Cosmic Crib, with Rainn Wilson

He’s Dwight from The Office, he’s a climate activist, and he’s definitely a nerd. Neil deGrasse Tyson sits down with Rainn Wilson to explore acting, climate change, his new show Utopia, and the mysteries of the universe.

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.

• 0:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And we're gonna go slightly off format today. This is just gonna feature my conversation with Rainn Wilson. His fans know all about him and his portfolio. And of course, in fact, he's in a recent Amazon Prime. Do I call it a mini-series? We'll find out. And it's on a subject-

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Depends on if it has a season two. If it has only season one, it's a mini-series.

• 0:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rainn Wilson, welcome to StarTalk.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I'm calling this my cosmic crib because we're just, you and I are just chilling. Normally I have like a co-host and experts and all that. It's just you and I having a conversation, reaching for our geek roots.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  I love it. That's awesome. Let's do this.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you're best known, and you hate it when people say "he's best known for", do you hate that?

• 1:18Speaker 01

  No, no, come on. I mean, it's just true. I'm best known for playing Dwight Schrute and-

• 1:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just true. In The Office. And how many seasons did that go?

• 1:30Speaker 01

  It was nine seasons, 10 seasons.

• 1:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's crazy. Every time I turn on, there's The Office, you know?

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I just want to just congratulate you for being a fixture in that show. And in the geekiverse, you are deeply loved. And especially most recently, you have a show that dropped. And it's called Utopia, in which you play a virologist. So we'll have to get to the bottom of that. And also, you've got a podcast of your own?

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Soul Pancake? Will I ever be on Soul Pancake?

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Probably not, probably not. You wouldn't make the cut. I'm so sorry.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  You're not legit enough. It's a podcast called Metaphysical Milkshake I did with Reza Aslan.

• 2:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so Soul Pancake is your production?

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Soul Pancake, but Soul Pancake is the company that I co-founded. It's a digital media company. So it's Soul Pancake Presents Metaphysical Milkshake. They're very much a part of it. It's kind of in the whole Soul Pancake vibe, which is about exploring life's big questions and making uplifting content and bringing people together. And our podcast is in sync with that.

• 2:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does that work today? Because no one wants uplifting content. They thrive on conflict and tribalism. So how's that working out?

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Well, yes. How is that working out?

• 2:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not following the Facebook model.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  There is a large percentage of the population that is looking for uplifting content and unifying content and something that contains hope and joy even. And, you know, I just look at, I mean, you saw the documentary, The Social Dilemma, yes?

• 3:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes, yes. Very interesting. It got right to the heart of the problem.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I knew a lot of the stuff that was in it before. A lot of people watch it and go like, "Well, I knew all that." It's like, "Well, yeah, I knew it, but it wasn't put together in a..." The puzzle pieces weren't put together in such a...

• 3:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a coherent way.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Coherent way. And you see that so much of the division going on in the world right now is this Facebook model. If they can get you outraged, they get you clicking buttons more and they get more ads and they make more money. So outrage and division fuels commerce. So we're a digital media company. Yes, we would like people to watch our videos, but we're trying to combat this by bringing people together and using the best aspects of the web and of YouTube and digital content.

• 4:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is so noble. I mean, I'm proud of you. And I hope it succeeds by greater than all measures, because then others would then emulate it and then it would maybe be this force of attraction. Away from all that continues to divide us. And what's this in that same production company? An Idiot's Guide to Climate Change?

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 4:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're into that, too?

• 4:32Speaker 01

  You'll dig this. I keep wanting to say Dr. Tyson.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, it's Dr. Neil.

• 4:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just Neil, just Neil.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  I know, but I keep wanting to say Dr. Tyson. Why is that? You command such respect. I never want to call anyone a doctor. Even my own doctor I call.

• 4:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is fascinating. Many people call me that and I never, I don't introduce myself that way. When I give public talks, I was here is doctors. No, I don't. But so, so I have to receive it as a, as a, as a, an unsolicited honorific.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Yes, okay, good.

• 5:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm warmed by it, but still it's not necessary.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Um, well, okay, Neil. All right, Neil, shut the up. Here's.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  So, no, you would dig this show, An Idiot's Guide to Climate Change. Here's what we did. I, I was, I got involved with this nonprofit called Arctic Base Camp. That basically explores the science of how climate change is affecting the Arctic. And tries to really impart that information to movers and shakers. Because as you know, in the world of climate change, what's happening in the Arctic is far more extreme than what's happening even in California. I mean.

• 5:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, in fact, when they say we're warming the earth by one or two degrees, that, that's the average. The Arctic gets a much bigger hit from that.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Exactly, almost double what we're feeling in North America.

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Almost double, that's.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  So, uh, I got invited to take a trip with them to Iceland and Greenland and meet some scientists that were working up there. And so, we didn't really have a budget for Soul Pancake. It's a, you know, it's a smallish company. So, but on like a $60,000 budget, we were able to kind of pull together. I kind of documented myself on this trip up to Greenland. And we made it a six-part series. Greta Thunberg is on the series. And the whole point of it was like. Listen, there's a lot of people that believe in the science of climate change. Of course, as you always say, you don't believe in science. Science just is.

• 6:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, just wait, back up for a second. You can't just call up American Airlines and say, uh, book me a trip to Greenland. Like, how did you, what was the path that you took?

• 6:43Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so getting to Greenland was, was a bitch. We had to-

• 6:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did someone invite you to Greenland?

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, the scientist, Dr. Gail Whitman, who's the founder of Arctic Base Camp, and there were a bunch of other scientists that were working up there. And she was like, we were going to do a bunch of events. And she was like, Rain, I'm going up there to meet with these scientists. You should come along and just see firsthand what's going on.

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, cool.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  And we'll document it and you can make it into this little series. And then you can also kind of, as you know, you can speak to science much more when you've kind of like lived it and gone through it. So the point of the show, though, Neil, was that there's a lot of people that buy the science. There's a lot of people that don't buy the science and think it's kind of a crazy liberal conspiracy. But there are some people in the middle. There are some young people in the middle that are kind of getting it from both sides that, you know, maybe they've got a crazy right wing uncle that doesn't buy the-

• 7:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, at Thanksgiving, it all happens at Thanksgiving.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Thanksgiving dinner table. Exactly. And, but maybe their friends at school are climate activists and, you know, or something like that. So do Fire Drill Fridays with Jane Fonda or something. So they don't know what to think. So I tried to make it like, I'm the doofus, I'm the idiot, um, going, who doesn't know anything about climate change, wants to learn something that's going on this, this trek. So it's fun, I try and use humor, it's, it's kind of, you know, off putting and, um, it was a lot of fun. We had, Greta Thunberg was on it and we had a blast.

• 8:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. Did you glean any tactics, any tools or the tools of communication from that trip?

• 8:20Speaker 01

  You know, that's a great question. I didn't. I, I don't know, I don't know what to do, you know, just to-

• 8:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, shit. Where do I go? What do I do?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Sorry, despairing in front of you.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought you said you were hopeful, dude.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  I do think that we just need to keep fighting the good fight and trying and really work with young people. You know, people over forty or fifty, they got their minds made up. You know, they're never gonna change their minds, so.

• 8:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it does seem to be demographically split that way. That's a fascinating fact. And so that therefore, the younger demographic, they're tactically different. If you're trying to get some of them off the fence versus, you're right, the old ossified folks.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. So try and reach some of the young people, and we can make a difference. If we make extreme changes right now, throughout the world, we can meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. It's gonna be really, really hard, but we can do it, and we just have to keep believing. That's it. That's all I got.

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, that's helpful. And do you think, so, I'm just wondering if there should be tourist jaunts to Greenland, so they can see. That might help. Because I always think, I think the flat-earthers are a conspiracy just so that they're the first ones to go into space, because that's where we're gonna wanna send them, so they can see the round Earth firsthand. So they get a free, just send them on, just do that round.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  You don't even need to go to space. You can just fly, you can fly to Europe, and you're up so high, like the sun's rising, you see the curve of the Earth. It's not...

• 9:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here, no, here's what you do. You set them up into space and say, "You have to confess Earth is round, otherwise we're not bringing you back."

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Oh, there you go. Perfect. I would not suggest bringing people to Greenland, mostly because the carbon footprint is so big. And I talk about that in the series, but just flying to Greenland, it's so much gas and taxis and whatnot. I mean, the only way to do it is if you're gonna, like, I'm gonna plant a frickin' forest when I'm done flying to Greenland, but...

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm, just to make up for it. And Greta's quite, Greta's quite the ambassador. Was she on the same trip with you, or did it go in another time?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  No, this guy who's on our board, Callum Greaves, works with her and her organization, so he was able to kind of patch her in, and we did it, we shot remotely with her. She didn't go on the trip, but she's a firebrand, man. It's remarkable what she's done.

• 10:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really good. Doing that right. So now, you have a show that just dropped, like, days ago, from the moment of this recording. And I already know people who have binged the entire series, and I said, "Damn." So I, so I confess, I just read some of the reviews. I haven't seen any of them yet.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I just like the fact that you're a virologist. But i- i- in Utopia, it is curiously, weirdly syn- synch- uh, synchronized.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some overlap with our current pandemic. So what's up with that?

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Um, it's pretty crazy, man. I mean, this is based on a British show. Utopia was on the BBC a long time ago, like 10 years ago.

• 11:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As was The Office.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Uh, thank you. Thank you. Yes. And in fact, we're fighting that same battle. There are these hardcore fanboys of the British original series like, "The American series sucks. It's gonna fail. It's terrible." And, um, how did that work?

• 11:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It always makes more money in America than in England.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  But I don't, I don't get that argument because no one's taking away that TV show. Like, no one, when we made the American Office, we didn't take all copies of the British Office and like burn them, like no one could watch them. Like, you can watch them over and over and over again.

• 11:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, it's an American Office show in an American office, right? It's not Americans in a British location, right?

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Exactly. But Utopia is the same thing. So, a- and it's been being developed for years. Gillian Flynn was a showrunner and creator of our version. And, um, it's all about conspiracy theories.

• 12:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the parallels are creepy. So, so give, give me a, give me a, like, you know, three sentence overview.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Uh, a group of comic book geeks discover a graphic novel that contains the keys to the destruction of humanity, which includes, uh, crazy viruses and a, and a supervillain named Mr. Rabbit.

• 12:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  How's that?

• 12:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it takes off from there.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  And then it, it's all, it's all downhill. Yeah, it's, so it's conspiracy theory thriller with some science fiction and, um, and drama and really dark, uh, sense of humor. I call it Stranger Things meets Quentin Tarantino.

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, so it's got some blood.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it has, it has, yeah, human heads being smashed.

• 13:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so tell me, tell me about the virus. What's the virus up to in this story?

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, so in this story there, my, I play a virologist, Dr. Michael Sterns, who discovered a really obscure virus in the Andes Mountains in Peru that killed a couple hundred members of the Peruvian military. And so I studied it and I created a, a super vaccine that not only inoculates it, but cures the disease.

• 13:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, let me guess, uh, you're a scientist, you call this to people's attention, and no one listens to you?

• 13:26Speaker 01

  No one listens. No one cares.

• 13:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just, I'm just spitballing there. Let me just.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Exactly. So then I'm, so I'm just relegated to kind of researching this virus in the basement of my college in Chicago. I'm a small potatoes guy. And then there happens to be this huge pandemic sweeping America. And the parallels between my virus and this one are very stunning. And so it does turn out that my virus is the virus that is killing hundreds or thousands in America. So all of a sudden, I get thrust into the spotlight, and I become this very, very unlikely hero.

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Well, it's good to have a scientist as a hero, even if it's in a, a, a gory, weird storytelling.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it is, it is.

• 14:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Usually the scientist gets long forgotten after you pass them by in the beginning of this, of a storytelling. So I'm happy to, to learn of this.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and, and, and the, is there, does it also address social, cultural things like fear, vaccines, and this sort of thing?

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Yes, it does. And, and it was amazing. So we shot this thing, we finished this thing in September, the virus, the Wuhan virus started in December. The pandemic was in February or March. And, um, we were texting each other like January, February, March, like, what is happening here? Is our show coming true? This is nuts. Because not only is it the virus, but there's a whole segment of the show that's about the vaccines, the production of vaccines, rushing the vaccine to market. How are we gonna get this vaccine out? Um, who should take it?

• 15:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, what it means is you have a really effective PR firm.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Apparently, yeah. That's, I guess that's it.

• 15:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they started the Wuhan virus.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 15:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a PR.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  I think, I'm waiting for, because this is an Amazon show. I'm waiting for the conspiracy theory that Jeff Bezos started the virus in order to promote Utopia on Amazon Prime, but.

• 15:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And with everyone, with the virus, no one's going out, so everyone needs their stuff shipped. So that's the Amazon.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 15:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, he's the only one, you know, he'll be a trillionaire by the time this is over.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Almost is.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Rain, we gotta, we gotta take a quick break, but when we come back, more with Rain Wilson, one of our patron geek saints out there.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're going to take questions from our own fan base, specifically our Patreon patrons when StarTalk returns.

• 16:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk, a Cosmic Crib edition, where we're in conversation with Rain Wilson, who's an actor and I just learned, a climate activist.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, can I call you that, Rain?

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The climate activist?

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Why not? I'll take it.

• 16:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'll, you'll take it, okay? And so, right now, in this portion, we, we've solicited questions from our fan base, and we're going to lead off with Patreon members. These are the folks who, who actively support our podcast. So, we got a question right here for you, Rain, all right? So, when reading and memorizing scripts for a science-heavy show like Utopia, how much of what you need and learn sticks with you and furthers your understanding of science in general? Also, just wondering, what was your favorite comic book character?

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Ah, nice, okay, good.

• 17:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why don't you answer that first, because that's presumably a fast, fast question? Favorite comic book character?

• 17:14Speaker 01

  So, here's the deal with me and comic books. So, I was a huge comic book nerd as a child, and then around 11 or 12, I discovered these things, Neil, called books. They don't have pictures in them. There's no pictures. There's just stories. No, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just giving, I'm giving him shit. I, I switched over to science fiction, but I have in the other room of our house, I have my 1970s and 1980s science fiction book collections, like 400 books that I read when I was a teenager. So Dungeons and Dragons and science fiction books were how I lived my teenage years.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  But, uh, favorite, ultimately favorite comic book character. I loved Superman at first and then Green Lantern, because I figured out that Green Lantern could kick Superman's butt uh, by just making a kryptonite shell around him. But then I always was, I really loved Thor. I, I, I, because I loved mythology and I loved the way that it blended kind of Norse myths and mythological characters with superheroes. So I, I was really big into, into Thor.

• 18:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. So if you're first into Superman and later into Thor, those are the two authentic alien superheroes. They come from other planets.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 18:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to put that in context.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  That's true. I hadn't really even thought about that. I guess because I've always felt like an alien myself, kind of in my own skin. So, there you have it.

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now tell me, I'm, I'm, I, I actually claim cameo appearances in five feature-length films, but that doesn't make me an actor. And if I'm playing myself, I don't really have to prepare for it. So, as an actor, what is the relationship between preparing for a role where that role has expertise? And, and what might be real expertise that you'd glean along the way?

• 19:08Speaker 01

  I mean, this is-

• 19:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's this question that was just asked.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a great, it's a great question, and I get asked this one a lot. I, fortunately, you know, I spent years playing a paper salesman and I didn't have to do a whole lot of research about-

• 19:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you train for that?

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and a beet farmer. I didn't like research like beet growing harvest yields and, and irrigation techniques for the sugar beet.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  But for

• 19:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But imagine how much better you would have been had you done

• 19:38Speaker 01

  I know, I'm kicking myself right now. But I'm, I will be, I'll be brutally honest. So I play a virologist and I didn't do any research on what a virologist does or learns or anything like that. I'm sorry, I apologize, science nerds. But because in this case, and I would if I was in, if it, if it really was about the science. Like if this was a show where I was in the lab a lot and doing work and talking about concepts of viruses and stuff, but I start in the lab and I'm immediately like, episode two, just like launched out into the world and I don't really deal with the science of it so much.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  So I knew it wouldn't really help my performance or my kind of authenticity to kind of dive into the research.

• 20:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that because it's scripted in a way where you are more than just a scientist, you're a whole person who's interacting with a social ecology that's out there?

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because for example, there's, so I, I forgot which show it was, it was one of these doctor shows and there's Laurence Fishburne as the, the medical examiner performing autopsies, right? So they don't put him out in the field too much, you know, when you go down into the bowels of the, of the, where they store the bodies, he's there. And so his lines have to come out convincingly to what might be an audience who has fluency in the analysis of dead bodies. So presumably some of your lines have to be sort of medically authentic when you deliver them.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Well, in this case, and in this case, there were really only a handful. Like I'm talking three or four lines over the entire series that needed to kind of sound medically, scientifically authentic. When you're doing a TV show and you're in the milieu and you're playing a doctor, a surgeon, or a specialist or something like that, you're coming back time and time again, you know, like Doctor House or something like that. You really might need to learn some more about medicine to be able to every single episode be diving into some kind of

• 21:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and be authen, and authentically deliver the lines. Right, I mean, that's, that's gotta, it's, it's gotta at least sound convincing to some experts and especially in the geekiverse, you'll be held to that.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 21:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got people Who are experts or no experts, or, or, and, you know, I'm a big, well, I, I, I'm known.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, you do this on the movies all the time. I watched your live, I literally followed your live Twitter feed of, um, was it Gravity? I think it was Gravity. Of like, everything that was right and most things that were wrong, but, uh, it was, uh, it was great.

• 22:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it was Mysteries of Gravity. That's what, that was, that was the hashtag I created for it. Um, but I try to give some latitude to the creative arts. So people think I'm just a total, you know, nasty person to ever see a movie with, but I, I think I'm just misunderstood.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 22:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In my intent. Yeah, thank you.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  You need a hug. If this weren't COVID, I would give you a hug.

• 22:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just need, air hug, we can give an air hug. Yeah. So, um, let's get another question from, uh, one of our Patreon members. And, oh, sorry, I didn't give the name of that. That first person, uh, was, uh, Robert Stanley. Yes.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Okay, thank you, Robert.

• 22:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, and a next one is, uh, Chris Hampton. And, uh, these are clearly your fans. Hey, Rain.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  That's where I have another house, Chris Hampton.

• 23:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chris Hampton. That's, that's east of West Hampton. Right, right, right. It's like, hey, Rain. So these are like total fan, fan folks out there. Huge fan. Uh, do you ever get into deep conversations about the universe with the other actors on set? If so, who have you had the best conversations with?

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Oh, that's fantastic.

• 23:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's broaden that to just your, you know, not only Utopia, but also The Office. How about that?

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's great. Um.

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the downtime, in downtime.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Sure, we do. Well, you know, there's a lot of downtime when you're on the set. So there's a lot of like really deep, uh, conversations. I, the one that just popped into my mind, uh, immediately was I did a long time ago now, it's about 15 years ago. I did a role in this action, uh, adventure comedy with Matthew McConaughey called Sahara.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  And

• 24:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I missed that.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's it's a big silly romp through Morocco and explosions and camels and hidden treasure and

• 24:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Explosions and camels.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  But that's

• 24:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the whole movie. Explosions, camels, hidden treasure.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  There's a little bit more to it than that, but um and I played a science geeky nerd in that one. But I remember talking to Penelope Cruz and I was just blown away by how smart she was and how, I mean, first of all, she's like the most beautiful woman on planet Earth. So it was a little bit, my jaw was kind of dropped, but she's, you know, she speaks five languages. She runs all these orphanages. She has got university degrees. She's very well read. She's

• 24:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can only know that in the downtime. Now that I think about it, that's how you know that.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, just sipping on a coffee, eating on a sandwich and we just had some, we didn't have a bunch, but I just remember this one conversation where we were talking about, you know, world peace and how to achieve it and working together and different cultures coming together and some big concepts. And I was just su- super impressed with her.

• 25:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I like that. So I did not know that about Penelope Cruz.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very, very, very good.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Genius. Supermodel genius, basically.

• 25:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have a very opposite experience that I once had.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, I was filming, again, in a cameo role and we're between takes. So I'm sitting in my, you know, in the, in the, in the chair, you know, with the director's chair, but of course I'm not the director. I'm just, but that's what they're called, the director's chair. And there's someone else, one of the other actors is there. And so there's some new photo from the Hubble telescope that had just arrived. And I just, I'm excited. I'm an astrophysicist. I say, oh, have you seen this photo? There's stars being born in the middle of this gas. And she, oh, okay. And then went back to reading People Magazine.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Oh goodness.

• 26:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is a person who's playing a medical doctor. And I was just so, you know, and again, I'm naive to assume that an actor is the thing that they're acting. The fact that they're so good at what they're portraying, making me think that they know this stuff, that's why they're a good actor.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I, it's, I'm so torn by this reality that

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  an actor can be completely ignorant about everything in the world and all that matters is they deliver those lines. And so, yeah.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  At the end of the day, actors are idiots. So, you said it. You said it best.

• 26:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Actors are idiots.

• 26:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just that one.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 26:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I'll say something else here, okay, just to, just to dig myself out of the hole that you just threw me in, even though I dug the hole, okay? So, um, I remembered the, in a scene she was in, where she delivered a line and the director said, "No, you need the line to be, uh, this is a person you remember from the past, and you had good memories then, but then you had later bad memories, so you have conflicted emotions, go." And out came three lines where it was like, "Yes, it's all there."

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the, in the body, in the eyes, and the, and the gestures.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and, and I said, "Damn, damn, that's good."

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I asked her in, in the, in the break, I said, "Well, so how long have you been acting?" She said, "Well, yeah, it depends on when you want to start counting, but, um, since I was six." I was like, "Okay."

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so if, so if you ask me, "How long you been thinking about the universe?", it's like, "Since I was nine", right, I can, I got that. And I'm, I'm totally, I'm all in in the universe.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, so, and she was all in with the actor.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  No, I appreciate that. There's a, people don't, a great actor makes it look so easy and effortless. I always use Brad Pitt as the example, like, it's just like, everyone watches a Brad Pitt performance, you're like, "I could do that. If I was that good-looking, I could do that." I mean, he just is standing there saying.

• 28:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's the, that's the only thing separating.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  If I had won the genetic lottery like he had, I could do it. But Brad Pitt is a phenomenal actor. I mean, transformative, subtle, precise, emotional. Like, I'm astounded at his, the intelligence of his performances, all of them. So it's really complicated and you, you know, you spend your whole life making it look really easy. Uh, but it's not.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you hope someone notices and then you get the next gig.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's do one more question before we take, take, take the next break. So, uh, this is Violetta, 12-year-old astro nerd in Birmingham, Alabama. And my mom, Izzy, is also a nerd.

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nerd, nerd, nerd soup here. Okay, we want to know, uh, do you consider yourself a nerd? And if so, what level of nerd are you? And what's the nerdiest thing you've ever done? Thanks, love you guys.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  I love this question.

• 29:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we need a fast answer here.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  I love this question. I have a chess clock over my right shoulder. That should prove it to you. I used to be, I used to play competitive chess and I was on the chess team and we would drive around competing in chess. And once I went to a chess tournament and I saw a guy who had mold growing in his ear. That's, I'm not exaggerating. That's how nerdy I am, okay?

• 29:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you didn't have the mold, but someone next to you did.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  They did.

• 29:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Means you're hanging out with that crowd.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  I was hanging out with the crowd with a guy who had mold in his ear. That's how nerdy I am, boom.

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 29:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, and I'm, I'm going to answer this too. So I'm, I'm nerd from way back. I went to the Bronx High School of Science, but I was kind of a nerd jock. So, you know, the whole, the whole spectrum of tribalizing that goes on in high school. We have the jocks and the nerds. Um, in the Bronx High School of Science, everybody's a nerd. So, so the nerd spectrum has shifted. The whole high school spectrum has shifted in the nerd direction. So, everybody is a nerd. I was just a nerd jock. Then you had the nerd, the nerd nerds, okay? They were like extra. So, so for me, uh, what's the nerdiest thing I did? I once wrote down.

• 30:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every single number that had any significance that I knew at that moment. So it was a whole sheet. So it was like all the digits of pi that I knew. I also happen to know the fifth root of a hundred to 12 decimal places, but that's another story. Every phone number that I knew, including their area code. So these are 10-digit numbers. Other, other numbers. And I just wrote that. And I said, how many numbers could possibly be in my head that are just there for random access?

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I filled an entire sheet. And each number has, had meaning in my life. I thought that was kind of a geeky thing to do.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  That, that takes the cake. That's, that's, that's remarkable.

• 31:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just thought maybe that was kind of geeky.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Although I do have notebooks filled with my, uh, God, I wish I could just grab one right now. I've got notebooks filled with the drawings I did of my Dungeons and Dragons characters.

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. All right. Yeah, that's good.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  So.

• 31:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. Okay, Izzy, Mom Izzy and Violetta, where we are on that scale. And just briefly, however nerdy you think you are, there are people who are way more nerdy than you are.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  True.

• 31:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when I finally calculated the mass of Thor's hammer, someone corrected my calculation and said, "The actual mass of Thor's hammer."

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Oh my.

• 31:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My calculation was as geeky a thing as I've ever done with a superhero universe. And that is the Marvel Universe, of course. And then someone out geeked me, who was a, a, a, a, a material science engineer who worked for the Navy, who had all kinds of superhero paraphernalia in his office. And he, he showed me the errors of my calculation.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Oh man.

• 32:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  And was he right?

• 32:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I had to, I had to concede.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Wow, good. Well, good for you that you had the humility to say, you know what?

• 32:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  You got me.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So, so it turns out, um, I calculated that his hammer weighed the equivalent of a herd of 300 billion elephants. And I had authentic ways to calculate that. He said, "No, it's actually made of a fictional substance called Ulu, Ulu, Ulu, and it weighs exactly 42.3 pounds." And my answer was so much better than that.

• 32:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but I had to concede, I concede. And then one of my fans said, no, Neil, Neil, they didn't say on what planet it weighs forty-two point three pounds. Because you weigh different amounts on different planets.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 32:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But anyhow, we gotta take a break and when we come back, Rain, if you have questions for me, that'll be the chance to ask them.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Great.

• 33:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When StarTalk returns.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Hey, it's time to give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons, Jennifer Sell-Napp and Chris Reynolds. Guys, thank you so much. Without you, we couldn't do this show. And for anyone else listening who would like their very own Patreon shout out, please go to patreon.com/starTalkRadio and support us.

• 33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Cosmic Creer, welcome to it. And in my Cosmic Creer, I got Rain Wilson. Rain, been a delight in conversation with you the first time we've met. And I'm also, I feel good that we've exposed your geek underbelly.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's actually not your underbelly, it's all around you.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  It's my literal belly, yes.

• 34:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's your literal belly, not your underbelly. It's on top, all around you. And so, in this third segment, I just want to probe, what are the depths of your cosmic curiosity? Because it's not every day someone hangs out with an astrophysicist. And I want people to fully exploit that occasion if they want to.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so, listen, I hear a lot from people about this thing that Einstein referenced, spooky action at a distance. And then I know that this is kind of a controversial concept, and I just can't wrap my head around it. I'm really a science neophyte around this stuff, and I really have a hard time taking science and math into my brain. But, you know, I know it has to do with theoretical physics and kind of some experiment or some happening in one place affecting something in some other place. And I'm just wondering what that means, what that, I always hear that and I just don't, I tried to watch a YouTube video on it, I couldn't wrap my head around it.

• 35:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love the way you said that. All right. It predates Einstein. Let's go back to Isaac Newton. So when Isaac Newton first wrote down his equations of gravity, and in these equations, there's a mass term of one object and a mass term in another, you multiply them together, and you divide by the distance between them squared. And when you do that, that's the force of gravity between these two objects. So these two objects at a distance from each other, feel each other's presence. But he knew there's nothing in space. There's no cable connecting them. There are no, there's no pulleys. It's empty.

• 35:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this deeply disturbed Isaac Newton. It's like there's gotta be some way that they're physically connecting to each other. But until we discover that way, I know my equations work. So I'm sticking with my equations, okay? So the equations work. The orbit of the moon around the earth, earth around the sun, Jupiter's moons around Jupiter that you could see with a telescope. It was knocking them out of the park. But he was uncomfortable that you could have action at a distance. And thus became this quest for is there something else going on in space? That enables these two objects to know about each other?

• 36:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then we've ended up exploring electromagnetism. There's another thing, action at a distance. Okay, magnet, there's a magnetic, the concept of field had to be introduced, right? And that was Faraday in the 19th century. Faraday introduced the concept as a magnetic field. And if we're going to talk about fields, we have a gravitational field, if you want to talk that way. And it's this zone out there where things can happen. But there's still the mystery of what's going on.

• 37:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Across, what is gapping that distance? And it took modern field theory to come to an understanding of it. So, before I get to that, let's get the gravity solved. So Einstein figured out that gravity is not action at a distance. Gravity is a distortion of the fabric of space and time. And I, as a mass, am distorting space around me. And if you want to move in my space, you're gonna follow that path. So Einstein is quoted as saying that mass tells space how to curve? Space tells matter how to move. So it kind of sidestepped the action at a distance question.

• 37:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause you're just sliding up and down like, like a skateboarder on a, on a, on a, on a varied terrain, going up and down in the hole and out of the hole. That, that's what things are doing. When things are in orbit, they're just sort of falling on this curved fabric of spacetime. So that kind of buys us some time on this, alright? Maybe that's all we have to do to think about gravity. With electromagnetism, we're not talking about spooky action at a distance. It's a photon is exchanged between two particles and that creates the force. So photons carry the force of electricity and magnetism. That's modern field theory describing that. And so we're done there.

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now, you folded that together with this other thing, which is, wait a minute, there's something way over here and something's happening and it's not gravity and it's not electromagnetism, there's something else. That, I think, was part of your question. So, but there's another sort of modern version of that that reveals itself in quantum physics. And it's called quantum entanglement. And so quantum entanglement is, is where you can have two particles. You know, you heard that particles can be wave, you know, matter can be wave and particles at the same time? You might have heard about that, the wave particle duality. Well, okay, if you create a particle, you can create a pair of particles that are entangled with each other, where they have complementary properties.

• 39:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, now, separate the particles.

• 39:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't know what properties one of them has until you measure it. You just don't know. But the moment you measure it, you instantly know the properties of the other particle because they're complementary. Okay, what one is, the other is sort of the complementary variant on that. So, if you separate these particles, and don't measure them, just separate them, put them at great distance, then the instant you measure this particle, the other particle shows up with the complementary properties. And so the wave is occupying that entire space. And they instantly know about each other. That is the crowning achievement of action at a distance.

• 40:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, this information communicates, this happens faster than the speed of light, it happens instantaneously. So sci-fi people are asking, is there, can you make a warp drive that'll do this instantaneously and send something, information instantly? So there's a whole frontier of sci-fi people thinking about this phenomenon.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Well, that's what I was gonna say, Nick, that's the first thing that popped into my head is like, wait, so these two, I don't wanna say elements, but these two things,

• 40:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Particles.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Particles that have been split apart are, can connect with each other, not communicate like language, but there's a tension between them, you know, is faster than light space travel a possibility?

• 40:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, other than this quantum entanglement phenomenon, and there are few other, there's quantum tunneling, which is also an instantaneous thing, but other than that, moving physical objects through space faster than the speed of light, there is no known exception to it, and highly tested laws of physics that say it's impossible. So, we're kinda stuck with that. What you need, you need warp drives, you have to bend space, and then you cheat by cutting across shortcuts through it, or tunneling through wormholes. You can do it, you're not gonna accomplish it by physically moving faster than light through space.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 41:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So. So there you have it.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 41:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now I'm thinking of you in Galaxy Quest. I can't.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  That was my first role in a movie that was.

• 41:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're supporting alien.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Blanc the Thermian.

• 41:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thermian, yeah.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  But and so another question I had for you is like, what is, what was your most transcendent experience in astrophysics or astronomy? That was filled with the most wonder like what discovery? Or galaxy or?

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Experiment? Did you kind of witness that kind of made you gasp? And really stretched the limits of your of your wonder?

• 42:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I like that, and I think wonder is an undervalued. Feature of what it is to be a scientist or to be anyone on a frontier. We have one foot in what is known and the other foot in what is yet to be discovered. Many people fear that they have to have an answer. They can't bask in the ignorance of the yet to be known. And that's unfortunate because the wonder is to gaze upon something and say, I have no idea what I'm looking at. And and let me find out rather than I have no idea what I'm looking at. I'm afraid let me run back into the cave, right? These are two wholly different reactions. So for me.

• 42:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For parts of my PhD thesis, it involved obtaining data on mountain tops. And I went to mountain tops in the country of Chile, where those telescopes have access to the southern hemisphere skies, where the center of the galaxy passes overhead in the middle of their winter, which is the middle of our summer. So I would be there on the mountain top. And this was a pilgrimage because I have to travel all these thousands of miles into the southern hemisphere. Then you have to flip your biorhythms to go nocturnal. Because your night becomes your day. All right, and so so then there's this sort of physiological transformation. Then you have to regain your intellectual chops

• 43:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  because you're about to get data that's going to plug into research that you already have in progress. OK, so then the sun sets.

• 43:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a cloud layer that happens to roll in. Well, that cloud layer is below you. Cause you're on a mountaintop.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now the cloud layer completely surrounds you. And the moon is out just a little bit, so as it gets dark, there's still a little bit of light. I can see the tops of the clouds in moonlight. And I'm this island of rock with telescope domes that has ascended above this cloud layer. And there's nothing else in the world. Nothing in your sightline to the horizon. Except you on this mountaintop, above the clouds. So it's me on Earth, but really above Earth, looking out to the universe, ready to point my telescope to the center of the galaxy,

• 44:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  waiting for photons that have been traveling for thirty thousand years, emanating from the middle of the galaxy to land on my detector. And so, and I'm there alone. This is a very solid, well, there's a technician in another room, but it is a moment when you are communing with the cosmos. And for me, that is the closest thing I've had to a religious spiritual moment. Not religious in the sense of, oh, there are gods up there. No, no, just a spiritual moment where I'm not, in this moment, I'm not thinking of the universe. I'm feeling it.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  That's beautiful.

• 45:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's happened to me many times on the mountaintop.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Wow, that's a great story. That's fantastic. Yeah, I feel like those moments of transcendence is what we're really going for, you know, as us human beings on this planet, like that's

• 45:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And some people who've never had it might not know that that is something to go for.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that's another

• 45:52Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 45:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's another

• 45:53Speaker 01

  It's a direction to head, but I've had that same experience at a Radiohead concert. You know?

• 45:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. I did not expect Nancy to say that.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  I've had that same experience. You know, camping and being in the wilderness and seeing the stars. I've had that same experience, the birth of my son. But those moments.

• 46:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, wait, does your son know that you've analogized his birth to a Radiohead concert?

• 46:20Speaker 01

  He would be thrilled.

• 46:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Disclosed this.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  He's a huge Radiohead fan. He's 16. He's already seen them in concert twice. He would be thrilled.

• 46:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Well, dude, that's, I love that question and thanks for empowering me to relive that moment, which was very special for me. And dude, we got to get you back on at another time. I don't think we've plumbed all of the nerd space that we're capable of reaching.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Happy to come back anytime.

• 46:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Rain, Rain Wilson, thank you for being on StarTalk.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Doctor Neil deGrasse Tyson, you're very welcome.

• 46:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. This has been StarTalk. Let's call it the Rain Wilson edition. I've been your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.