sketches of this and other worlds. I've seen Saturn rings, Saturn brooches, Saturn ladies' pumps, dress shoes with jeweled Saturns instead of bows. How sexy is that? With images of distant stellar clouds and our so-called nearby worlds, we can make planetary art from photographs. If you've never taken a bit of time with the Voyager spacecraft's pale blue dot, well, you must. And thanks to a spacecraft named after another astronomer, Cassini, you can see our world through the thin rings of another.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  You can see the Earth beyond the rings of Saturn, backlit by the sun. It's a photo. It's astronomy. But for me, it's inspirational. It's art. This is Bill Nye, hoping that after we're done star talking, you do a bit of star looking at the works inspired by distant worlds and heavenly wonders.

• 3:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  That was very deep, Bill Nye.

• 3:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill, it's deep in one minute. That's a Bill Nye minute for you.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  It's inspirational.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes. And, you know, when you think of the first of the artists to be fully scientifically inspired...

• 3:30Speaker 01

  I was just gonna say, who are we gonna talk about first?

• 3:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta, it's gotta be Leonardo. Leonardo da Vinci. There's no, there's nobody like him before or since. I mean, here's a guy who, who was on top of science. He was all over engineering. He was in architecture. And, oh, by the way, he painted on the side. This guy, and he used to do experiments in physics, physics experiments. The word physics didn't quite have, was defined back then. But he would do experiments in motion and weights and...

• 3:57Speaker 01

  And wait, now he did this for his art?

• 3:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I, I don't know if it's for his art, but he did it in a way that then influenced his art. I don't know if that was the point of why he did these experiments. He was a smart, curious guy. You're smart and curious, you play with stuff.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  So he was one of those guys that activated both sides of his brain?

• 4:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, completely. If you did like one of these scans on his brain, it would be firing at every, every cubic inch that was in there.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Great guy to date.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  I think he sounds great. I just I'm just saying some of these guys in history. I go, oh, he'd be a good like Galileo, great boyfriend, Da Vinci, not so much.

• 4:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he's okay. Well, because he'd be too distracted by his own thoughts rather than by you.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  And I like someone who's yeah, like who's manipulated easily, not someone like that.

• 4:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would not happen with Leonardo, for sure.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  No, but but tell me more about him.

• 4:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So so first, he's considered one of those brilliant people who ever lived. And you look at his writings, all the the subjects that he touched, geology, physics, biology. And on the side, he he was a painter, right? And so one of my favorite parts, oh, by the way, you know about his, he drew a first, a model for a helicopter. It turns out it wouldn't work if you actually built it, but but he's thinking about flying. He's thinking about flying and not just saying, gee, wouldn't it be great if I had wings and I flew like a bird? He's actually trying to draw a machine that could make that happen.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Oh, so he was one of the first people who started with machinery?

• 5:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes. To bring machinery to the to the task of ideas, rather than just imagining that you had wax wings like like Icarus trying to fly to the sun. He says, look, dude, you need some machines to do this.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  And that's more like who I would date.

• 5:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So so you've got this. And and with Leonardo, he's he's he's he embraced all knowledge. And with all of that knowledge, it infused into his artistic expression.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  How did it infuse in his art? What did it do?

• 5:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, okay, did you did you know that he?

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Probably not, but go on.

• 5:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so he he he basically pioneered, well, he didn't invent perspective. That's something that's been around since ancient Greece, but it got lost. It got lost until the Renaissance. And Renaissance is French for rebirth. And so it's the rebirth.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  And Leonardo was in the Renaissance?

• 6:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, he was. Yes, he was.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  I'm gonna show my ignorance. Okay, so until then, let's let's go back a minute. So let's go back to like the Greeks and Egyptians and all these kind of people like first, okay, Egyptians, when they did hieroglyphics, they were flat.

• 6:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, all those dudes are flat. Right, right. You look on there like they're all flat. And you never see like a three quarter face of an Egyptian, right? They're always like side on.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  You didn't see him walking into the distance. There's none of that.

• 6:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, none of that. They're flat. So.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  And there were arrows pointing like, then they went that way, then they went that way.

• 6:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they were flat.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's the absence of perspective that.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Okay, then then who, the Greeks?

• 6:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Did they have perspective?

• 6:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, so so what so perspective comes in, but it doesn't really take off, right? It's there, it's discovered, they know about it, and it's it's used in the architecture, right? It's there, but you don't you don't see. Paintings that make full use of this until the Renaissance. And so my point is that the the physical principles of light and optics and ray tracing and and in the case of Da Vinci, he was he studied the laws of physics, not they were not known as laws of physics back then, but he wanted to know how things balanced and how things would look if they were imbalanced, because if you draw something that your eye and brain told you doesn't quite look right, it's not as convincing to you. So he wanted to make sure he understood how things worked.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  I took art in college, and my mother is an artist. And as a kid, I remember one of the things she always used to make me do, and they make you do this in art class in in school, is they make or in college, they make you look at what you thought you saw and what you really saw. And that's what it sounds like you're saying, like, because sometimes what you think you see is not exactly what's there.

• 7:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because your brain is messing with what what it is you thought you saw. And he's trying to get the the basic data there so he gets it right.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  My mom makes me squint. You know, you squint, you see what it really is.

• 7:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know who we have for this week's StarTalk? I spent some time with Peter Max.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a big crew.

• 7:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know Peter Max? Remember Peter Max? And he's still around?

• 7:58Speaker 01

  He's a big pop artist.

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pop artist. And did you know he's deeply inspired by cosmic themes?

• 8:03Speaker 01

  I wouldn't be surprised by that.

• 8:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, let's check out what Peter Max had to say. Peter, I understand the universe inspires you. Is that a recent phenomenon or does it go far back?

• 8:13Speaker 03

  It started when I was about ten, seven years old, living in China. And I was near Tibet, and I met an older man who started talking to me, do you know about the stars and the planets? And I had no clue. And every day would talk about it. And by the time, I think five, six or 10 days went by, it's all I would think about. And what I would go to sleep dreaming about it, thinking about it.

• 8:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It took only a week for it to just infiltrate your your mind and body?

• 8:40Speaker 03

  Jumpstart that. And believe it or not, it just grew and grew and grew. There's not a single day in my life. Where I'm not preoccupied with things about planets, stars, the universe. What is this whole thing? There's not a day that goes by where I don't think about it. I wake up in the morning and it's amazing, like some cosmic alarm clock opens my eyes and I think about the universe. I don't think the bed I'm sleeping in, I don't care what day it is, I don't care what today I have to, what it is I have to do today. The first thing is the universe, the cosmos, then I gotta calm this down and then I look at my sheet, what I gotta do today. The first thing is the universe. So you've got it bad. I got it bad. You got it so bad it's good. Yeah, it's unbelievable.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  That's why when I'm with you, see you on TV, talk to you, even hear your name, forgive me, but I get so inspired by that.

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's so nice to me.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Forgive me, he says, that's so beautiful, you're his muse.

• 9:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He didn't have to say that, but that was so nice. So Peter Max, if you remember Peter Max, he wrote all those love posters from the 60s and, yeah, and it's like, he was the artist of a generation.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, you still see all the t-shirts that have the peace sign and the hearts, the big hearts that he did. And I wanted to say, what he said I thought was so sweet about waking up and how the universe inspires him, like he doesn't think about his bed. That's what I'm saying, like artists are so neat because they think in such a bigger...

• 10:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A bigger canvas, yes.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the universe I think is inspirational because it's infinite.

• 10:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wonder, I wonder if any listeners, if anything about science or space inspires them, either artistically or otherwise. I know it inspires me and I'm a scientist, it inspires Peter Max and...

• 10:19Speaker 01

  It inspires me.

• 10:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then he's an artist, and Lynn.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  And I'm, you know, something like an artist.

• 10:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know, with Da Vinci...

• 10:25Speaker 01

  So call us, wait, call us.

• 10:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh yeah, sure, I gotta give you the number.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  At 877-5STAR-TALK. Tell us what inspires you from art, I mean, from science.

• 10:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, let us know, because there are many people who are inspired, who are creating art, who are making a difference in this world. And I'm charmed by that, because like I said, to see artists get mainstreamed in that way, if it becomes the subject of art, to see science get mainstreamed in that way. When science becomes the subject of artists, I think science has arrived in the culture in the ways that no one had ever imagined for it. Do you know what?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  You're just excited about scientists being cool.

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know what Leonardo did to try to become a better artist?

• 11:03Speaker 01

  What did he do, Neilie?

• 11:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's drawing people and so he dug up cadavers.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Really?

• 11:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dug them up, peel them open to see.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Oh gross.

• 11:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's gross, but if you're committed to your art, you'll do whatever it's.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  What did he do? He peeled them open? See, this is again, we give, we.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're dead. What do they care? They're dead. Who's gonna know?

• 11:22Speaker 01

  Jeffrey Dahmer did the same thing and he didn't get credit for being, he did the same thing.

• 11:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He killed them first. That's different. Leonardo didn't kill them first. They're already dead.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Oh, he just dug them up. That's fine.

• 11:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dug them up. That, who's gonna know? He dug them up, peeled back the skin.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  That's weird.

• 11:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Looked at how the muscles came together, how they formed. He wanted to know what was going on beneath the skin of his subjects.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Well, don't, don't they have an exhibit now that bodies exhibit?

• 11:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yeah, which I haven't seen yet, but I've read about it.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  You got downright giddy.

• 11:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, cuz I wanna go. I wanna take my kids to see it so they can see, they're creeped out. They're, my kids are eight and 12 and they're, they don't wanna go.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  You should not see that right now, Neil.

• 11:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're completely creeped by it, but I'm gonna drag them kicking and screaming so they can see what bodies are.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Are you really?

• 11:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's human physiology.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  And if you create little serial killers, I don't be surprised.

• 12:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, that's maybe the modern version.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Take them to Madame Tussauds Wax Museum where all the normal kids belong right now.

• 12:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the prob, so here, here's what's interesting. Had, if we had the bodies exhibit, which is in a lot of the big cities across the country right now, where they have, they have, they have people formally alive, shown without their skin, and you can see how the muscles and all their rest of the body parts come together in different poses and shapes and.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Really? So it's like, it's really like a serial killer Disneyland?

• 12:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I guess so. Well, no, creepy, uh, uh, demented serial killer Disneyland. Yes, cuz yeah, serial killers just kill people. You gotta be demented enough to peel their, their skin back and see what the muscles are doing.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  But I do understand why they would, why Leonardo would have done that.

• 12:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If bodies exhibit existed back then, he wouldn't have to dig up cadavers. That's my point.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  And I just saw a thing on National Geographic, cuz you know, all my knowledge of everything is from you or television.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  I just saw a thing on National Geographic where they had found these, um. Pterodactyls.

• 12:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  And they did that very thing. They had found just the fossil, just the skeleton. And they took it and they did, they put the skeleton through a CAT scan.

• 13:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, all right.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Which I thought was really weird, but there was nothing inside, of course, because it was a skeleton.

• 13:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  But they, they could, they drew art, artistic pictures of, and then they could figure out what would have gone in there by what was missing.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Isn't that kind of cool?

• 13:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't have a pterodactyl cadaver, a little cadaver, so you do the best, the next best thing you can.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  What's missing, that's how you figure it out.

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know, these, these bodies that are in the exhibit, they're preserved. You know, there are different ways you can preserve human flesh. And one of them is you'd sort of dip it in acetone, right? That gets rid of sort of the moisture and the water. So you know. And then they have to sort of keep, then they have to like, keep it, keep its shape. So they infuse it with silicone, which then hardens the tissue so that then it can stay on display.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  Like Pamela Anderson.

• 13:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, she's alive. I don't know what fraction of her body weight is silicone.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  I don't know about that. Lisa Rinna, Pamela Anderson.

• 13:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they would not need to be prepped if they were donated their body to this exhibit? Is that, was that what you're saying? Because they, you know, they're, they're pre-made for the exhibit.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I'm saying they're going to last for a long time. They'll be around with roaches and cheese whiz.

• 14:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and Twinkies, don't forget. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. My day job is as director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. Uh, we are live in Los Angeles and Washington DC, and I'm here with Lynn, Lynn Koplitz. Give us a call if you have something about space that inspires you. Science or space or science in general. If you're an artist in particular, or if you're just somebody on the street.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Or a writer or poet.

• 14:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, exactly. I want to.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Tell us how creatively it's.

• 14:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want to hear what it is that might influence you, because we'll hear more from Peter, from Peter Max, learning about how science infused his creativity. Our toll-free number is 1-877-5-Star-Talk. And we're live streamed on the web on StarTalkRadio.net. Let's take a break. We'll be right back.

• 14:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you've been gone for a couple of weeks, I'm so happy to have you back.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  I'm happy to be back. Now, before we move on, I want to go back to Leonardo da Vinci for a minute.

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  We were talking about bodies and the bodies exhibit.

• 15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because he dug up bodies to get the artistic form of what he drew.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  And then on the break, we were talking about the bodies exhibit now.

• 15:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, during the break, yeah.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  And then you told me a little something that I didn't know, which was that those were prisoners, like Chinese prisoners?

• 15:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're told that the bodies on display in the bodies exhibition, which is shown in many cities now, were not necessarily people who donated their bodies to this cause, that they were the bodies of prisoners who were executed.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Oh, that's much better then. I like that better.

• 15:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it became a little controversial, because the prisoner might not have had a choice in the matter.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Who cares? He was a prisoner!

• 15:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm just saying, I'm just not voting for sides here, I'm just saying that it may be as controversial as it was in Leonardo's day when he's digging up cadavers.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Now, was it controversial when he was digging them up?

• 15:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, he was. You dig up a body, and the body's a sacred burial grounds in a church yard, or wherever people were? Of course!

• 15:58Speaker 01

  But people didn't, people, they didn't, did they know he was doing that?

• 16:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't think, he did it in the dark of night.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  He did it late at night, right, with an assistant who made nothing, probably.

• 16:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, you know, one of the most famous illustrations from Leonardo's era is the, you know, the Vitruvian Man, have you ever seen this?

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Is that the one with the man in the circle and the square?

• 16:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  He's hot!

• 16:19Speaker 01

  What? I mean, seriously?

• 16:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I never thought of it that way, it's just like a little homunculus inside of a circle.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  I just like from back then, everything's got abs. Jesus, Vitruvian Man.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's true, yeah, well, because it's drawn by people who like muscles.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  And have never been to Pittsburgh.

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have no-

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Have you ever seen that, there's no abs in Pittsburgh?

• 16:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No abs in Pittsburgh. You just performed there a few weeks ago.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, the great sports teams, but no abs.

• 16:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The sports players have the abs, not the viewers.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 16:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, is this gonna be on their next, like, tourist motto? Visit Pittsburgh, no abs?

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Don't worry about your abs, come to Pittsburgh. So, talk to me about Vitruvian Man.

• 16:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, here's where you get into trouble, because if you have an aesthetic, okay, but if you want to believe that somehow the human form is some epitome of aesthetics, this is what went into the Vitruvian Man. And so you all remember this image, it's this man with his arms. Outstretched and his legs slightly parted and it's a perfect circle drawn around him. And the arms are just touching the edge of the circle and his feet are at the bottom of the circle.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  So you're saying this isn't just art, this was to prove something?

• 17:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's to prove that the human form had some aesthetic beauty to it because the circle was a thing of beauty. And in the center of that circle, you know what was there?

• 17:26Speaker 01

  His wee wee?

• 17:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, his belly button.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 17:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what we-

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 17:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What we learned-

• 17:32Speaker 01

  I'm thinking about-

• 17:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What we learned was that some people don't have those proportions. It was assumed that your, your distance from fingertip to fingertip equaled your height. And then that was considered the ideal form. And then you actually measure people and some people's hands are shorter, some are longer. Mine are actually especially long. Some people have what, you have a, a, a high ape index. It's what's been joked about. If your arms are really long compared to your body height, my arms were a foot longer than my height. So I can touch your nose sitting right where I am right now.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  How do you know that?

• 18:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, because you know, so the point is in that circle-

• 18:05Speaker 01

  No, no, you don't know. Did you measure them?

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Measure my arm, the distance from fingertip to fingertip, yeah.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  You're hilarious.

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's 84 inches and so that's, so I'm just telling you that that's, it's not, not everybody, I'm not alone in those who don't fit the circle.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  But people are bigger now, right? They were smaller then.

• 18:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but if it's in proportions-

• 18:22Speaker 01

  They just draw bigger circles?

• 18:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just a bigger circle, everything would be in proportion. So that didn't really turn out the way anyone had hoped, but it remains an iconic vision. It remains an iconic vision of what humans would have looked like. And then there's this thing with the golden ratio, remember that? Many people have heard of it, but don't quite remember it. It has a mathematical form, I'll tell you what it is mathematically, but it's more interesting artistically.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Oh, really? Oh, really? Mathematics is not more interesting than art. Hmm, that's a new idea.

• 18:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so if you take a, a line segment and you could split it exactly in half if you wanted, right? And it'd be half and half. But if you don't split it in half and make one segment a little longer than the other, okay? You want to cut it into two pieces where A plus B divided by B-

• 19:07Speaker 01

  I fell asleep for a minute, tell me more.

• 19:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A plus B divided by B is in the same ratio as A to B, as B is to A. Now, that's what it is arithmetically. Okay, so, now you can write that out as an equation. It's 1 plus the square root of 5 divided by 2 to 1.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Neil, I'm so sorry. I don't want to be disrespectful, but I'm gonna shoot myself in the face if you keep... What does this mean?

• 19:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, so if you do the math, you get a ratio of 1 to about 1.6. In other words, back then, back then, if you designed form, you would design it so that the base was 1.6 units long and the height was 1 unit high. And that would feel aesthetically pleasing to you. And that was called the golden ratio.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Oh, that's very... Now, that's very interesting.

• 19:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what they've done lately?

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Can they do that with your face?

• 19:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. They're measuring people's faces, the width of the face and the height of the face and the nose to the eyes to the mouth. And the claim is, those people where those measurements capture the golden ratio are considered more beautiful than other people.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, that's very creepy. Because that's good, like, that movie, Gattaca, that's saying that those people are more perfect.

• 20:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, could this be the one where they make to genetically choose your offspring? So you choose one that has more golden ratios and then more people will think you're attractive.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  But that's not fair either, because in different cultures, in different places, the ratios are gonna be different, right? Like, if you go to Africa, facial features are gonna be different than facial features maybe in certain parts of America or eastern...

• 20:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They claim they've done it for people all around the world and everyone focuses back on this golden ratio. I have my... I'm suspicious of it, but I'm just reporting what they've said. And it's fascinating that there might be some genetic...

• 20:44Speaker 01

  It sounds a little Aryan to me. I don't like it.

• 20:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That there might be some genetic propensity for that.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  I don't like it.

• 20:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know about the, um, not only that, in Da Vinci's most famous painting is what? Do you know what his most famous painting is?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Oh, don't do this to me. You make me feel stupid, Mona Lisa.

• 21:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Mona Lisa, of course.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  I have it in my room. She looks like a dude.

• 21:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have a copy of the Mona Lisa. Let's get that straight.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, not the real one. I mean, I live in a three-floor wall cup that smells like trash and says "Wash me" on the Sharpie marker on the wall. I don't think the real Mona Lisa's in my apartment.

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what, she looks masculine to you?

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, she looks like a dude.

• 21:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you know what they found? They were able to study the painting. You can expose it to a certain wavelength of light that penetrates the top surface of paint and you can see a whole other painting, a whole other illustration below it. And it's rumored that that was a self-portrait of Leonardo himself. That was the first attempt at whatever he was doing on that canvas.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Oh, and then he painted like his inner Mona Lisa?

• 21:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, well, I don't know. Is that why you think he looks like a, she looks like a dude?

• 21:43Speaker 01

  I didn't know that. I mean, until you just said it, but yeah, she does look like it. I look at her every morning. She's right over, like in front of my bed and she looks like a dude.

• 21:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, okay.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  A sweet dude.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is Leonardo in drag is what you're saying?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm just saying it was a little bit like there was a review back then.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  But, but, um, yeah, cause she's got kind of a thick, like forehead and she's kind of crossed.

• 22:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotta look again. I gotta look again to check that out.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  She's a little Liza Minnelli-ish.

• 22:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Put her in a review, is that what, in Vegas? Uh, let's, as you, as you're listening to Star Talk Radio and for this episode, I spent some quality time with Peter Max, pop artist from the 1960s and he's still at it right on through to today. And let's see what more he has to say about how the universe has inspired him.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  He's interesting.

• 22:27Speaker 03

  We are part of something that is so enormously big. You know, when you talked about the molecules in one glass of water. There are more molecules in one glass of water than there are glasses of water on planet Earth. Well, that line that you gave me about this feeds me for the next six months. I want to think about this at least once a day. I love it so much.

• 22:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I'm happy to be your fuel supply. So let me ask you, are you, are you more influenced by science directly? Or is there a bit of philosophy that folds in?

• 22:58Speaker 03

  There's science, there's the mystery of the science because there is so much more we don't know than we do know. And we do know a lot and so that we must probably not know a billion times as much. But it's wonderful what we do know. But I was also lucky in 1966, just about the same time. I met a Swami, a holy man from India.

• 23:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you would use pure science as your source of objects and imagery, but the philosophy is a means of how you would interpose them?

• 23:28Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. So it was nice. Through meditation, I was able to get very, very peaceful and quiet. But through looking at the universe, I would get excited. And so in between the peacefulness and the universe is where the art world lived.

• 23:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's Peter Max. He's just so in tune with his own sense of art and self and science.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  He sounds so like, like a cool hippie guy, like very like down to earth and calm. He calms me just listening to him.

• 23:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't it? He's got one of these calming voices. It's so, it's so, it's so beautiful.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  And you two, the two of you are like a glass of warm milk and a cookie.

• 24:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to StarTalk Radio. Our phone number is 1-877-5-Star-Talk. If there's some aspect of science that has influenced you, inspirationally, as a creative person, or just in your thoughts, give us a call. We have Nancy from Santa Monica. Nancy, you're live on StarTalk.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Hi Nancy.

• 24:21Speaker 04

  Hi.

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hi.

• 24:23Speaker 04

  So, I'm dabbling in art. I'm actually an environmental scientist, but I like art a lot and I've observed a lot of artists who've been inspired by environmental science. And I thought I'd just share this something with you. We have a bunch of art galleries here in Santa Monica called Burgamot Station, and there is this really cool exhibit on hyperbolic crochet. And what this is, you guys were talking about Leonardo da Vinci and perspective, right? Well, that's about flat planes as a geometry. Apparently, there's another kind of geometry that was, I guess, driving mathematicians crazy, the hyperbolic space, which is the geometric opposite of a sphere. And I guess I was taken by this

• 25:07Speaker 04

  because I actually photographed the captions here. So in 1997, there was this Cornell mathematician who was trying to figure out how to model this geometry, and so he wound up crocheting it. And you wound up finding that corals, kelp, sponges, all these different kind of anatomical features, actually hyperbolic geometry. So these artists have gotten together and crocheted these incredible landscapes of these objects with hyperbolic crochet. And I was at the exhibit at Burgamot Station.

• 25:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's a lot of children now going around without mittens because the crochet effort is going to art.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  I love crochet and it's very difficult, but it does have a lot of that spiral and it is very interesting.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So are you saying that crochet is the natural artistic way to express these forms of nature?

• 25:50Speaker 04

  Well, no, crochet was a technique that humans could use to model this geometry, which was very hard to do mathematically otherwise, or I guess even on a computer.

• 26:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's very cool. And so anyone near Santa Monica, go check it out, definitely.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  That sounds so interesting. I'm gonna look it up online. Thank you Nancy.

• 26:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you Nancy.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  You know what I like about that too, is because if you're using yarn or whatever is what you use or rope to crochet... That is also going, that's great for studying the body too, because it is like tendons and muscles.

• 26:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, how it holds together and how it doesn't.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can pull it and make it twisted and make it do things that you can't do with just charcoal and it brings in perspective.

• 26:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'd use yarn as a substitute for muscle.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  It brings in, shut up Neil, I have lots of crochet things, I just told Neil to shut up.

• 26:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One other thing about perspective, another very famous painting is The Last Supper. The Last Supper, it's one of the most famous.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Oh, Jesus's dinner party.

• 26:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jesus's Last Supper, and they call it supper rather than dinner, I was intrigued by that.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  I like to call it Jesus's dinner party. I just love a man that throws a dinner party at the end.

• 26:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you look at that, there are lines of perspective that reach what they call a vanishing point. And the vanishing point is where all the lines that are horizontal in a room or in a painting end up focusing down in the backdrop of the painting, and it focuses right on Jesus's eye.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Really? That's very interesting.

• 27:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So wherever you are in the painting, the lines take you right to the center of his face, and so.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  For those who don't know, when you're drawing or painting perspective, a vanishing point is one of the first things you draw, so that you can.

• 27:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because everything else works into that.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Everything comes off of that, works into that.

• 27:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  So that's very interesting that the vanishing point, so that was no accident, that the vanishing point was Jesus's eye.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No accident at all, and plus his 12 dinner guests.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  And he was the center of the whole thing.

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have a tweet, you can tweet us at StarTalk Radio. We have a tweet, someone asks, "Do you think Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings are a combination of science and art?"

• 27:46Speaker 01

  And anatomy.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Their vagina, aren't they?

• 27:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, they're flowers.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Their vagina flowers. Get, oh come on, they're vagina flowers, tweeter.

• 27:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Flowers.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  They are not flowers, look at them. Oh, please.

• 27:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Look into those flowers, they're not just flowers. You know what, Neil?

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay, I'm just, all right.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  This is what annoys me about men.

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sometimes a flower is just a flower.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Well, sometimes it needs you to look for the G-spot on it.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so what we're saying is Georgia O'Keeffe took the flowers of the southwest and folded them with her knowledge of human anatomy to create a whole new expression of, a whole other way to communicate with the viewer.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think what Georgia O'Keeffe and many artists do, and great artists do, is that they are, they make you look at something a different way. They make you see the other possibilities in it.

• 28:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, then that, okay, all right, I'll give, I'll give other possibilities.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think Leonardo did that. I think all the great artists and painters, and they've all done that, and writers, they've taken things that everybody looks at every day, and they, they've twisted it and showed you other sides to it.

• 28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got another tweet, uh, they're asking, is the golden ratio, which we talked about a moment ago, only about aesthetics, or is it indicative of the health of an organism? And that's a fascinating point.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  What a great question. What kind of geniuses do we have listening to this? My family's clearly not tuning in.

• 29:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, no, what's good about that is, if, if the, if that aesthetic, if the aesthetic is sort of hardwired into our brain, and we identify beauty that way, and then you turn ill, or you, something happens to your bodily form.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Don't put the horns on me. You pointed at me.

• 29:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you turn ill, then your body starts taking a shape that does not fulfill that golden ratio, and you, and you look less attractive to others. It's a fascinating concept there. So maybe it is hardwired.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  I'm angry.

• 29:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So my, I, I, so my question is, I don't know the answer to that, but it's an intriguing possibility.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Like osteoporosis.

• 29:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, exactly. Your, your bones start becoming misshapen, and you no longer fulfill the golden ratio.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Well, I think there should be a golden ratio for different ages.

• 29:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So there should be like a silver ratio, a platinum ratio.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, just like the average, what your average weight should be, or whatever. It should just be like, here's the, right, the silver ratio.

• 29:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's an excellent, excellent thought.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  The platinum.

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent thought. We've got some more of my interview with Peter Max. I was in his studio, uh, in New York City, and he's got this huge studio, where he's, he's still painting. He's still doing it. The guy is still doing it.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Why didn't I get to go to this? I'll take you to my thing. I love Peter Max.

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't ask. Let's see what more Peter Max has to tell me.

• 30:21Speaker 03

  While I was a realist and I started painting realism like Michelangelo, I couldn't get any work. I did, there were no galleries were interested in it, no museums, nothing. And I used to sit in a little cafe, which back then was almost like what is a Starbucks today? And I would make my astronomical drawings every day because I loved it. And I had maybe a hundred little drawings with me. And one day an art director said to me, Peter, what's this on the bottom of your portfolio? And I go, oh, oh, it's nothing because I was shy. I was a realist. I was a classical guy. Because at the top of your portfolio was all your realistic. Yeah, I wanted to be like Michelangelo. I wanted to be revered as like I was because I was so good in realism. Anyhow, and one day he said to me, what's this in the bottom of your portfolio? I said, no, it's nothing. It's nothing. And he insisted I take it out.

• 31:05Speaker 03

  And when he looked at it, he went, oh, my God, this stuff looks unbelievable. Hey, guys, fellas, the girls, come over here. See what this guy does. And I walked out of there for the first time in my life with 14 projects. That paid like, you know, a few hundred dollars each, which was today like a few thousand each. And when I delivered them about 10 days later, I walked out of there with 22 projects. And in the next 18, 20 months, I won 66 gold medals in art and design for my creativity and for my inventiveness. And I suddenly realized that the stuff I was doing, which was these cosmic characters and cosmic stars and cosmic runners and all these characters with wings that I invented

• 31:49Speaker 03

  only because of my interest in, in the space area that I invented characters that lived there that really weren't anything I could see in the regular world. So it's fair to say that the universe birthed your career as an artist? Completely.

• 32:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you want to be a great artist, study the universe. That's the.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  I think that's very cool that that's his inspiration.

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. And so rather, it wouldn't have to be the universe in particular, but I think. It's fair to say that you can be a new kind of an artist, or as an artist you can reach another dimension of reality if you come to it with some kind of science literacy. Is that fair?

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Well, I think, I think it is fair, but I think the other thing that our show keeps bringing up is that science makes you ask questions.

• 32:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  It keeps you asking questions.

• 32:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Probing the nature of reality.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  And I think when a creative person keeps asking questions, it keeps broadening their, you know, their view of things, and that's what happened to him. He kept asking questions and he's kept creating these characters and people built on that.

• 32:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's not just science ideas, it's actually, there's math even beyond the golden, the golden ratio that we talked about earlier. There's algebra, so there's a branch of-

• 32:53Speaker 01

  Look at the Matrix.

• 32:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well-

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Movies and things are being built around this whole thing now.

• 32:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, and there's a, there's a branch of algebra called linear algebra, which is, you don't normally greet that in, in high school, but you can take classes in it in college, where there's 3D computer games that are enabled because of a huge mathematical engine that's driving them.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I guess so.

• 33:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, so that's how-

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Like Grand Theft Auto.

• 33:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  (laughing) I, I don't know the extent of math-

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Because of science and math, you can kill a hoe.

• 33:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  (laughing)

• 33:24Speaker 01

  And steal a car.

• 33:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I haven't checked the math engine on that, on that, on that particular game.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  But you know what scares me?

• 33:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it allows them, what it does is, they're trying to create a, a virtual world for you that you move through, and if you're stealing cars in it, fine, that's your virtual world, but the perspective that changes as you run down the street, and as doorways open, and as corridors show up, they have to calculate-

• 33:44Speaker 01

  I know.

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  -at every split second what the new scene looks like as you travel through that world.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  And what it will look like if you do this move or that move.

• 33:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  They don't know what you're gonna do.

• 33:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't know what you're gonna do next, so it has to be ready for that, and that's the computing power.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  That's true, because I play Lara Croft Tomb Raider, and when you dive in the water, all of a sudden you're in the ocean and the music stops.

• 34:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you wanna be Lara Croft?

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Um, no, she's way too active.

• 34:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She was, I had to, I, I gotta admit, I liked the movie when I saw it.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  I did, but the video game is very active and annoying. At one point I just started jumping off the slide. But here is what concerns me as an actress, aspiring actress and comic. You know, CGI now, computer graphic imaging is really taking over. I went to see Bolt, the 3D, when it was 3D, with my friends.

• 34:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bolt is with the dog?

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, with my friend's sons. And I have to grab little kids from out of nowhere so I can go to these movies and not look scary. And I went to see it, it was great. But when I was a kid, 3D movies were not as intense as they are now. I mean, they're so realistic. And as an actress, it started bothering me, Neil, because I started thinking, wow, when are we going to fade out? Like the way talkies took over silent films.

• 34:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Like, I'm finally getting acting roles, and I'm done. They're going to start just drawing people.

• 34:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you draw people and animate them in 3D, and then they won't need you anymore.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  So isn't there a chance that regular actors and actresses are going to become obsolete?

• 35:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what they can do? They can fully scan your body in various motions, and then fully get you to read like a whole encyclopedia of words. And then they have all your vocabulary, they have all your body motions, and they can just cast you in a 3D animated movie.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  So they might not need us anymore?

• 35:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. Yeah, you just sort of sell your body that one time, and then you get used later on.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Well, I know there are people in LA listening to this show right now. If this scares you, because you're waiting tables and you're thinking, what now, call us at 877-5STAR-TALK.

• 35:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're worried about being out of a job, is that what's...

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, some of the science stuff, when it comes into the creative form, scares me. Because like, for example, I don't like nude digital film. I hate it.

• 35:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nude digital film?

• 35:44Speaker 01

  No, the digital film versus like 16mm things.

• 35:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Let's shoot everything on digital. Now all of a sudden, I don't want to see people with lines in their face. I can see that in a mirror myself. I want pretty people. I want the old grainy imaging. I want the Barbara Walters lens that looks like it's got Vaseline over it. That's what I want.

• 36:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The soft focus lens.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Yes, thank you.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you know, photography is a, you know, it's...

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Did I make you nervous? All of a sudden Neil's like, I'm never going to be on The View. What is lens done?

• 36:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know. We're going to go to break, and we're going to come back. Give us a call, 1-877-5STAR-TALK. And we're tweetable at StarTalkRadio. And we'll be right back. And we're going to talk about photography, and the universe, and how that's inspired whole generations of artists and movements, social movements, simply because of images we've obtained from the night sky. See you in a minute.

• 36:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk Radio, Neil Tyson on the line here. We've got Lynn Kopfels, my co-host Lynn. Hello. Hello, we've got a caller who called into 1-877-5-Star-Talk with our question has sci... they have a question about the relationship between science and art and inspiration. Awesome. Who is the muse for whom? We have Rick from LA. Rick, you're live on StarTalk.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Hi Rick.

• 37:08Speaker 05

  Hey, how you guys doing today?

• 37:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, thank you.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  We're doing good. How you doing, Rick?

• 37:14Speaker 05

  Big fan, big fan.

• 37:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, thank you. So what you got for us?

• 37:17Speaker 05

  Uh, well, I was... you know, you're talking about how, um, how, uh, science has inspired art over the years, and I just wondered if you could think of any examples where, uh, art has inspired science?

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a good question, Rick.

• 37:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, well...

• 37:33Speaker 05

  Scientific discovery.

• 37:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, let me... here's the best I could do for you there. For example, before the era of photography, when people nonetheless had telescopes and they wanted to be able to tell others about what they saw, they had to draw what they saw. So they needed an artistic talent just to communicate their science to other people. And if they were not good at their art, they'd be showing something that was not really what they saw to other people, and that would confound any attempt to have sort of a level-headed assessment of what was going on.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Well, also, the constellations. At first, they, they, they came up with like, what the stars, they came up with pictures, correct?

• 38:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but there's no science anywhere in that. No, there's just...

• 38:16Speaker 01

  The stars.

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, no, they're, they're connect the dots points. That's... I mean, they are, there are scientific subjects themselves, but things we only learned much later, long after anyone was drawing pictures with them.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Okay, so Rick, the question, the answer is, we don't really know.

• 38:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, wait. No, I, uh, let me, no, I may offer a little insight. I can say that artists, not to speak for artists, because I don't claim myself among them, although my brother's an artist, uh, I can say that all artists I know are driven, often, if not all the time, by some aesthetic. And it's the aesthetic that drives, that fuels their attempt to create a form. And I can tell you without hesitation that as a scientist, we approach the universe, we approach the natural world with a similar expectation that what we're going to discover is something aesthetically pleasing, something beautiful, something that will make you say,

• 39:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that is nature at its finest. And so I can tell you that we share a common driver. But whether or not there's some art that inspired a scientific discovery, it may be that it doesn't-

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Also, if you're talking about what kind of art you're talking about, because we've already discussed on this show that there are films that have probably in television programs like Star Trek that have inspired scientists.

• 39:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. So what happens there is the art-

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Close encounters.

• 39:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  -triggers someone to be interested in a subject.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 39:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it affects them in an emotional way, and then they become charged, and then they want to learn about the science. So that's-

• 39:44Speaker 01

  What we're saying is we all need each other.

• 39:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Kumbaya. Hold, hold. So Rick, thanks for calling in.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Thanks, Rick.

• 39:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we still, we still have some more from Peter Max. Peter, Peter Max, you gotta love him. And like you said, Lynn, he's such a soothing voice. I could listen to him all day.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  He's like Venus flytrap. Remember him on-

• 40:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it was scary.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  They've got that really smooth, hey.

• 40:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's see what more he's got to tell us.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  I was in Cleveland. I had an art show, and I wake up in the morning, and I go back to sleep, and I wake up again about 10:30, and I'm flip-flopping around the TV set. And suddenly I see Neil Tyson with his khaki pants rolled up past his knees, squatting down, lifting up a handful of sand and saying, "You see all the sand? There are 10,000 beaches in the world. They're like 10 or 20 miles long." And then he lifts up another big pile full of sand, and he said, as it's running through his fingers, he said, "For every grain of sand that we have on these 10,000 beaches, there are more planets in the universe." And I meant, "Oh, my God. I can't be... This is so big. It's so gigantic that all the grains

• 40:52Speaker 03

  of sands in 10,000 beaches that are like probably 10 feet deep and 10 to 20 miles long, that there are more planets than this." The first thing I looked is for my phone. I found Neil Tyson's phone number, and I called him up and said, "Is this real?" He said to me, "It's probably bigger than that."

• 41:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I'm honored to have blown your mind without drugs. How, how, what do you think of that?

• 41:18Speaker 03

  It is like, there's nothing that's nicer to be blown away by than the cosmos, the universe, these complete unbelievable facts that exists. And the more you think about it, the more you dream about, the more it starts making sense. And you still know that you're just this little microscopic little thing in the universe, thinking about all the bigness, the largest thing. I mean, isn't it true now that because of this thing they call the string theory, they think that there could be other universes?

• 41:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are a couple of ideas that lead to the idea that there could be a multiverse, and we're just one bubble within an uncountable number of other cosmos.

• 41:56Speaker 03

  Just like when Hubble discovered the first few galaxies.

• 41:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 42:00Speaker 03

  And now they're discovering maybe more universes.

• 42:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's philosophically the same thing, because back then, we imagined it was only one galaxy, and then he discovered a universe of galaxies.

• 42:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, you got it. There must be a place you can hide. It is too big. It's too big to imagine. You know, sometimes you gotta take a tranquilizer to calm it down. It's just so amazing.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Okay, now, I didn't think this could happen, but Peter Max made me like you more.

• 42:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really? So I got dibs from Peter Max, and now it's...

• 42:27Speaker 01

  He actually makes you sound even cooler.

• 42:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know he'd go off on that that way. I was just trying to get some...

• 42:33Speaker 01

  It's so sweet that you touched him so much.

• 42:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Content for our show, but I didn't know that.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  And he's an amazing artist, an amazing influence and person, and that's really neat.

• 42:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you know.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  I have a homeless person in my neighborhood who says I really inspire them.

• 42:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was that that guy that was on the sidewalk when I visited you the other day?

• 42:49Speaker 01

  It was the lady who wears these big crazy Erykah Badu wraps in her hair.

• 42:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So photography can inspire people. Do you remember, I don't know how old you are, Lynn, but in the 1968, Apollo 8 went to the moon. It didn't land, but it actually circled the moon and came back and took a picture of Earthrise above the lunar landscape.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  I was very little when that happened.

• 43:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but you've certainly seen that photo. It's called Earthrise. By the way, Earth does not rise on the moon, because the moon doesn't rotate compared to the Earth, so Earth is just always in the sky. So the picture is, misrepresents what actually happens on the moon. It rose because they were in orbit around the moon when they took the picture. That's what...

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Okay, that's great. Yeah, thanks. But now...

• 43:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  No, no, I'm saying, that's great things. Is a moon camera different than a regular camera?

• 43:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's bigger and more expensive and take better pictures than most cameras you'll ever see in your life.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Do you have one?

• 43:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I don't. No.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  You do, don't you?

• 43:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what I'm saying is that picture who that showed Earth.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Without any lines of continents or states or cities, it was just this blue orb juxtaposed as part of the scenery of another world transformed our understanding of our place in the universe. And the modern green movement is traceable to that photograph. And so there's there's scientific photograph that became iconic art that influenced a generation of people to take action. I just had to share that with you.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Interesting. Now, the Hubble images and things are the is that the same kind of camera?

• 44:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I Hubble, no, it's a digital camera. That was a regular sort of film camera back in the days of Apollo eight. And now Hubble pictures is digital. It's it's a very expensive version of the detector that's in the camera that all of us have, the digital cameras that we all use. It's called a CCD, charged coupled device camera. So I'm just you asked, I'm just telling you, you asked, did I volunteer that?

• 44:31Speaker 01

  LOL.

• 44:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You asked. And so the Hubble photos are are today's generation of exposure to the rest of the world.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Which are better?

• 44:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, definitely digital pictures are far superior.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Because they're more accurate.

• 44:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're they they they're far superior.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  They're not as romantic.

• 44:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you know.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  I'm a Luddite.

• 44:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In terms of romance, do you know there's a scene in the in the Carl Sagan film Contact? I don't know if you saw the film.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Yes, of course.

• 44:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Remember where Jodie Foster was taken by the aliens into their distant land?

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And she's looking and it's so beautiful. And you remember what she says?

• 45:01Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She says, because she's without she's speechless by the beauty of it all. She says, they should have sent a poet.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 45:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's that's just.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  But that's poetical in itself.

• 45:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Poetical or political?

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Whatever, poetical.

• 45:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just and other thing.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  Really, Neil?

• 45:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm a big fan.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  I'm not Peter Max. You better watch what you say.

• 45:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm I'm a big fan of Van Gogh's Starry Night.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Oh, you think?

• 45:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Inspired a song.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Just so everyone knows, who doesn't know Neil, Neil has Starry Night stuff all over his office, everywhere, like pillows, books, which is great because it's beautiful.

• 45:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it was the cover of one of my books, too. I can't because it's a star night. It's an artist whom he could have named that painting Sleepy Village.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Neil, you know what? We had this argument before. No, it couldn't.

• 45:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, he could.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  It's all stars in the sky. It's about the sky, not about the village.

• 45:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm agreeing. So the man came through. I'm totally with you on that. And then there's other art that has inspired, you know, the the ceiling of the of Grand Central Terminal.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, you took me there and showed the ceiling to me.

• 46:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, you didn't need me to take you there. It's Grand Central Terminal.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  I know, but I never really looked up at it till you took me there.

• 46:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's different. Okay, so that ceiling, did you know that all the stars are backwards? That pissed me off when I discovered that.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  And who did that? What was that artist's name?

• 46:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I forgot. Paul Hail-Yuf from 1912.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Was he dyslexic?

• 46:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  French artist. I think he was not sufficiently scientifically literate to know that the image of the sky he was looking at in a map was the reverse of what he had to put on the ceiling.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  Or he might have been dyslexic now.

• 46:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It can't be that dyslexic. Dyslexic is flip a few letters or a few words, not an entire sky. So there's no excuse. I don't forgive him at all.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  I wonder if he still got paid.

• 46:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know, with those Hubble photos, some of the colors are vivid. They can represent colors that you would see if your eyes were huge and if your retina was sensitive to the filters that the Hubble telescope uses. You wouldn't necessarily see what Hubble sees. You would, however, if you've got, if you can tune your eyeballs in the way we tune the Hubble telescope.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  I don't get that. What does that mean? So it means the colors that I think I see on there are not the colors that really if I'm up in space?

• 47:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's great. If you had special eyeballs, you would see it that way. You would see it just that way. We have feeble eyeballs.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  So in space, when I see, if I was in spacecraft looking at it, it wouldn't look like that?

• 47:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it would look like something else that was commenced with your eyeballs. But in Hubble, we want to see...

• 47:15Speaker 01

  That's aggravating.

• 47:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I'm sorry, but it's just, you know, what happens when people put on makeup before they get photographed? It's not what you really look like. It's something else. I'm just letting you know.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  But if you were there on the planet, would it look like that?

• 47:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would look different.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Like is Mars really red?

• 47:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. You're acting like you're getting angry with me.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  Because I just find that aggravating.

• 47:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's get a fast clip of Peter Max, our final clip with him. Let's see what more he has to tell us about how he's been inspired by science.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  How much he loves you.

• 47:41Speaker 03

  I want to make an animated film. I told you about it earlier. And this film has a lot to do with the universe. And it's with like, you know, us suddenly connecting with another species from far, far away who have some common interest with us. And it's a beautiful, it's a musical. It's a two-hour musical. And I'm about maybe halfway through designing it, conceiving it, and I'm gonna go to some of my friends in Hollywood and see how I can get it made.

• 48:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we gotta get you back when that comes out.

• 48:12Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 48:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Listen, Peter Max, it's been great having you on StarTalk, and thanks for your hospitality, inviting me into your studio where I'm inundated by paintings ready to fall on me. This place is... This place, you need like three more floors of this warehouse.

• 48:26Speaker 03

  Thank you, thank you. We just have a couple floors here with about a hundred people. But it's my playground. I, in the morning, I can't wait to get here. At night, I don't want to leave.

• 48:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how all jobs should be. Peter Max, thanks for being on StarTalk. That was Peter Max.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  I love him!

• 48:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my god. But you, how about, why do you love all the guests that I have on, on the interview?

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Well, I don't love, I think he's my new favorite.

• 48:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Until our, our guest next week, she's my real favorite, but it's really awesome.

• 48:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So did, I don't know if you know, that NASA is not unmindful of the fact that art matters in our culture and in society. So they, it's not just fighter pilots, flyboys, and scientists they send into space.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  They send artists?

• 49:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, they don't send artists into space, not yet. But there's a, there's an Arts in Space program where artists are invited to capture so, the discoveries of NASA, the voyages of NASA, in whatever is their artistic means of expression. And it was started in 1962, and they've commissioned artists such as Norman Rockwell and, and others. And it, and it chronicles the history of space exploration through the eyes of artists and others. And there's more than 2,000 works of art by 350 artists in their archive.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  That's interesting. And listen, next week, this has been a great show, but next week, tonight, we need everyone to watch the Joan Rivers Rose.

• 49:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Joan Rivers is being, she's a buddy of yours, apparently.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  She's my dear friend, and she's on our show next week.

• 49:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, indeed. Thanks to your connections. I could have never had access to this woman.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  We had so much fun with her.

• 49:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's an icon of comedic, she's going to be riffing on all the science that we're trying to take seriously here, and tell us where that fits and where it sits. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  What's up, Neil?

• 49:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Funded by the National Science Foundation. We'll see you next week.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Keep looking up.