Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Extended Classic: The Future of Humanity, with Elon Musk About this episode Neil Tyson explores the future of humanity with one of the men forging it: Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors. With Chuck Nice and Bill Nye. JUST ADDED: Neil and Bill in the Cosmic Crib, sipping Merlot and musing on optimism and space exploration.
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Transcript 10,660 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And I have with me Chuck Nice.
0:21 Chuck Nice? That's right.
0:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hey Chuck. Hey Neil. Tweeting at ChuckNiceComic. That is correct sir. As always. Good. Good to have you on the show. Good to be here. Do you know, you know what this topic is today? There's probably no more important topic we've ever addressed than this topic. Oh. The future of humanity. Oh, okay. That's what it is. The future of humanity. And we are featuring my interview with the one and the only Elon Musk. A man who is contributing to the future of humanity. He's not, he's not contributing to it. He is the. It's not something that everybody else is doing and then they come in on it. No, no, he's, he's, he's, he's making it. Okay. Okay.
1:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And sometimes he's referred to as the real life Iron Man, Tony Stark. I have to agree with that actually. And he's the founder of PayPal. It's an internet company. He's a founder of SpaceX, a rocket company. He's founder of Tesla Motors, an electric car company. And he's chairman of SolarCity, a solar energy company. He is the real Tony Stark. There you go. And I thought, I mean, I don't love you, but I thought I should bring in some help on this one. Okay. Is that okay? Another man who. Yeah, yeah. Someone else in my, in my life. Now, now this is awkward.
1:34 Bill Nye? It's not that awkward.
1:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, here he is. Bill Nice.
1:39 Bill Nye? Biting my lip.
1:43 Bill Nye? Is Dr. Tyson gonna introduce me or should I say anything?
1:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, we'll just talk about you.
1:48 Bill Nye? We're talking about Elon Musk, who is a heck of a guy.
1:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. Good to have you here because you've got some serious engineering background. And so a lot of the show, we're going to talk about engineering, the future of our civilization. Yeah. And I could make stuff up, but I'd rather you say what real stuff. And plus you're writing a book on like sustainability.
2:08 Bill Nye? Climate change and, and doing more with less.
2:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Do you know what it's going to be called?
2:13 Bill Nye? Unbounded.
2:14 Chuck Nice? Unbounded. Ooh.
2:17 Bill Nye? And I want to cultivate.
2:18 Chuck Nice? Go ahead. Subtitle, you're a frickin idiot if you don't believe in climate change.
2:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that what it is?
2:24 Bill Nye? Well, that might as well be. So it is an extraordinary time. I mean, we're talking about Elon Musk and his vision for the future of humanity.
2:32 Chuck Nice? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
2:33 Bill Nye? But it's an extraordinary time. As we record this, the state of Florida just forbade.
2:39 Chuck Nice? Forbade?
2:40 Bill Nye? Kept, would not allow state officials to use the phrase "climate change."
2:44 Chuck Nice? Yes.
2:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Really?
2:45 Bill Nye? Yeah.
2:46 Chuck Nice? Or, or a sea level rise.
2:48 Bill Nye? Or sea level, and they're gonna, so what is, what's gonna happen? The states of Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama are gonna build fences like we have in Texas.
2:56 Chuck Nice? Yes.
2:56 Bill Nye? The Floridians, both the Seminoles and the, uh...
3:00 Chuck Nice? And no disrespect to anybody who lives in Florida, Georgia, or Alabama, but I got a feeling it's gonna be a chain link fence too.
3:09 Bill Nye? Let's keep this water out!
3:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, let's find out. So, let's, let's get, let's get to the bottom of what created Elon Musk. I, I wanted to find out, you know, where, where did he come from? Where, where did he grow up? I didn't know anything about the man. Let's find out.
3:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Elon, what egg hatched you into this world? Where were you before you?
3:31 Speaker 03 Well, I was born in South Africa.
3:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Born in South Africa, and you come to America and make a billion dollars?
3:36 Speaker 03 Yeah. I mean, I didn't expect to make a billion dollars, I suppose. I mean, I grew up in South Africa, honestly, seeing a lot of the same TV and movies and reading comic books. And, and it really didn't feel all that different from, say, Southern California, honestly.
3:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you had a kind of baptism into American pop culture at the time?
3:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. I mean, I ate a lot of hamburgers and went to steak houses and read like every comic book, you know. So my father brought me on a trip to the United States when I think I was about 10. I remember it was a really awesome experience because the hotels all had arcades. So my number one thing was when we went to a new hotel or motel, or whatever it is, go to the arcades and so the...
4:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Forget any other services, forget whether they had bedbugs, you're looking for arcade games.
4:21 Speaker 03 Yeah.
4:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What did video games do for you?
4:23 Speaker 03 And they're incredibly engaging and they made me want to learn how to program computers. Cause then I thought, well, I could make my own games and then I could also, I wanted to see how the games worked. Like, how did you create a video game? That's what led me to learn how to program computers.
4:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you became a programmer?
4:37 Speaker 03 Yeah, so I had one of the first video game consoles. Didn't even have cartridges. You had like four games that you could play and you could like pick one to one of the four games you could play. That was it. And then it went from there to the original Atari and then in television. And then I was in a store and saw a Commodore Big 20. And I was like, holy crow, you can actually have a computer and make your own games. I thought this was just one of the most incredible things possible. Took all of my saved allowance and then hounded my father until we got the Commodore Big 20. And it came with this manual on how to program in BASIC. Which I sort of spent all night, several days in a row, just observing that and.
5:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On your own? No one forced you?
5:16 Speaker 03 No.
5:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is self motivated, I gotta know this. This is good for me.
5:20 Speaker 03 I was spending like nine, nine or 10 or something.
5:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you were fluent in BASIC at age nine or 10?
5:24 Speaker 03 Yeah. I kinda went, got OCD on the thing. Maybe it's not technically OCD, it's, but I suddenly got obsessive. Let me put that, at least the O pot.
5:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So programming is power. You get to control something.
5:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, you can construct a little universe. And when you first do it, you're like, wow, this is incredible. You can actually make things happen. Like you type these commands and then something happens on the screen. That's pretty amazing.
5:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So there is hope for all the parents who have middle school children who are lost in their video game?
5:51 Bill Nye? Absolutely.
5:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They too can be a billionaire.
5:53 Bill Nye? I'm sorry, what I was just playing.
5:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bill, we're over here, put the video game down. Put your PS Vita down.
6:01 Chuck Nice? Yeah, you know, actually, that's, uh, my son is a video game craze ball.
6:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How old is he?
6:07 Chuck Nice? He's nine.
6:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's nine, yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't get better.
6:09 Chuck Nice? Doesn't get better. But his favorite game is something called Minecraft.
6:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
6:14 Chuck Nice? I know nothing about it. However, uh, I started watching him play this and I went, you know what? This isn't bad. This guy's learning how to create his own universe. It's very imagination driven. And now he wants to learn how to code.
6:27 Bill Nye? We love the guy.
6:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It could, it could go, it could go diabolical if he wants to create his own universe. I just want you to know.
6:33 Bill Nye? It's not as easy as it sounds. On the radio, create your own universe, hey, great.
6:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So just a quick resume of Elon Musk. So, you know, in 1999, he founded the company that would become PayPal and then sold it to eBay and he went off with $180 million and he was 32 years old. And so
6:56 Bill Nye? How did he make a living between university and 32?
7:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, there's more of this interview that we will find out. But I don't know. He was like making companies and selling them and then
7:09 Bill Nye? The way you do.
7:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, of course. That's how you do it. Let's find out.
7:13 Bill Nye? That's hard.
7:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what I wanted to know was while he was in college, what was he thinking about? You know, most of us in college, you want to major, get a job when you come out. Let's find out what he was thinking about.
7:28 Speaker 03 When I was in college, I sort of thought, well, what are the things that are most going to affect the future of humanity? And electric cars, solar power, essentially sustainable.
7:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Most people are thinking, I just want a job when I get out. And you're trying to reshape humanity as an undergraduate.
7:41 Speaker 03 I mean, it's pretty, in America, it's pretty easy to keep yourself alive. So I mean, my threshold for existing is pretty low. I mean, I figured I could like be in some dingy apartment with my computer and be okay and not stop. In fact, when I first came to North America, I was in Canada when I was 17, and just to sort of see what it takes to live, I'd try to live on $1 a day, which I was able to do. You sort of just buy food in bulk at the supermarket.
8:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Rice and beans and the
8:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, I went more for the hot dogs. Hot dogs and oranges. But you do get really tired of hot dogs and oranges after a while. And we can also like, you know, pasta and a green pepper and a big thing of sauce and that can go pretty far, too. So I was like, oh, okay, you know, if I can live for a dollar a day, then at least from a food cost standpoint, well, it's pretty easy to earn like $30 in a month, you know?
8:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I would think.
8:34 Speaker 03 So probably be okay.
8:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so that allowed you to not have to worry about money because you did the experiment.
8:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, I did the experiment. Exactly.
8:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So this was an important psychological, philosophical anchor for you. Not to put words in your mouth, but that's a starting point to launch anywhere you want to go.
8:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, absolutely.
8:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so now you've got a baseline, a life baseline from which to go new places intellectually, psychologically, financially. So what came first? Thoughts of an electric car or thoughts of space?
9:02 Speaker 03 You know, when you're starting out in college, like in your freshman, sophomore year, like you have these sort of sophomoric philosophical wanderings. And I try to think of, okay, what are the things that will seem to me would most affect the future of humanity? There were really five things, three of which I thought would be interesting to be involved in. The three that I thought were definitely positive would be the internet, sustainable energy, both production and consumption, and space exploration, more specifically, the extension of life beyond Earth on a permanent basis. And then, although I never thought I'd actually be involved in that, that was simply something I thought that was important in the abstract, but not something I thought I would ever have an opportunity to be involved in. And then the fourth one was artificial intelligence, and the fifth one was rewriting human genetics. These were just the five things that I thought would most affect the future of humanity.
9:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Chuck, did you want to change humanity when you went to college? I didn't even want to change my underwear when I was in college. Are you kidding me? Bill, you're an engineer man, do you agree with this list?
9:57 Bill Nye? Yeah, it's a pretty cool list.
9:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's a cool list.
9:59 Bill Nye? I would have included educating women and girls, raising the standard of living of women and girls so that the human population of the world will slowly become more manageable.
10:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A greater tapping the lost intellectual capital.
10:13 Bill Nye? That's right.
10:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Among those who have been disenfranchised from it.
10:17 Bill Nye? Or never franchised.
10:19 Chuck Nice? Right. Never franchised in the first place.
10:21 Bill Nye? Pre-franchised.
10:22 Chuck Nice? Which is, I love when you say that because it's basically, when women are educated, they don't have as many babies.
10:32 Bill Nye? That's it.
10:32 Chuck Nice? That's all there is to it.
10:33 Bill Nye? The babies they have are more loved and better cared for.
10:35 Chuck Nice? And so that's where the burgeoning of society happens, with mom being a happier, healthier person, more educated, end up with better educated kids, end up with a better world.
10:48 Bill Nye? Just like that.
10:50 Chuck Nice? Just like that.
10:50 Bill Nye? Furthermore, the woman has a higher quality of life. She has a better job, she's happier, which just makes everybody happy.
11:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Elon, after he sold PayPal, he had a bajillion, zillion...
11:07 Chuck Nice? See, now that's where I stop.
11:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You be done.
11:10 Bill Nye? That was a mistake you made.
11:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? See, that's where I'm just done. You got a couple hundred million dollars.
11:14 Chuck Nice? I've got a hundred and eighty million dollars.
11:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're good, you're good. There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11:19 Bill Nye? He's not that kind of guy, though.
11:20 Chuck Nice? Yeah, exactly.
11:21 Bill Nye? Push, push, push.
11:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so what he wanted to do, he wanted to go into space.
11:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's find out how that got started.
11:30 Speaker 03 When I started out, my goal was to do a philanthropic mission with the intent of increasing NASA's budget. That was my goal. I was confused as to why we'd not yet sent a person to Mars. It seemed like this was obviously the goal after the moon and we'd not made progress on that. And when it became clear like that PayPal was going to get sold, a friend of mine asked me what I'm going to do next. And I said, well, I mean, I don't know what I'm going to do next, but I'm always curious about what's going on with space and why haven't we made progress? I just wonder when we're going to send a person to Mars. So I went on NASA's website and I couldn't find a date. I was like, well, maybe it's here somewhere and I just can't find it.
12:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The date that NASA wants to land on Mars.
12:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, there's got to be like some schedule or something.
12:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're looking for that.
12:10 Speaker 03 Or game plan or it's this date, even if it's far in the future and it was not to be found anywhere. And anyways, I started learning about that back history and I thought, well, okay, maybe there's something that I can do to send a small mission to the surface of Mars that would get the public excited. And as a result of that public excitement, NASA's budget will be increased and we could resume process of sending people to Mars. Essentially.
12:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you thought you can do that with your lousy billion dollars?
12:36 Speaker 03 No, I didn't have a billion dollars at that time. I had about a, well, 180 million is still a lot. And I figured, well, you know, maybe I could spend half of that on a mission to Mars. So I spent a fair bit of time investigating the space industry and eventually decided on this idea of sending a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars. It was called the Mars Oasis Mission. And so you have seeds in dehydrated gel that would land, you hydrate the gel upon landing and you have this great shot of green plants on a red background. And the public responds to precedence and support it. So this would be the first life on another planet, the furthest that life's ever traveled, as far as we know.
13:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And that's how you get a headline.
13:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's got to be something new or something superlative. And I thought, well, and that would maybe reinvigorate excitement and the result would be NASA's budget gets increased. So the whole goal in the beginning was just how do we get more money for NASA? But after spending a fair bit of time on this, I came to the conclusion that I was actually incorrect. My initial assumption was wrong because I thought that where there's a will, there's a way. And that we just sort of lost our will. That was, that's false. There's plenty of will. People needed to believe that there was a way and a way that would not. bankrupt the country or mean that they'd have to sacrifice something of critical importance like healthcare. So it became clear that the space transport problem had to be solved. Unless there was a dramatic improvement in the cost of space transport, then none of
13:57 Speaker 03 it would matter.
13:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So in your first successful launch, what was the cost per pound to orbit?
14:02 Speaker 03 Uh, about $6,000.
14:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? $6,000. Okay, that's an improvement.
14:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, not bad.
14:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not $100 a pound?
14:09 Speaker 03 No. To get to $100 a pound, you need a big rocket that's fully reusable.
14:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are you there yet?
14:14 Speaker 03 No. We're making progress, though. It's been 12 years. So far, we've not recovered a stage. But I think we'll recover a stage within the next year and be able to refly.
14:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is there a date on your website where someone can say, oh, he's gonna land on Mars?
14:30 Speaker 03 Tchay. Good point.
14:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That sounds like a no.
14:33 Speaker 03 Well, I mean, I've said it publicly many times, although maybe we should put something on the website, which is that I think we've got a decent shot of being able to send a person to Mars in about 11 or 12 years.
14:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Bill, what, uh, is he gonna do this?
14:48 Bill Nye? To reuse a stage?
14:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, and then get the cost down and...
14:52 Bill Nye? Yeah, well, the cost down to a...
14:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, who's gonna get us to Mars? Elon Musk or NASA?
14:57 Bill Nye? So let us keep in mind
14:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Please.
15:00 Bill Nye? that NASA pays SpaceX.
15:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
15:03 Bill Nye? About 2 billion bucks so far.
15:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
15:06 Bill Nye? So SpaceX is now a contractor for NASA.
15:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so our tax money is going to SpaceX. Okay, so what is this vehicle that's gonna get us to Mars?
15:14 Bill Nye? So there's a couple of innovations, just, uh, let's say three innovations that I've seen with my own eyes, which must hide another 100,000 innovations that are very, much more subtle. First thing is, all the same engines. First stage, second stage, how many stages? It's the same engine.
15:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
15:34 Bill Nye? So why didn't somebody else do that? That's a good question.
15:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Everything was a one-off in the past, yeah.
15:39 Bill Nye? Yeah, yeah, well, or a five-off, Saturn five-off.
15:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh huh.
15:42 Bill Nye? And so then, uh, um, the other thing is, let's see if we can reuse a stage.
15:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm, right.
15:50 Bill Nye? And this is his thing. It almost worked the other day. Tried to, he, the company tried to land on a barge. Just east of Cape Canaveral. And it landed on the barge just a little faster than anybody want because it ran out of fuel to slow itself down.
16:05 Chuck Nice? Okay.
16:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Any fuel that gets faster and if you're going fast, you generally need fuel to slow down.
16:10 Bill Nye? Yeah.
16:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Unless you're going to aero brake or something.
16:11 Bill Nye? Yeah, well, we're coming through the atmosphere after it launched. It's uh, and the thing is not shaped for aero braking really, but it is shaped for retro rocketing. If I can coin the verb.
16:21 Chuck Nice? There you go.
16:22 Bill Nye? But then the other, the fundamental thing, you guys, when you, just um, when NASA was created, I believe, uh, Dr. Tyson, on the year of your birth, just within a week or so, yeah.
16:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Same week.
16:33 Bill Nye? Yeah.
16:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Same damn week. I come out of my mother, NASA comes out of,
16:36 Bill Nye? Coincidence?
16:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Out of Congress.
16:38 Bill Nye? Perhaps. Anyway, the idea was to keep the thing. I feel NASA's pain.
16:45 Bill Nye? They put NASA centers all over the US. So when they went to manufacture rockets, they put pieces of the rocket all over the US. Solid things are made over here, the liquid things are made over here, they're tested over there. They get on train cars and go down there, just right there, just the expression, Houston, we have a problem. Why isn't it Florida, we have a prob- Cape Canaveral, we have a problem.
17:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, did you know?
17:08 Bill Nye? Orlando, we have a problem.
17:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The instant the spacecraft clears the gantry, in that instant, full control transfers to Houston.
17:17 Bill Nye? I mean.
17:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If there's a human being onboard.
17:19 Bill Nye? Thousand article miles away.
17:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. All, all, the whole countdown and everything, uh, uh, go to launch, go to, all of that is Cape Canaveral.
17:28 Bill Nye? But it's SpaceX.
17:29 Chuck Nice? Moment it takes, moment it passes the thing, then it's like, alright guys, we'll take it from here.
17:33 Bill Nye? That's right, that's right. That's exactly.
17:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thanks a lot, guys, for your work.
17:37 Bill Nye? But anyway, it's SpaceX. It's just south of, uh, Los Angeles International Airport. Train car drives up, full of stainless steel, full of titanium, full of, let's make rocket anium parts. And it comes off the train car and they shape it a bit and do their own thing.
17:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I want rocket anium. I want some of that.
17:53 Bill Nye? Yeah, uh, well, you can get it. 6061 T6 aluminum, T7 sometime tempered 7 aluminum. So then it comes down, they make the, they make the tank, they make, they attach the plumbing. It comes over here, there's a bunch of electronics, they attach that. They vacuum test it over here, blah, blah, blah. Then it goes back on the train car to either Cape Canaveral, close to the equator as the US can get, or up to Vandenberg Air Force Base, which is north of there.
18:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As a continental US, because Hawaii is closer.
18:19 Bill Nye? Yeah, Hawaii's closer, but that's not on a train car.
18:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, it's not on a train.
18:23 Bill Nye? Extraordinary train car.
18:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
18:24 Bill Nye? And so, uh...
18:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hover train.
18:27 Bill Nye? The Aqua Train. But the, uh...
18:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, wait, Bill, so I, I get that.
18:31 Bill Nye? Well, this is a fundamental lowering of cost. Huge, huge reduction of cost.
18:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that low enough to like go to Mars like everybody says? He wants to go to Mars. He still wants to go to Mars.
18:39 Bill Nye? Well, I, I would like to go to Mars, but I want to come back. And I don't want to go to Mars to live. I think that is not all the way thought through, in my opinion.
18:48 Chuck Nice? We choose to go to Mars.
18:49 Bill Nye? That's right.
18:50 Chuck Nice? Because it's not easy.
18:52 Bill Nye? Well, that's right.
18:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, no, he was choosing Mars because it will kill you.
18:56 Chuck Nice? Right.
18:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's so, yeah, I mean, it's really...
18:58 Bill Nye? Well, it's just really hostile place. And also, for your consideration, I do love the Mars bar. For your consideration, uh, we can talk about this after the break, but Elon Musk is a native of South Africa. South Africa colonized by Dutch people. Uh, I am a descendant from people from northern and central Europe. Uh, you guys are much more recently descended from Africa, but we have this human tradition of just spreading out. We don't like it here, we're gonna go over there, we'll just keep spreading.
19:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Which means, of course, you're a descendant of Africans as well.
19:35 Bill Nye? Oh, yes, we're all descended African.
19:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You have arbitrarily selected...
19:38 Bill Nye? Yeah, I say more recent descent.
19:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, that was arbitrary. Let the record show that was a completely arbitrary line that you drew.
19:44 Bill Nye? Uh, but arbitrary, but historically not insignificant.
19:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:48 Bill Nye? So...
19:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm just, I'm just...
19:49 Bill Nye? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, anyway, human pride has spread, has spread into Mesopotamia. Across Eurasia. The Ice Age has the snow froze up. Just keep going in North America.
20:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
20:02 Bill Nye? Spearing mammals, partying.
20:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's what we do.
20:05 Bill Nye? And so, it's not clear that you'll be able to leave the earth and go live on Mars.
20:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you are skeptical of this, but you would not interfere with the dream state.
20:17 Bill Nye? However, we do not want to violate in Star Trekian terms.
20:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The prime directive?
20:22 Bill Nye? Just so, Doc.
20:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Which is?
20:24 Bill Nye? Uh, we don't want to mess up the ecosystem on Mars.
20:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait, excuse me. We have no qualms messing up our own damn ecosystem.
20:32 Bill Nye? Well, that doesn't make it a good thing. I mean, and after-
20:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Why should Mars be the sacred place and not our own-
20:38 Bill Nye? There's a, it's a rule.
20:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're pooping in our own backyard.
20:40 Bill Nye? It's an arbitrary, but it's not arbitrary. It's a reasonable rule.
20:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
20:44 Bill Nye? We can poop there after we determine whether or not there's something alive.
20:48 Chuck Nice? Mars. It's nothing more than Earth's toilet.
20:53 Bill Nye? And with that, we'll be back after this.
20:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On that brilliant note from Chuck Nice, you're listening to StarTalk, the future of humanity edition. We'll be right back.
21:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back on StarTalk. I got Chuck Nice, right across the table from me.
21:26 Chuck Nice? Yes, sir, yes, sir.
21:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I got Bill Nye, the Science Guy.
21:28 Bill Nye? So good to be here.
21:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And since we're radio, I must alert people that even in studio, you are in bowtie at the record show.
21:37 Bill Nye? Yeah, uh, well, what you see is what you get.
21:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Maybe he's like the guy in Terminator 2, where the-
21:42 Bill Nye? Just a polymetal?
21:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, no, no, for the polymetal, but no, but his, his, his police uniform-
21:48 Bill Nye? Yes, right.
21:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Was part of-
21:50 Bill Nye? It was polymetal.
21:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That is the metal.
21:52 Bill Nye? That's how I roll.
21:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So maybe Bill and the bowtie-
21:55 Bill Nye? But watch out, I can turn-
21:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are polymetal.
21:56 Bill Nye? I can turn my arm into a giant saber sword, wacky thing of death thing, which is shiny.
22:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're, we're talking about the future of humanity. We're featuring my interview with Elon Musk.
22:07 Bill Nye? And that does not feature, uh, polymetal.
22:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, it does not yet. Not yet, yet. And I snared that interview when I visited him at SpaceX headquarters, which is, what's the name of that town that he's in?
22:18 Bill Nye? Uh, Crenshaw, Hawthorne.
22:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hawthorne, California, near, uh, Los Angeles.
22:24 Bill Nye? Okay, New Yorker. Where is it? Hawthorne.
22:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hawthorne.
22:30 Bill Nye? Oh, by the stars.
22:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Fine, so, so Bill, if we're gonna go to Mars, uh, do you, do you see engineering challenges to that?
22:39 Bill Nye? Oh, no.
22:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or is it only, no, no, wait, wait, wait, no, I'm gonna, this is a very serious question. Engineers love a challenge, so don't tell me, don't, don't play that with me, A, B.
22:49 Bill Nye? Bring it on.
22:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Don't, don't, don't, don't even.
22:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So my question is, is it just a matter of money? Or, or even if I gave you as much money as you want, you might not be able to solve some of the engineering problems.
23:02 Bill Nye? Oh, we can solve the problems.
23:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Snap, that's.
23:04 Bill Nye? No, we can solve, yeah, because we landed a rover from a freaking rocket crane.
23:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
23:09 Bill Nye? We can solve the problems, but as far as this colony idea, everybody.
23:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Mm-hmm.
23:15 Bill Nye? It's, I mean, there's no liquid water as such.
23:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
23:19 Bill Nye? Oh, well, Mars was once very wet and we found evidence of ice, all good. But it's not like there's a river there.
23:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
23:25 Bill Nye? Okay, then.
23:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If there is, it's underground and no one has found it yet.
23:29 Bill Nye? Okay, and let me go on to say, it's, on a summer day at the equator, it's twenty below. Okay, yeah, you can get, what is it everybody wearing this year? Uh, Canada Arctic crew, that was a goose down, Canada goose down brand jacket.
23:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
23:45 Bill Nye? All very good. That's dead, that's when things are really good, that's all you got on.
23:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's mid, that's midsummer, midsummer attire.
23:52 Bill Nye? But the main thing I think you would pick up on right away, there's no air. You would suffocate in a second.
24:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, there's air, but there's no oxygen in the air. Well, so you, you just have to make all that stuff once you get there. Thank you, Chuck.
24:06 Bill Nye? But Neil.
24:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? At least somebody's thinking about the future here.
24:08 Bill Nye? I gotta stop you there.
24:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bill, quiet for a minute.
24:10 Bill Nye? There is oxygen in the air. But it's carbon dioxide, you have to separate it from the carbon.
24:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Carbon, carbon dioxide, CO2, is one of the most tightly bound molecules ever made.
24:21 Bill Nye? I mean, you can do it, but you gotta put in the energy.
24:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You gotta put in the energy.
24:24 Bill Nye? And then you're gonna be living, everybody, you're gonna be living in a submarine.
24:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But just to be clear, so you have to get that energy from somewhere. Right. Right, so just, just, there's no such thing as a free lunch.
24:35 Bill Nye? And you're one and a half times the distance that we are from the sun, so your, uh, solar energy, if you just wanna run, if you wanted to run solar panels, uh, was fifteen squared, so it's a one and a quarter.
24:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Two, two and a quarter times more.
24:48 Bill Nye? Less.
24:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Less sunlight. No, you need two and a quarter times more solar panels to equal that. In light of this conversation. Why do we want to go there?
24:57 Bill Nye? Well, because, I'll tell you why I would go there. Well, it is the next logical place to look for things.
25:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I like Chuck getting high pitched on us. Give me that again Chuck.
25:07 Bill Nye? Chuck, Chuck, the reason you want to go there is because you're going to explore. And when you explore, two things happen. Those two things, Doc? Chuck? One? You will make, you will make discoveries. Okay. You will find something you never found before. Alright. But the other thing is you will have an adventure. You will have an adventure. It will engage you like nothing else. Whether it's your backyard, the video game, or the surface of Mars.
25:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You might die, but it'll be an adventure.
25:34 Bill Nye? Well, but what we want to do as an engineer, and this is what astronauts say, part of their pride as being astronauts is coming back. That's like, landing the airplane is part of a pilot's pride. I mean, ejecting and letting the $350 million fighter plane explode is kind of cool on video. Yeah. But it's not really your goal as a pilot or an astronaut. So, if we were to go there with a human, we would be able to make discoveries at an extraordinary rate. It's estimated 10,000 times faster than our best robot spacecraft.
26:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right now, but if the day comes when we have a 10,000 times better robot, you'd still probably want to explore.
26:13 Bill Nye? Still want to send a human there.
26:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so then...
26:16 Bill Nye? And so here's the thing, if we found evidence of life, fossilized bacterial mats, or cooler yet, something still alive, some Mars probe, then the question would be, and I want to know, do those Mars probes have DNA like you and I do? Or are they a whole nuther, nuther of nuther-ness?
26:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mars probe?
26:37 Bill Nye? That's a Martian microbe.
26:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I don't know.
26:40 Bill Nye? Martian microbe.
26:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mars probe.
26:42 Bill Nye? And then, if they have DNA, and they're so much like us, does that mean Mars was hit by an impactor, whoo, whoo, whoo, went off into space and you and I are descendants of Martians?
26:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Then we'd all be Martians.
26:52 Bill Nye? Do, do, do, do, do, do, do.
26:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so you know, he's trying to change humanity by reinventing space exploration.
26:58 Bill Nye? Mm-hmm.
26:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I get that, I get that. But, he's also worried about problems on Earth. Okay? That's okay. Is he allowed?
27:05 Bill Nye? Well, us, the astronauts are.
27:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is he allowed?
27:07 Bill Nye? I have no, I say bring it on.
27:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so you know, he's co-founder of Tesla.
27:09 Bill Nye? Yeah.
27:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The electric car company.
27:11 Bill Nye? The car is just sex with wheels on it.
27:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very cool, he's also... Sex with wheels on it.
27:16 Bill Nye? It's fantastic.
27:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, he's also chairman of Solar City. Let's see how he just got into this.
27:23 Speaker 03 From a terrestrial standpoint, the biggest problem we need to solve on Earth this century is sustainable production and consumption of energy. This really is quite a serious problem. People really should take this quite seriously. Even if you put the environmental consequences of dramatically changing the chemical composition of the oceans and atmosphere aside, we will eventually run out of oil.
27:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Holding that aside.
27:46 Speaker 03 Well, if we don't find a solution to burning oil for transport and we then run out of oil, the economy will collapse and civilization will come to an end, or as we know it.
27:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? With or without global warming.
27:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, with or without, exactly. I mean, and so if we know that we have to ultimately get off oil no matter what, we know that that is an inescapable outcome. It's simply a question of when, not if. Then why would you run this crazy experiment of changing the chemical composition of the atmospheric oceans by adding enormous amounts of CO2 that have been buried since the pre-Cambrian era? That's crazy. That is the dumbest experiment in history by far.
28:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I mean, promise, it's not even a-
28:26 Speaker 03 Can you think of a dumber experiment? I honestly cannot.
28:30 Speaker 03 What good could possibly come of it?
28:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So therefore, we need another solution here. But of course, electric cars still uses coal.
28:39 Speaker 03 That's why you need sustainable power production, like solar and wind.
28:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Which can still charge your car.
28:44 Speaker 03 Yes.
28:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bill.
28:46 Bill Nye? Neil.
28:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Do you still have your house in California?
28:48 Bill Nye? Yes.
28:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In Studio City?
28:49 Bill Nye? Yes.
28:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I've been there.
28:50 Bill Nye? Yes.
28:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But you're like a native, you're a New Yorker now, not native, but you would live in New York.
28:54 Bill Nye? Yes, I'm loving it.
28:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Somebody else is living in your house.
28:55 Bill Nye? Yeah.
28:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's a crazy house that you live at that day.
28:57 Bill Nye? It's cool.
28:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's completely alive with self-generated electricity.
29:02 Bill Nye? Well, it's got four kilowatts of solar. That's great. Which is more than enough for, uh, well, well, 10 months of the year, maybe 10 and a half months of the year. And I would have more, but my neighbor's house- Shadows, my panels.
29:17 Chuck Nice? Oh, I thought you were gonna say your neighbor's stealing your electricity.
29:20 Bill Nye? Well, she's stealing sunlight.
29:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, that's the same thing.
29:23 Chuck Nice? That is the same thing.
29:24 Bill Nye? She travels a lot, and I thought maybe while she was out of town, I could just cut off this, like, this one part of the second story.
29:32 Chuck Nice? Mm-hmm.
29:32 Bill Nye? Easier to ask forgiveness than permission.
29:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, Bill, but we-
29:35 Bill Nye? Oh, yeah, sorry.
29:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's tons of oil still in reserve-
29:38 Bill Nye? Ah.
29:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That is yet to be drilled, or is-
29:40 Bill Nye? Here's the bad news-
29:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
29:42 Bill Nye? We'll never run out of fossil fuels.
29:44 Chuck Nice? Oh.
29:45 Bill Nye? That is the bad news.
29:46 Chuck Nice? That's terrible.
29:47 Bill Nye? It really is, because burning it and burning it is just the worst thing for all of us-
29:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, do you have a plan? What's your plan?
29:54 Bill Nye? So, the plan is to-
29:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because as long as oil is cheap, and it's cheaper than my solar panels, how do you expect people to-
30:00 Bill Nye? So-
30:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, if you're rich, you can, you can buy the car that saves gas.
30:05 Bill Nye? So, bear in mind, the rea- the reason-
30:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That costs you more than the car that doesn't save gas.
30:08 Bill Nye? Well, but the reason-
30:09 Chuck Nice? The sex on wheels.
30:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The sex on wheels car.
30:10 Bill Nye? The reason you want a sex on wheels electric car is because-
30:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Costing how much?
30:14 Bill Nye? Uh, a hundred thousand.
30:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A hundred thousand, yeah.
30:16 Bill Nye? Right now.
30:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Everybody's got a hundred thousand, yeah.
30:18 Bill Nye? Well, deep breath.
30:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
30:18 Bill Nye? Deep breath.
30:19 Chuck Nice? Let me get to my mattress.
30:20 Bill Nye? Deep breath. Uh, it's ninety-five percent efficient, or ninety-three percent efficient, whereas a gas-powered car, constrained by the second law of thermodynamics, is at best twenty-eight percent, thirty percent. So, you're squandering energy you just can't get back when you try to get it out of heat at low-temperature differences. So, with that said, there is, uh, it's been estimated that we could save about thirty percent of the energy we use through conservation. We can have electric cars, we can improve transportation systems, to be sure. But the big thing, you guys, I just, if, as we say about climate change, if you are opposed
31:03 Bill Nye? to government regulation now, you don't like governments now, just wait till stuff gets bad. Just wait till Floridians have to abandon their homes, and Miami's half underwater, and then there's gonna be regulations.
31:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But really, at the bottom of this-
31:17 Bill Nye? And I'll give you an example of this: World War II. Regulation happened like crazy and everybody was very proud of it. Want to create the next great generation.
31:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, uh, what I neglected to mention here, and I think you should have mentioned too, was if you can start out with a hundred thousand dollar car because it's a test of concept. People like it, wealthy can buy it. But the real test is can you make an electric car that's competitive in price to
31:42 Bill Nye? Absolutely.
31:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I'm told there's a Tesla Model 3 expected to come out and that's a priced at thirty five thousand.
31:48 Bill Nye? Yeah, so I drove a Nissan Leaf for three years.
31:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
31:51 Bill Nye? It was about that same price.
31:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? About that same price, so that's that, there you have.
31:55 Bill Nye? I mean, I, I, you know, I did other stuff. I, I went to sleep, I had meals, I didn't just drive for three years.
32:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What I really want is the flying car.
32:04 Bill Nye? The flying car is a real tough problem.
32:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It is, but I think Elon, Elon cured me of my urges to find a flying car.
32:13 Bill Nye? Oh, well, just wait till everybody's in traffic flying cars.
32:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, no, no, no. He, he told me what the deal is with flying cars.
32:20 Bill Nye? Wing loading?
32:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's find out.
32:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Of course, what we all really want are flying cars.
32:26 Speaker 03 Do you?
32:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
32:27 Speaker 03 Actually, let me ask you, so are you sure you want a flying car?
32:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, but it looks cool.
32:32 Speaker 03 It does look cool. I mean, you know, whenever you see sort of cities in like some futuristic concept, they always throw the flying car in there and.
32:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You can't tell me you never thought of it.
32:40 Speaker 03 No, I thought a lot about it.
32:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, okay.
32:42 Speaker 03 And there's some people I know that are working on flying cars or flying personal transport devices, if you will.
32:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hoverboards.
32:48 Speaker 03 Uh, there are people who work on hoverboards, but I mean, I sort of wonder.
32:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? After the interview, you can show me your hoverboard room, okay?
32:54 Speaker 03 I know some people who work on a hoverboard.
32:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I won't tell anybody. The microphone is on mute now, so you can.
33:00 Speaker 03 Just between, just between us. It's awesome.
33:06 Speaker 03 I, I'm debating like, should there be flying cars or shouldn't there be flying cars? I'm of two minds on that, you know, because if there are flying cars, then well, obviously, you have added this additional dimension where now a car could potentially fall on your head and will be susceptible to weather. And of course, you'd have to have a flying car where it would be like an autopilot. Because I mean, otherwise, forget it.
33:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You don't want people navigating.
33:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's got to be, it's got to be autopilot. But even in autopilot scenario, this, and even if you've got redundant motors and blades, you've still gone from near zero chance of something falling on your head to something greater than that. And there's also a noise challenge. So I sort of.
33:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We don't know how to fly quietly.
33:45 Speaker 03 Right.
33:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so I'll wait it out some longer.
33:47 Speaker 03 Something that I do think would definitely help a lot in cities is more tunnels. Essentially with flying car, you're talking about going 3D. And there's a fundamental flaw with cities where you've got dense office buildings and apartment buildings and duplexes, and they're operating on three dimensions, but then you go to the street and suddenly you're two dimensional.
34:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because it's a flat, it's a surface.
34:08 Speaker 03 Yeah.
34:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is how New York City solved this with the subway, going underneath multiple layers of subway.
34:13 Speaker 03 Right.
34:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So we are actually traveling in three dimensions, but below the ground rather than in the air.
34:17 Speaker 03 But I think if you were to extrapolate that to cars and have more car tunnels, then you would alleviate congestion completely.
34:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you wouldn't need the flying car.
34:26 Speaker 03 You would not need a flying car in that case. And it would always work even if the weather's bad.
34:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It would never ice up.
34:32 Speaker 03 It would never ice up and it would not fall on your head. So.
34:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're gonna get started on that right away.
34:39 Chuck Nice? I think those sound like the words of a man who owns a car company. That's all I'm saying.
34:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A non-flying car company.
34:46 Chuck Nice? If I, if I had a company that made non-flying cars, I probably wouldn't want to have a flying car.
34:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You would say, build more roads.
34:53 Chuck Nice? Exactly.
34:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, he's got a point. You don't want a car falling on your head. Plus, a point that came out in my conversation with it, but we didn't make, it didn't make the clip, was we have flying cars today, they're called helicopters.
35:05 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
35:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And they're really noisy.
35:07 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
35:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And in fact, if you want something as heavy as a car to levitate, you're gonna, it's gonna be making some noise.
35:14 Chuck Nice? Well, it's also gonna use a lot of energy.
35:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And a lot of energy.
35:16 Chuck Nice? Well, that's because in the word of a, a, a, another physicist I know who flies his own plane, he said helicopters don't fly as much as they beat the air into submission.
35:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who, who, who said this? Who said that? It's true.
35:32 Bill Nye? It's true.
35:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's all, it's completely there.
35:33 Bill Nye? Well, the air doesn't submit. It just flows down having enough momentum to hold the helicopter up. And now, he also, Elon Musk brings up another good point.
35:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What?
35:42 Bill Nye? When we have humans operating the Tysonic flying car, which competes with Chuck Nice's subterranean vehicle. Pete, who's gonna drive the thing without all kinds of trouble? And so, you know, it always fascinates me when you look at highways from the air when you're in an airplane or a helicopter, it looks so orderly.
36:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
36:05 Bill Nye? It really does. Cars all emerge, they go along, it's very cool, but you're using a human brain. This thing is capable of art and radio shows and rocket companies. You're using this brain to do nothing but operate this car on this right of way. Stay in a straight line, stay in a straight line, stay in a straight line. Change lanes, look over your shoulder, we'll go head check, head check, head check. Whoa, whoa, head check. And so, this is why, uh, this seems like a real opportunity to improve things.
36:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? My favorite bumper stickers ever, caution driver applying makeup.
36:35 Bill Nye? I've seen it.
36:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I see you've driven behind me.
36:37 Bill Nye? No, is that right Chuck? That's a lot of info Chuck.
36:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so you don't want, you don't want drivers. You don't, you don't want humans driving cars. You want driverless cars.
36:45 Bill Nye? Yeah. At a very high level reliability. Now, you know, I used to work at Boeing and you get a triple.
36:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You worked on the 747?
36:53 Bill Nye? 747, a little bit 727, 3757, but.
36:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
36:57 Bill Nye? What you want is.
36:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's the lingo Chuck.
36:58 Bill Nye? I know. Well, that's how you.
37:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's showing that off now.
37:01 Bill Nye? Sounds like you were giving me your number.
37:04 Bill Nye? These are all planes.
37:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Everyone from Boeing has a 7, 7 something 7 in their.
37:08 Bill Nye? Well, yeah, but the interesting point of interest, the 727, the 737, 757 have the same tube. A 717, which was, uh, the 707 KC135 have the same tube. Uh, and so, where was I going? When it's triple redundant autopilot, you can count on it. It's gonna land the plane. Gotcha. Uh, but the problem with cars is not, you don't have nearly the traffic control that you, um, that you have in a airplane.
37:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, so who, who do you think's gonna win this? Tesla and with a, uh, a driverless car perhaps coming out of their shop? Or Google?
37:48 Bill Nye? Well, Tesla makes cars.
37:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
37:50 Bill Nye? Google makes software. You can't have one without the other to be driver.
37:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So this is like a chocolate and peanut butter thing.
37:55 Chuck Nice? Exactly.
37:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Whoa.
37:57 Chuck Nice? You got your car and my software.
37:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I got your software in my car.
38:01 Bill Nye? But, wait, you're both right.
38:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, I love setting you up.
38:06 Bill Nye? But wait, but wait, there's more.
38:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
38:09 Bill Nye? When you think about the automotive industry writ large, everybody uses the same parts.
38:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
38:15 Bill Nye? Uh, what the gas gauge, sensor, the speedometer, the tires, the nuts, all the bolts, all the same standard. There's little competition, but you can get a lot of commonality. And so we will see what happens in the near future.
38:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When we come back, we're going to find out what Elon Musk is really worried about. You know, should I give you a hint?
38:36 Chuck Nice? Go ahead.
38:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, no, I'm not. When we come back, find out what keeps Elon Musk awake at night on StarTalk.
39:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, co-host Chuck Nice in the house.
39:06 Chuck Nice? Hey, hey.
39:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the house, and I got Bill Nye in the house.
39:10 Bill Nye? I am co-housing.
39:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Co-housing, donning a bowtie as usual. In the earlier segment, we were sure that it is surgically attached. Polymetal. Polymetal surgically attached to him. We're featuring my interview with Elon Musk. And just before the break, I teased you to tell you that we would be saving for this final segment.
39:28 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
39:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What he fears the most.
39:31 Bill Nye? Fears.
39:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Now, if you're, it's.
39:33 Bill Nye? He's a confident guy.
39:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's a confident guy. And to quote Bill, if you've been scoring along with us, you may remember in our first segment, we listed the things he wanted to introduce to change humanity.
39:43 Chuck Nice? Right.
39:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? One thing he does not want to touch. Let's check it out.
39:49 Speaker 03 I mean, I'm quite worried about artificial superintelligence these days. I think, and I've said this publicly, I think it's maybe something more dangerous than nuclear weapons. So, we should be really careful about that. If there was a very deep, super-digital, superintelligence that was created that could go into rapid recursive self-improvement in a non-Logarithmic way, then, you know, that was...
40:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's self-learning?
40:10 Speaker 03 Yes. So like, it just could reprogram itself to be smarter and iterate very quickly and do that 24 hours a day on millions of computers. Well...
40:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Then that's all she wrote.
40:20 Speaker 03 That's all she wrote. I mean, we will be like a pet Labrador if we're lucky.
40:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A pet Labrador?
40:27 Speaker 03 I have a pet Labrador, by the way.
40:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We'll be their pets.
40:30 Speaker 03 It's like the friendliest creature.
40:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, they'll domesticate us, so that we will be lap pets to them.
40:37 Speaker 03 Yes. I mean, or something strange is gonna happen.
40:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They'll keep the docile humans and get rid of the violent ones, and then breed the docile humans.
40:46 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, the utility function of the digital superintelligence is of stupendous importance. What does it try to optimize? And we need to be really careful with saying, "Oh, how about human happiness?" Because it, you know, may conclude that all unhappy humans should be terminated, and, you know, that we should all be just be captured and with dopamine and serotonin directly injected into our brains to maximize...
41:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Happiness.
41:10 Speaker 03 Happiness, because it's concluded that dopamine and serotonin are what cause happiness.
41:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Therefore...
41:14 Speaker 03 Therefore maximize.
41:17 Speaker 03 I'm just saying, I'm just saying we should exercise caution.
41:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What do you think of that? Wow. So, so just to be clear, he's not talking about artificial intelligence, right? He's talking about artificial superintelligence. The kind that can self-learn.
41:31 Bill Nye? Okay, so 20% of the world's population of people does not have electricity. They've never made a phone call, not a cellphone call, they've never made a phone call. So when the superintelligence takes over Chicago or whatever, what are people in East Africa gonna give a rip about? Okay, so you guys have managed to kill yourselves. Way to go. We're looking for some corn here. So, I get it. But I think people have to keep in mind, we all take, computers are so reliable, and they're so much part of our everyday life now, we take them for granted. But somebody is in a, literally, or in a sense, shoveling the coal.
42:13 Bill Nye? What happens if you unplug the supercomputer intelligence thing?
42:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It will, uh... Find a new source of energy. No, no, no, no, no. Because it has its own nuclear reactor. The failure of that logic is the assumption that it would let you unplug it.
42:28 Bill Nye? Right. Yeah, okay, but how did it create that thing to keep it from...
42:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm just saying, I don't, I don't, you know, I'm with you here.
42:34 Bill Nye? Seems like a solvable problem.
42:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, I'm looking at here, we have three, three levels of intelligence. Artificial narrow intelligence, so it's a computer doing one thing better than anything, it's not getting anybody's way. A calculator. Calculate, let it do it.
42:46 Bill Nye? One wins the jeopardy.
42:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, and, no, no, that'd be artificial general intelligence, which would be general intelligence, but it's not, uh, it, it's not hell-bent on taking over the world. It's that IBM computer, right?
42:57 Bill Nye? Yeah, yeah.
42:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, it goes across, yeah, yeah, which one was that? Watson? Watson, it's Watson.
43:02 Bill Nye? Okay.
43:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Watson, so it's this superintelligence that scares him. And, again, I, I kinda agree with you, Bill, you could, at some point, you just unplug the dude. And, and...
43:12 Bill Nye? Well, I just think about, uh, the Colossus Project, Forbin, the Colossus Project.
43:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
43:17 Bill Nye? Uh, and so, uh, this is where these, the two superpowers on Earth have, uh, nuclear arsenals, they're controlled by computers, so they connect the two computers. And, you know, trouble ensues, okay? And so, you try to unplug it, but they have their own nuclear reactors that run them.
43:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is the movie War Games, like, all over again.
43:38 Bill Nye? Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, it was before War Games.
43:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
43:40 Bill Nye? And so, and then a movie. But the deal is... That running a nuclear power plant is not straightforward. It takes some, somebody shoveling the coal or rate, moving the stuff around in the waste.
43:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the pile.
43:53 Bill Nye? Ponds, yeah.
43:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so there's also much, much ado about the singularity. Ray Kurzweil said, you know, I gotta get him on StarTalk because I don't, I'm just not with him on this. But I don't want to badmouth him unless he's sitting in front of me.
44:06 Bill Nye? This is everybody, when I do a college talk.
44:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Does this happen to you, Neil?
44:09 Bill Nye? When I do a college talk, somebody asks me about the singularity.
44:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I know, and people all freak out.
44:14 Bill Nye? The computer is as smart as a human.
44:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, this would be.
44:17 Bill Nye? And it's always plugged in and has no arms or legs and does something.
44:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right, somehow, what is it gonna, it's gonna chase you down the street? Like, what's it gonna do?
44:24 Bill Nye? Well, no, it's going to actually get the machines to do its bidding for it.
44:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, it'll control your thermostat.
44:32 Bill Nye? It will control your thermostat and your self-driving car.
44:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm cool with that, but this notion that somehow the world is fundamentally different before and after the singularity.
44:41 Bill Nye? But from a historical standpoint, I could buy it.
44:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, we'll be different, but we're not gonna be, it's not, we're gonna be running out of the, screaming out of the, out of the apartment. No, when, when machines took over our physical labor, did we say, oh my gosh, this is the crazy day? No, no, it happened slowly and we're fine.
44:57 Bill Nye? Right.
44:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Now we got people repairing machines. I don't have, you know, so.
45:00 Bill Nye? And there's still artisans carving the thing.
45:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We gotta get him on the show. I'm gonna get him on the show and then we'll give him a piece of our mind.
45:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But we can't leave people freaked out over the fate of the machines that we create and their capacity to turn us into domesticated pets. Let's find out if Elon has any positive thoughts about the future at all.
45:24 Bill Nye? Thank God.
45:26 Speaker 03 I'm quite optimistic about the future. I mean, I don't think we're about to enter a dark age. It could happen, but it's not, I think, not likely anytime soon.
45:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not before you get to Mars.
45:37 Speaker 03 Hopefully not before we get to Mars. But bear in mind that.
45:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And part of the act of trying to get to Mars is a force to keep us out of the dark ages.
45:45 Speaker 03 I mean, there's always a chance that something calamitous could happen to Earth, either a natural or man-made catastrophe. Certainly, we see that in the fossil record. And we've invented all sorts of ways of doing ourselves in that the dinosaurs didn't have. And we haven't managed to solve the asteroid problem. So therefore, our risk is higher. Okay? Should people realize this? If you haven't solved the problems that have caused the prior extinctions, and you've added new ones, you've not improved the situation. And that's sort of where we are right now. And, you know, there are people, there are some really smart people that are a lot more pessimistic than I am, like, you know, the Stephen Hawking's of the world and the Martin Rees, the Royal Astronomical, they're all quite pessimistic. I'm a naturally optimistic person, but I do think that there's value
46:30 Speaker 03 in establishing life insurance, which if life as we know it is on more than one planet, then the light of consciousness as we know it is likely preserved into the future for much longer.
46:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If consciousness is preserved? No, it's a beautiful talk. That was his optimism? What, what? That was optimistic?
46:49 Chuck Nice? Oh, you know, the thing that took out the dinosaurs, that's still a thing. It's still a thing. It's still a thing. And by the way, we'll probably take ourselves out before that.
46:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And that's a still a thing, too.
46:58 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
46:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But you know what? I'm pretty optimistic. No, no.
47:02 Bill Nye? But you guys, back in the day, there were no humans when the ancient dinosaurs were taken out.
47:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
47:08 Bill Nye? There's no evidence that the ancient dinosaurs had a space program.
47:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? At all. They didn't even have opposable thumbs, much less.
47:13 Bill Nye? It doesn't seem like they did. And so we have that leg up. Also, they're going on nine billion people. If you kill almost everybody through extraordinary means, somebody's gonna leak through. Much more easy to leak through here on Earth than on Mars.
47:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Here's what I'm saying. You want to become a multi-planet species, whatever effort that takes, I've said this before, it seems that it would be less effort to deflect the asteroid.
47:36 Bill Nye? Yeah.
47:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Than to terraform Mars and ship a billion people there.
47:39 Bill Nye? Yeah.
47:39 Chuck Nice? I'm with you on that.
47:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Deflect the damn asteroid. Get on with life. If you have the power to terraform Mars, you have the power to fix Earth.
47:45 Bill Nye? Yeah. Martian atmosphere is getting scraped off all the time.
47:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's what I'm saying.
47:50 Bill Nye? So, everybody, this is where...
47:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What fears you the most? What fears you the most? We gotta, we gotta wrap it up. What fears you the most?
47:54 Bill Nye? The dark.
47:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The dark. Sorry, I go with the simple stuff. It's the truth. The monster under your bed. All right. Bill, what fears you the most? Climate change, then asteroids. You know what I fear the most? What? That we lack the wisdom to understand our own fate, so that we then become victims of it, rather than conquerors.
48:16 Bill Nye? This sounds like those who do not know the past are condemned to repeat it.
48:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a version of that, I think. You're listening to StarTalk, the future of humanity edition. We'll be right back.
48:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bill, back in the crib.
48:43 Bill Nye? Neil.
48:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Back in the crib. First let me pour you some wine here, I guess.
48:46 Bill Nye? Yes, thank you, gosh.
48:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You've still got some left, or there's 2005 Merlot?
48:50 Bill Nye? You have bottle after bottle. No, he does, everybody.
48:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, if you like a wine, you get a little more of it.
48:55 Bill Nye? That's what you do.
48:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Merlot was so maligned in the movie Sideways, I loved that movie, but I don't let movies tell me what wine I should drink, is what that comes down to.
49:03 Bill Nye? I think, I've heard that, I've seen the bumper sticker, "Movies don't tell me what wine to drink." I don't think I've ever seen that. Anyway.
49:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, we're just chronicling the space, the history of space exploration, you know, Russia, you know, America, Soviet Union, so you're a space baby, and so, what was your, were you hit by this, like the way?
49:25 Bill Nye? Man, I grew up in Washington DC, so my mother would drive us.
49:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So professionally, you cut your teeth in Seattle, but you're a Washington DC baby.
49:33 Bill Nye? That's it.
49:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I would have never guessed that about you.
49:35 Bill Nye? I grew up in the city.
49:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When I think of, when I think of Chocolate City, I don't think of Bill Nye.
49:40 Bill Nye? Yeah, I know, I know. I'm from the altitude, the little zone there. My people.
49:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You got your people.
49:46 Bill Nye? My people in the northwest. But I'll tell you what, before we get on to the brothers, where I went especially junior high school, all these kids are from all over the world, and they could, because they're all diplomats.
50:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
50:02 Bill Nye? God, they could play soccer.
50:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah. Even back then, yeah, of course.
50:05 Bill Nye? Especially back then, yeah.
50:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so you are, so you grew up in a ci- in a city.
50:10 Bill Nye? Anyway, my mom would take me and my friends.
50:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you experienced, you're old enough to have remembered the sixties.
50:15 Bill Nye? Oh, man. And you'd go see Alan Shepard waving from the back of a convertible and it was this extraordinary optimism. That's what, when I look back, and of course, putting a guy on the moon was cool. And I was on my knees for that, black and white television. It's easy for old, you know, people of my age, "Oh, I remember it." Okay, but the thing, the deep thing that was important for me was the optimism. And that's what we all longed for.
50:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know what I wonder? If that optimism was magnified because of how much other sources of pessimism there was in the world? With the hot war in Vietnam, and the cold war with the Soviet Union, and the civil rights movement, and campus unrest, and protests. There was no place else to turn for anything optimistic.
51:02 Bill Nye? But it was, they were, those things are of a piece. I mean, they're all one thing in that, uh, things are changing. People.
51:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, nobody likes cha- no one in charge likes change.
51:12 Bill Nye? Yeah, well, depends.
51:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you optimistic? What, so how optimistic were you? What did you think the nineteen seventies would bring when you're thinking about the nineteen sixties?
51:20 Bill Nye? Better cars, better, space food sticks, just better, I'm trying to think of things, better television. Oh, that, it was a big deal. I saw the very first Super Bowl at the neighbor's house. And, uh, he.
51:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Super Bowl one.
51:37 Bill Nye? Yes. And it was on a color television.
51:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh, so the grass was all green and stuff.
51:42 Bill Nye? The corners were cut. Uh, the television screen, uh, was not rectangular the way you think of a television screen today. And, uh, not that that's the good old days, oh, no.
51:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It wasn't so cut, they were rounded, the corners were rounded, yeah.
51:56 Bill Nye? And so it was, it, you expected that things would get bet- just better. Everything would be better. The food would be better.
52:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Everything.
52:06 Bill Nye? The wine, I presume, would be better. Dr. Pepper would be better.
52:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So this is the manifestation of this. Future view.
52:14 Bill Nye? Yes, that you could do this and that I was.
52:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Did it influence what you majored in?
52:19 Bill Nye? Yeah, so I was about to say, what I was encouraged to work in math and science. And maybe I have an aptitude for it, but I was rewarded for it. Like if you did well in math, you were gonna be an astronaut and that was something you were gonna do.
52:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You wanna be an astronaut?
52:35 Bill Nye? I applied four times, but after.
52:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What the hell's their problem?
52:39 Bill Nye? Well, after Krista McCullough got killed, I don't think a guy like me was gonna fly. Plus, you know, nowadays.
52:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Beloved educators.
52:46 Bill Nye? Yeah.
52:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You don't wanna start killing them off.
52:47 Bill Nye? Yeah, I mean, it was a drag. I mean, it was.
52:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, but you would've had a high school name after you by now.
52:53 Bill Nye? Well, shit, not really. Uh, about getting anything named after me, Neil, maybe you're the same. I just soon not. I'd like to wait till I'm dead.
53:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
53:04 Bill Nye? And there's no hurry on that.
53:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No hurry.
53:06 Bill Nye? I know it's coming. I've seen billions of people.
53:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Good data, good data on this one.
53:11 Bill Nye? Yeah, but I, I have no hurry. So with that said, to, uh, to recapture that optimism or to have a new, a new optimistic view. Uh, space exploration is an ideal thing for us to spend tax dollars on or intellect and treasure. Now, we have climate change is the most serious problem facing humankind, that's for sure. If we were talking about climate change in the same way we were talking about Ferguson, Missouri, I mean, it would just get done.
53:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just get done.
53:40 Bill Nye? It would just get done and people would feel good about it and they'd be optimistic about the future instead of hand wringing and whining. And furthermore, the other thing, as a guy grew up in the United States, it had this US feature.
53:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Imprint.
53:54 Bill Nye? Yeah, and NASA is the best brand the United States has. You go anywhere in the world, people recognize.
54:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? People hate United States and love NASA.
54:02 Bill Nye? Yeah, yeah.
54:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's interesting.
54:04 Bill Nye? And it's also not a military endeavor. It's missiles and stuff, but it's not, it's not for that. It's for exploration. Let's see what's out there. Let's learn more about the cosmos and our place within it. And so, uh, it's a good investment for any country at any space agency to, um.
54:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But how do you justify it to a country that can't still barely feed their people?
54:27 Bill Nye? Well, you do have to do everything.
54:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, do everything. Okay, so some balance, it's a budget balance.
54:31 Bill Nye? Yeah, and so I say this, any, if it's the choice is do we pay teachers or build a new baseball stadium? The answer is, I hope, for everybody, you pay teachers. But no, the challenge for a politician, the reason people hire you to vote for you is so you'll figure out how to do everything.
54:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, at the right balance.
54:48 Bill Nye? At the right balance.
54:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. I remember seeing critiques of the Apollo era where people saying, "We took that money and built schools, we'll have this many more schools." And I thought to myself, the Apollo in its day was like 4% of the US budget.
55:00 Bill Nye? Four, not .4, which is what it is now.
55:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, full up 4%. And so, so that's a lot, no doubt about it, but to, to walk past the 96% of the rest of the budget and say, "Use this 4% to build schools." Did you really analyze what you just walked past?
55:15 Bill Nye? Is that what you did? Punk?
55:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Punk?
55:19 Bill Nye? Yeah. So, this is where, uh...
55:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, Bill, so you are who you are because of who we were then.
55:26 Bill Nye? Absolutely. Oh, man, absolutely.
55:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bill, thanks for coming by.
55:29 Bill Nye? Thanks for having me. Let's, uh, change the world.
55:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Change the world.
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