Geekdom 101, with Olivia Munn

Are you ready for your lesson in geek culture? Neil deGrasse Tyson chats with Olivia Munn about superheroes, aliens, math, planetary science, and more. Featuring comic co-host Chuck Nice and astrophysicist and StarTalk geek-in-chief Charles Liu, PhD. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons and All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/geekdom-101-with-olivia-munn/ Thanks to our Patrons Genesis Perez, Braden Thomas, Joe Aguirre, Ayush Kapri, and Aden Parker for supporting us this week. Photo Credit: StarTalk.

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. This is StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist and host. And we are coming to you from my office at the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. Co-host Chuck Nice.

• 0:29Chuck Nice?

  Hey!

• 0:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck in the house?

• 0:31Chuck Nice?

  Good to be in the cosmic crib.

• 0:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tweet... Oh, we hadn't called it that in a while.

• 0:34Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's what it is and has always been.

• 0:37Chuck Nice?

  That's what it is, always will be. The Cosmic Crib.

• 0:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, tweeting at ChuckNiceComic.

• 0:41Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, sir, yes.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, and I got with me Charles Liu.

• 0:44Chuck Nice?

  The one and only!

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If Charles Liu is in the house, you know we're gonna do some geeking.

• 0:48Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 0:49Charles Liu?

  Looking forward to it.

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, thank you.

• 0:51Charles Liu?

  Thank you so much.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because this topic today is about aliens and superheroes.

• 0:56Chuck Nice?

  Yes!

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we snared an interview with sort of geek icon, geek goddess, Olivia Munn.

• 1:06Chuck Nice?

  Yes!

• 1:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was out, last time I was out in LA, got an interview with her, it was great.

• 1:11Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, last time I was out in LA, got a restraining order.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From her?

• 1:15Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:16Charles Liu?

  Last time I was in LA, I was 12.

• 1:18Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 1:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really, you gotta get out more, dude.

• 1:20Charles Liu?

  I do have to get out more.

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta get out more.

• 1:22Chuck Nice?

  Especially on the west coast.

• 1:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so, just the whole universe of mutant superheroes, to be specific.

• 1:29Chuck Nice?

  Well, she is an X person.

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh yeah, because the X-Men are mutants, right?

• 1:33Charles Liu?

  She played Psylocke.

• 1:34Chuck Nice?

  Psylocke.

• 1:35Charles Liu?

  In the Age of Apocalypse.

• 1:36Chuck Nice?

  That's correct.

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, there you go. And, and it's a, uh, so she's been associated with geek culture simply through her acting roles, but there's also some of that in her, because you don't have to be a geek to be a geek actor, but it helps.

• 1:51Chuck Nice?

  It does.

• 1:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want it to be true.

• 1:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When someone has that kind of portfolio.

• 1:55Chuck Nice?

  It's better to be a fan of what you're doing than just to do it in a mercenary type way, anyway.

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good point. Mercenary, whoa, actor mercenary.

• 2:03Chuck Nice?

  Actor mercenary.

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, she also wrote a memoir titled Suck It, Wonder Woman: The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek. She's also a talk show host about geek culture, and I had to ask her, because she's thought about, I've thought about, we all thought about it, but she's like in it, performing it, is embodying it, and I had to ask her just what, in her mind, defines...

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Being a geek, let's check it out.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  There is a misnomer that being a geek is just playing video games, or being awkward, or just, or having a pile of, you know, comic books. I think being a geek is somebody that just thinks differently than the rest of the crowd, you know? That it's not just what's laid out before you, there are different ways to think about it. And that's why comic books have been so popular with geeks for so long. Because there is a group of people that operate a different way, think a different way. Superheroes, like, they are ostracized because of their abilities to be different. And I think that all geeks operate that way. We're just called geeks.

• 3:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so superheroes never really fit in. Well, neither did the geek set.

• 3:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I think that's what people identify with. I mean, when you're in school and your brain works differently, and you're not picking it up like everybody else is, it's not that you're dumb, it's that you have to figure out a different way. And like, and that comes with, you know, whether people are autistic, or on the spectrum, or are shy, or uncomfortable, or socially awkward, or really smart and clever, and they could be the college quarterback, but also be into astrophysics, you know? It's just anybody who allows their brain to think differently.

• 3:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a movie titled The Astrophysics Quarterback.

• 3:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, you are StarTalk's resident geek-in-chief. I'm honored to be that. I don't remember who first knighted you that. It wasn't me, I totally agree with it, but somebody upped that. Right? And it landed on you like robes. A ton of bricks. No, no.

• 4:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like royal robes. So what was your arc through life to become the geek-in-chief that you are?

• 4:22Charles Liu?

  For me, geekdom is essentially freedom. From the norm, from the constraints of social, or familial, or other kinds of pressures.

• 4:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we generally associate comic books, video games.

• 4:37Charles Liu?

  But also theater.

• 4:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Attendance at Comic Con.

• 4:39Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 4:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are kinda, these are kinda card carrying behaviors.

• 4:42Charles Liu?

  Yes, but they're also theater geeks, they're art geeks, they're opera geeks, they're music geeks. Math geeks, science geeks. They're all kinds of geeks. When you are just different, then you become a geek in the eyes of many. And then you have to ask yourself, what are you gonna do with it? I myself, fortunately, had such a strong sense of self, some people might say arrogance or egotism, that I didn't care what other people thought of me.

• 5:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sounds like he's been to therapy and they trying to get that through to him.

• 5:10Charles Liu?

  It does sound like that, doesn't it? Yeah, so I didn't really care that I was off to the side of what was supposedly mainstream. Yes, I was bummed at times when I felt excluded or otherwise not part of the in-crowd. But I was fortunate that I did have a few good friends who were like me, who were interested in the same kinds of things that I was. So that I did not have a problem with a social group that made me feel comfortable. And as a result, my geekdom gave me freedom.

• 5:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You found family.

• 5:41Charles Liu?

  I did.

• 5:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now, but geek to me should also mean, not just an interest in something, but some expertise. That you could put on the table, that you could throw down.

• 5:50Charles Liu?

  Something that you know more about than an average person.

• 5:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, I liked you as my co-host, cuz you hang with the geek folk. So I think you got some geek underbelly from your past that you have not fessed up about.

• 6:02Chuck Nice?

  I lived most of my life as a closeted geek.

• 6:05Charles Liu?

  Oh.

• 6:05Chuck Nice?

  And then, believe it or not, 10 years ago when I started working with you is when I came out of the closet.

• 6:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh!

• 6:13Chuck Nice?

  I felt like, you know, I was like, you know what? Why am I hiding this part of myself?

• 6:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 6:18Charles Liu?

  Geek liberation?

• 6:20Chuck Nice?

  I was liberated, as a matter of fact. I could say like, you know what? Yeah, I really enjoyed this. I love science. I love all this stuff.

• 6:27Charles Liu?

  Neil, he's one of us now.

• 6:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A way you can express it professionally.

• 6:30Chuck Nice?

  Correct, yeah.

• 6:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, what's the next geek frontier? Is it, because it tends to attract technology?

• 6:36Charles Liu?

  Yes, it does.

• 6:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it like VR worlds? Is it augmented reality?

• 6:40Charles Liu?

  You know what?

• 6:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With video games?

• 6:42Chuck Nice?

  I so far so good. This sounds great.

• 6:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the geeks tend to be at the moving frontier

• 6:46Charles Liu?

  Absolutely.

• 6:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  of how technology applies to

• 6:49Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 6:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  ways to not go to work.

• 6:55Charles Liu?

  I believe the next great geek frontier, at least right now, is biohacking.

• 7:02Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 7:02Charles Liu?

  I think the idea-

• 7:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, biohacking?

• 7:04Charles Liu?

  Biohacking. The idea of like, say, somebody is paralyzed and can't move their arm because their nerve systems, nervous systems can't get from their, you know, get signals from their brain to their arm. Instead, you put a, say, a wireless thing up against your temple, which then allows you to do some other way of communicating, maybe through 5G, maybe through some sort of wireless or Bluetooth signal.

• 7:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  6G.

• 7:28Chuck Nice?

  Right, at that point.

• 7:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At that point.

• 7:30Charles Liu?

  Yeah, at some point. Which then allows that person to move the arm.

• 7:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have completely convinced me that you've watched too many science fiction movies.

• 7:37Charles Liu?

  Well, this is the point.

• 7:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Put on this helmet and then you become-

• 7:40Chuck Nice?

  But see, that's happening now, though.

• 7:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's going away.

• 7:43Charles Liu?

  The frontier, you asked me what the frontier was, and that's what it is. And we're not talking about like cyborg terminators or anything. We're talking about people whose lives can be improved.

• 7:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's not just a geek frontier. That's a medical frontier. That's not just geeks.

• 7:57Charles Liu?

  I don't know. There are people who are right now just geeks, who can do cool things with, you know, a screwdriver and a webcam.

• 8:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They might lead the charge to make this happen.

• 8:08Charles Liu?

  I think there's some neat stuff. I don't think this is going to be talking about like people inserting, you know, devices into their gray matter or anything like that. I'm talking about-

• 8:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like half of every episode of Black Mirror.

• 8:18Charles Liu?

  Just a little, just a little bit too crazy.

• 8:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Involved brain interface.

• 8:21Charles Liu?

  Right, exactly. I'm not talking about that kind of thing. I'm talking about the other kinds. There's also biohacking in agriculture, growing plants.

• 8:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's called GMO, yeah.

• 8:30Charles Liu?

  Genetically modification, right.

• 8:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but I really liked what you said, that geeks- Are people that don't fit in because they have interests that they want to preserve within themselves and not succumb to social pressure. So Olivia also had thoughts about this, about what it is to think differently growing up, especially when you have peer pressure in school. Let's check it out.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  I'm half Asian, so you know, there is a very strict like, you know, grade system. Like there's like the Asian F is a B. So, so it was like, I, and I, so in my family.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's really true.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  It's a hundred percent true. And so I remember had to work so hard to understand because it was just going so fast. And I just, I needed more time to absorb it. In fact, I got really good at cheating because of it. Like I had to learn when I was like really young, I had to, I had to learn like how to come up with a little system of dots or dashes like on my notebook or on a chalkboard or whatever. So I would see like the formulas everywhere because you couldn't have them out, but I would like sketch them into like little dots and I would come up with a whole, like an alphabet based on dots and dashes, just because that's how my brain had to work. I was, it was so much easier to come up with that than to just learn the actual formula. It was easier for me to learn a whole new like system.

• 9:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the beginnings of cryptography.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  Right, yeah, yeah. I mean, but it's, it worked for the way my brain worked and, but there was Mr. Thek and that was in eighth grade. I was 13 and I remember there was a time where he called and he said, look, your, your daughter's flunking on her algebra. And my mom was normally a yeller, but she sits me down and I was like, oh my gosh. Normally she's like the screaming Ellie, but it's, that moment she knew it was more serious and she sat down, she says, okay, so you're making an F right now in algebra. And I was like, oh gosh. And she said, now I asked him, what would it take for you to make an A? Because obviously that's, it's either A or nothing. And she said, he said, you have to make 100% on every quiz, test, pop quiz and homework

• 10:35Speaker 03

  and all the bonuses on all of those for the rest of the semester. And I was like, well, there's just no way I'm doing, I mean, my, I was like literally calling, you know, the funeral home. I was like, I need a casket ASAP. This is not going to end well. And my mom said, "You're gonna do it." So every day, I would come home and she'd say, "Did you do your homework?" And I said, "Yes." And she says, "Let's do it again." Like, "Oh," and she would normally like, when we would be studying and stuff, she'd be like, "No, it's this, it's this," she'd yell. This time, this whole period of time, my mom was just, just took her time with me.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A little more tender.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, and, and she understood that I was trying, but that I needed someone to just explain it slowly and in a different way. And by the end of it, I made an A. I made a hundred percent on every single quiz, test, pop quiz, homework, plus the bonuses. And, I mean, so that, that's what has helped me in my life now. When I think something seems hard, or I don't understand it, I will say to myself, "I know I can do it. I just need to stop down and think about how my brain works."

• 11:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, you're, you're on sabbatical right now, but otherwise, you actively teach at the College of Staten Island, at the City University of New York.

• 11:41Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 11:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you, how do you handle people who learn differently? Or at the college level, do you have the luxury to not care? Because they paid, they just could learn or get out.

• 11:51Chuck Nice?

  Here's the information, get it how you get it.

• 11:53Charles Liu?

  You always have the option to not care, but I wouldn't be in what I'm doing in my field if I didn't care.

• 12:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That Chuck is beautiful.

• 12:02Charles Liu?

  Well, thank you. Let me first shout out, give a shout out to young Olivia for getting through that really difficult period of time academically, and a shout out to Olivia's mom for doing exactly the kind of thing that I would have done in the circumstances there, if I were enlightened enough to do so.

• 12:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So she knew there's a point where yelling is not gonna work. We need to go to Plan B.

• 12:26Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 12:26Chuck Nice?

  Need a different approach.

• 12:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now what about the fact that we always hear that some people just can't handle math? What, what do you do about that?

• 12:35Charles Liu?

  What you do is, you realize that these people cannot handle math class. They cannot handle math curriculum, or math teaching, or math tests.

• 12:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't that kind of everything?

• 12:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, what's left?

• 12:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, what's left, what's left, Charles?

• 12:49Charles Liu?

  And that's what we find out, right? We all are excellent mathematicians. We just have varying degrees of ability to look at something in an Abstract form and then write it down on a piece of paper because somebody else told us to. Right? Our calculation abilities on a regular basis are remarkable. Our geometry in order to walk or to run, our physics.

• 13:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What people often talk about is, and by the way, obviously professional players do this best, but anyone can do it. If I throw you a ball and it's not where you're standing, you will run to it and arrive where the ball will land as you catch it.

• 13:26Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 13:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Most people will do this successfully.

• 13:28Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 13:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, which means you're, there's a calculation going on.

• 13:32Charles Liu?

  That's right, on the fly.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a parabolic arc and it speeds up as it come down. You're gonna intersect it at the right time and at the right place.

• 13:40Charles Liu?

  So, so the human brain is capable of doing math and I don't care who you are, you can do it. Can you write it down?

• 13:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Says the Asian person.

• 13:48Charles Liu?

  Yeah, you know, Olivia's point, Olivia's point is well taken. It's a very good stereotype. It's well taken, look.

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and Olivia's half Asian.

• 13:57Charles Liu?

  That's half Asian. Which is why she was only half good at math.

• 14:02Charles Liu?

  Look, it's.

• 14:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She summoned the Asian gods for that, when she needed to get all the perfect scores.

• 14:07Charles Liu?

  The amazing thing is that the Asian stereotype of academic success is really a combination of both the American dream, people working hard, and a sort of confluence of cultural things. In East Asia, for literally a thousand or more years,

• 14:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 14:25Charles Liu?

  you got ahead in society by doing well on tests, by taking exams, whether they were public exams, civil exams, school exams and things like that. And so, like in places like Japan, for example, which Olivia was mentioning, and also South Korea, some of these other places in East Asia, it's very unhealthy for the young people because all they're thinking about are tests, tests, tests, tests. But then they come to America, like I did when I was fortunate, when I came to America when I was four years old. And now all of a sudden, these.

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He said like he, like he took the boat.

• 14:53Charles Liu?

  I know. You see a young chub, right, you know?

• 14:57Chuck Nice?

  One ticket, please.

• 14:59Charles Liu?

  I took a plane with my parents. My mother brought us over, my father was a grad-

• 15:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From Taiwan?

• 15:03Charles Liu?

  Yes, and my father was a graduate student already here in America. So, what happened was that when we brought those cultural values over to America, all of a sudden, those values became the things that were valuable for colleges and universities, or the ability to get success in the academic realm.

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It all worked out.

• 15:20Charles Liu?

  And so it became a natural extension of it. It wasn't that we were somehow miraculously more intelligent than people who were not Asian. It was just that this is how the confluence of our values combined.

• 15:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, what works best for you to learn?

• 15:33Chuck Nice?

  Me?

• 15:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 15:34Chuck Nice?

  Oh, God. I'm gonna say, uh, sleeping while listening to tapes.

• 15:45Chuck Nice?

  No, I, um, you know, I think, for me, what I would do, the best thing for me to do, and I see this in my son, is to read and then to listen to it.

• 16:00Charles Liu?

  Multiple inputs.

• 16:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, different sensory.

• 16:03Charles Liu?

  That's really smart.

• 16:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sensory.

• 16:04Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, that's what I do when I give a public talk.

• 16:06Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 16:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they say, "Are you gonna stand behind the podium?" No. No, I'm gonna walk around, I'm gonna use my body gestures and tap in some dance moves.

• 16:15Charles Liu?

  It drives the camera people crazy.

• 16:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they hate it, but I'm not doing it for the camera people. And so what do you think about her dot system? Is that cheating? Or is it-

• 16:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's cheating. Yeah. Come on. And by the way, I had some news for her. There is a system that's been invented, it's called Morse code.

• 16:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Morse code?

• 16:32Chuck Nice?

  She could've just learned that.

• 16:33Charles Liu?

  Yeah, but she was a kid, right?

• 16:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:35Charles Liu?

  No, cheating is a fascinating, you know, concept, bending the rules. I mean, how many of us have never watched a movie online without paying for it, or downloaded a song to hear it without going through the proper copyright? Right? All of us have found something, some rule that they found onerous, or they'd rather circumvent, and then gotten around it.

• 16:58Chuck Nice?

  Well, also too, it's whatever, sometimes you're more motivated to cheat. For her, she had pressure to perform.

• 17:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I almost don't even blame her.

• 17:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that pressure to perform- She's like, "I'm gonna get killed if I don't, you know." Believe me, that's a lot of pressure. I've been there.

• 17:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Too much pressure. All right, when we come back, more of my interview with Olivia Munn, and we get into mutants and superpowers. Excellent. When StarTalk returns.

• 17:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk. We are talking about superheroes of the mutant kind. And we got Charles Liu, who is our geek in chief. Yes. Talking about superheroes. Yes, absolutely. And so, Olivia Munn, she was in one of the X-Men movies. She played Psylocke in Age of Apocalypse. Save Psylocke. X-Men: Apocalypse, Psylocke P-S-Y. L-O-C-K-E. And she even did her own stunts in the fight scenes. I don't know if you knew that. I did not know that. Yeah, yeah. So let's get a little bit of insight into this appearance in that film as we rejoin my interview with actress Olivia Munn. So you do martial arts?

• 18:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What kind?

• 18:32Speaker 03

  Taekwondo. We grew up doing Taekwondo. All five kids, we had to. Again, we have to play musical instrument, and we have to make A's, and we have to... My mom was...

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And kick some ass.

• 18:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, your character in X-Men kicks serious ass, not just with your, this blade thing that comes out. Is there a word for that?

• 18:51Speaker 03

  It's a psionic sword.

• 18:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Psionic sword.

• 18:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, so Psylocke, her ability is to be able to create anything with her mind. In my opinion, she has always been the most powerful, because if you can create anything with your mind...

• 19:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 19:02Speaker 03

  Done, game over.

• 19:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 19:04Speaker 03

  And so, the reason why Psylocke doesn't just create a boulder and just shut the whole thing down, because she could... Is because when you have, in my opinion, when you have a power that great, you get a little bored and it's so much more fun and intimate to kill with a sword because you have to get up close. Right. And I, as a fan, when I watch, if people have superhuman powers, I want them to tear each other apart. Like, that's really what I want. And these kind of movies, I want to see what it would be like if you have these powers. What would it really be?

• 19:39Charles Liu?

  So, Charles, tell me about the powers in the X-Men universe. All right. Well, Psylocke specifically was the sister of Captain Britain. The Captain Britain and the various British Marvel comics in the 80s were very much favored by American collectors back then, who were older than the children's crowd, because they weren't controlled as much by the Comics Code Authority, you know, that had to keep everything all family-friendly and things like that. They meaning the UK. The UK had more freedom. They had more freedom and the UNS did not. And so, this character, Betsy Braddock, actually was originally Psylocke,

• 20:18Charles Liu?

  an intelligent person who also had powers of telepathy, telekinesis, things like that. Eventually came and joined the X-Men and was there for a while. But then, around 1989 or so, Marvel changed the character dramatically. First, they gouged her eyes out. And then they added cybernetic eyes. And then she was brought over to, I think, Hong Kong, somewhere in Asia, brainwashed by an assassination team called The Hand. And then she became this seriously scary, kick-ass character. Nice. So, her character. Charles, why do you know this much about this? Psycho-lock. Olivia Munn wasn't too far off the mark. Charles, why do you know this much about this?

• 21:02Charles Liu?

  I know, that's an inordinate amount of information to know about a C-level character in the Marvel Universe. I was just saying, that's amazing. That's amazing. Charles? Yes. Charles? Yes. I don't, I don't. I'm sorry. It's just a thing. I don't know who you are. That's pretty cool. But what happened was that transformation did turn Psylocke from sort of a C-level character to a very popular Marvel character.

• 21:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got you.

• 21:28Charles Liu?

  Because then she had this sort of hard edge to her.

• 21:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 21:31Charles Liu?

  Which became very popular amongst the

• 21:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they knew what they were doing.

• 21:34Charles Liu?

  The twenty-somethings that were starting to read comics much more than the teens and the children that were reading it beforehand. So that dark sharpness that Olivia was describing in the clip is very much reflected in the current Psylocke, which has the ability not just to read minds and so forth, but actually creating her mind. Energy.

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's others. Magneto.

• 21:56Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 21:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Professor X, Wolverine, that's a lot of people's favorite.

• 21:59Charles Liu?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Cyclops.

• 22:02Charles Liu?

  Cyclops. Shoots beams out of the eye.

• 22:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I kind of like Storm.

• 22:05Charles Liu?

  Storm's cool.

• 22:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Storm was kind of cool.

• 22:07Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 22:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Me and Weather go way back.

• 22:09Chuck Nice?

  Nothing like a meteorologist that has superpowers.

• 22:12Charles Liu?

  Looks like storms.

• 22:14Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 22:15Charles Liu?

  No, looks great. Oh, yeah.

• 22:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got this. It's a storm.

• 22:19Chuck Nice?

  I don't want to go to the picnic.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, what would you do if you had, if you had her ability, Psylocke's ability?

• 22:26Chuck Nice?

  Psylocke?

• 22:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What would you make?

• 22:28Chuck Nice?

  I don't know. Listen, first of all, that's not the only, like, the idea of creating something with your mind, Green Lantern has the same thing, it's just the power is in the ring. But whatever he thinks of comes into existence in an energy form.

• 22:40Charles Liu?

  Great point.

• 22:41Chuck Nice?

  So, I mean, it's not, I don't like that power.

• 22:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did he just mix two different universes?

• 22:45Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 22:45Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I did.

• 22:46Charles Liu?

  The DC and Marvel.

• 22:47Chuck Nice?

  The DC and Marvel.

• 22:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, that's a, that's a

• 22:49Charles Liu?

  A no-no.

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a punishable crime.

• 22:50Chuck Nice?

  Yes. But my power would be like, um, Sebastian Shaw.

• 22:57Charles Liu?

  Oh.

• 22:58Chuck Nice?

  That's who I would like to be like. He's a guy that can absorb any energy.

• 23:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:04Chuck Nice?

  Any energy. Blow up, set off a hydrogen bomb. And guess what? He can absorb that.

• 23:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't this what the material is that was featured in, in Black Panther?

• 23:18Charles Liu?

  Yes, vibranium.

• 23:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, vibranium.

• 23:20Chuck Nice?

  Vibranium does that, yes.

• 23:21Charles Liu?

  It's essentially living vibranium.

• 23:22Chuck Nice?

  He's living vibranium.

• 23:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Living vibranium.

• 23:24Chuck Nice?

  He's a living vibranium. To me, that's what I would want.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I, so there's her character.

• 23:29Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 23:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Olivia Munn's character can create, materialize anything with her mind. I asked her, if she could choose her own superpower, what would it be?

• 23:37Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 23:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's check it out.

• 23:38Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  It has to be to fly. Well, I mean, if you, I mean, you're an astrophysicist, so if you could have any power in the world, what would you have?

• 23:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would be to read people's minds.

• 23:50Speaker 03

  Interesting, and what would you do with that?

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You would know before someone committed a crime that that's what they were about to do. So you don't have to beat them up, you can just prevent them from doing it.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  Like Minority Report.

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For example, although that's a little creepier, the way, how that, but, but my point is.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  You would stop them.

• 24:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you, you know, there they are in the act of committing a crime, and then you have to fight them, and then drag them to prison, or you know they're about to.

• 24:11Speaker 03

  And then what do you do?

• 24:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you, you say, hey, look, come over here, let's go have a cup of coffee, you know? It wouldn't make a good movie.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  You think that worked with, you think Hitler just needed a cup of coffee? You think Hitler was just waiting for Neil to come through, like, hey, hey, Hitty, come here?

• 24:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go to the beer garden. So.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  But so that is an interesting, like.

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that way you don't have to be strong, you can be, you could be intimately clever about how to distract someone from whatever might have been their nefarious plan.

• 24:43Chuck Nice?

  That is awesome. Neil deGrasse Tyson is Java Man.

• 24:52Charles Liu?

  Please don't wreck, yes, please don't wreck New York, come have coffee with me.

• 24:55Chuck Nice?

  Hey buddy, let's talk about that.

• 24:59Charles Liu?

  That's great, actually, well done.

• 25:00Chuck Nice?

  Want a cup of gel?

• 25:01Charles Liu?

  It's a great idea.

• 25:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You like some Madagascar cinnamon on the top?

• 25:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, what superpower you think you would have? One superpower.

• 25:09Charles Liu?

  That's a great question. At one time, I thought that maybe I would want the same superpower as you was thinking, you know, being able to read minds, but then I found out that most thoughts are never realized.

• 25:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 25:23Charles Liu?

  Thousands of thoughts.

• 25:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a whole episode of The Twilight Zone on that very fact.

• 25:28Charles Liu?

  Yeah, every time we read a book, we have new thoughts, every time we imagine something, new thoughts, the only things that actually matter are what come out in the real world. We cannot, like, in like Minority Report or other kinds of environments, castigate someone for their thoughts as long as they don't act upon them.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so, but that episode of The Twilight Zone?

• 25:47Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 25:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Someone, some coin was spun and it ended up standing up on its end, and that changed the universe, and he could hear people's thoughts, and he went into the, a bank, and the bank guard.

• 26:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was thinking, after everyone leaves, I can enter the safe, because the safe will be unlocked.

• 26:04Charles Liu?

  Uh huh.

• 26:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can open the thing. And he's like, she's like alerting the police and everything. And then he finds out, the bank guard has those thoughts every day.

• 26:12Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 26:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a little fantasy, right? And so you don't, you can't distinguish their fantasy from their, what they would actually act upon.

• 26:19Charles Liu?

  Exactly.

• 26:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I agree with you.

• 26:20Charles Liu?

  Thanks, thanks. So my desired power is instead to be able to know exactly the right thing to say or do at any given moment.

• 26:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Towards what end?

• 26:33Charles Liu?

  Toward either making someone-

• 26:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Peace and love and happiness?

• 26:36Charles Liu?

  Either making someone feel better, or stopping something bad from happening, or-

• 26:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't that my cup of joe?

• 26:43Charles Liu?

  That, that is.

• 26:44Chuck Nice?

  You guys have the same power.

• 26:46Charles Liu?

  It's the same idea, but instead of talking about thoughts- Except he gets, he gets, he gets a scone with a car.

• 26:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck's scone.

• 26:52Charles Liu?

  Chuck does a scone with a car.

• 26:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm picky about my scone, but a good scone is no substitute.

• 26:55Charles Liu?

  My wife makes the best scones in the world.

• 26:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now you tell me this.

• 26:58Charles Liu?

  Puts little zon- takes-

• 26:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was at your house two weeks ago, you didn't tell me she made good scones.

• 27:02Charles Liu?

  Well, next time. You weren't gonna commit a crime.

• 27:07Charles Liu?

  You were gonna commit a crime, you would've got a scone hammer. So, so preventing crime with actions rather than thoughts?

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Okay, very good. Chuck, how about you?

• 27:16Chuck Nice?

  Aw, man, you know, I'm not, see, you guys are too damn thoughtful. I just wanna be able to vaporize people.

• 27:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With your eyes.

• 27:26Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 27:28Charles Liu?

  It's been done, it's called Cyclops.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I guess so, I guess so. Alright, so Charles, what do you think science can do to create a superpower?

• 27:38Charles Liu?

  Oh.

• 27:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actuals, you know, in a real-

• 27:40Charles Liu?

  Great point.

• 27:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you know, we have the Iron Man suit, that comes closest to imagining that.

• 27:44Charles Liu?

  There are now cybernetic suits.

• 27:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 27:46Charles Liu?

  They're not nearly powered by, you know, some arc generator or whatever, but it's certainly, you can move or be protected from things.

• 27:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, what about genetic mutations?

• 27:56Charles Liu?

  Yep.

• 27:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Genetically mutate you so that what?

• 27:59Charles Liu?

  So that you don't catch diseases that are otherwise lethal.

• 28:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's not a superpower.

• 28:03Charles Liu?

  Yeah. That-

• 28:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's just being healthy.

• 28:05Charles Liu?

  It's a superpower in the jungles of Africa. But if it's true for any disease, then you become immortal, then that's a superpower.

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but it's not a superpower if everyone has it. We learned that in The Incredibles.

• 28:19Charles Liu?

  Why not? It is, it's still a superpower.

• 28:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's the mantra? If, if everyone is special, then no one is special.

• 28:25Charles Liu?

  No. I disagree with that point.

• 28:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it's my superpower, it's just power.

• 28:28Charles Liu?

  Well, see, that's a, a small-minded interpretation of what superpower truly is. Right.

• 28:35Chuck Nice?

  You just called me small-minded.

• 28:36Charles Liu?

  No, no, I'm talking.

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Meet me outside. You see how small-minded I am after I kick, after I pull my foot out of your ass?

• 28:42Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, that's, that's astrophysics fighting words right there.

• 28:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That sounds like, what'd you say about my mama?

• 28:51Charles Liu?

  I'm saying that your mama is special.

• 28:54Chuck Nice?

  Mama talks for astrophysicists.

• 28:55Charles Liu?

  I'm saying your mama is special, and so is everybody else.

• 28:59Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's hilarious.

• 29:00Charles Liu?

  Yes. No, no, this is a very Pollyanna-ish idea of what being special means and so on. But the idea that we can all benefit from something and therefore be super as a result is not at all an alien or a bad concept. I, I have no problem with, for example, everybody being able to live as long as they'd like to live, in a healthy manner. That is a true superpower, is it not?

• 29:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but it's also, um, you know, a big-time fantasy, because like, what, what kind of taxation on the earth would that create?

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If we could all, we'd need more planets.

• 29:35Charles Liu?

  We would, we would need to expand.

• 29:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, the universe is large.

• 29:38Charles Liu?

  We would need to go beyond. That's true.

• 29:39Chuck Nice?

  I forgot what I was talking to.

• 29:41Charles Liu?

  We already know, yeah. Four thousand planets and counting outside our solar system. Don't worry, we got other places to go.

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're all just in a little circle around us.

• 29:49Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 29:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got planets.

• 29:51Charles Liu?

  We're in good shape.

• 29:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We good, we good.

• 29:54Charles Liu?

  Yeah, so, remember what Arthur C. Clarke said, right? Not only was he a great science fiction writer, but he also patented, for example, the communication satellite, so a very intelligent engineer and scientist.

• 30:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice.

• 30:04Charles Liu?

  He said, and I paraphrase, I think, that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

• 30:14Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 30:15Charles Liu?

  Right? And if magic-

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not just a paraphrase, that's a quote.

• 30:18Charles Liu?

  I got it?

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think you got it, I think you got it.

• 30:21Charles Liu?

  So, so if, um, magic is essentially a superpower, right? Being a wizard is super-powerful, or supernatural, or something, then that means all of us who have the technology-

• 30:32Chuck Nice?

  But it isn't supernatural.

• 30:33Charles Liu?

  Who know how to wield it, and who know how to create it.

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it just looks-

• 30:35Chuck Nice?

  It's not supernatural, though.

• 30:36Charles Liu?

  It just looks like it, right? But theoretically, neither is the Iron Man armor, right?

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know what you're saying. Right. I'm 100% with you. Yeah, that's my take. Okay. All right, when we come back, we devote an entire segment to Olivia's Cosmic Queries. Awesome. You know she has some. I'm sure she does. You know. So when we come back. Like, what's your favorite coffee?

• 31:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tona, from the eastern slopes of the... When StarTalk returns, more of my interview with Olivia Munn.

• 31:24Chuck Nice?

  Hey, it's time to shout out the following Patreon patrons. Genesis Perez and Braden Thomas. Hey, guys, thanks so much for your support. Without you, there's no way that we could do what we do here at StarTalk Radio. And for those of you listening who would like your own Patreon shout out, go to patreon.com/starTalkRadio and support us.

• 31:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk, featuring my interview with patron saint of geeks. Oh. Olivia Munn. All right. Yeah, she's an actress, you know, she's got good street cred. Yep. For being a geek. Mm-hmm. And in this final segment, I just thought, why don't I see if she has questions for me about the universe? Okay. Because you know she's a deep thinker. Oh, yeah. And she's thought about this stuff. So let's get her first question for me right now.

• 32:26Speaker 03

  I want to know if you think that aliens exist.

• 32:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have no reason to doubt that the galaxy and the universe isn't teeming with aliens.

• 32:39Speaker 03

  It makes me so happy that you said that.

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's not, it's not because I want it to be true.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  No, because the science shows you that, right?

• 32:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The science is compelling. When you look at what we're made of as, as life on Earth, humans, we're made of the same ingredients in rank order as what the universe is made of. So the fact that life started here on Earth, there's no reason to think that was some special occasion, some special thing. And now we have catalogs of exoplanets that is growing into the multiple thousands now. And that's just in our little, little sector of our entire galaxy, one of countless billions of galaxies in the universe. To say that we are alone in the universe, there is no, that's inexcusably egocentric to think such a thing.

• 33:31Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 33:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, why do you think people get so excited? Maybe people like Olivia, but maybe others are excited at the prospect that aliens are out there rather than scared?

• 33:44Chuck Nice?

  I think that...

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, maybe there are two camps. There's the scared camp and the happy camp.

• 33:48Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I think there are two camps. But I think that being alone makes this so incredibly random and worthless. I think that's really from a philosophical, I think it's more philosophical than anything else, you know?

• 34:03Charles Liu?

  We don't want to be that special.

• 34:04Chuck Nice?

  We don't want to be that special. Because that really does. You know, it, it, it does make this whole thing so random and worthless that it almost doesn't count.

• 34:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, what do you think of the chances that we are unique in the universe?

• 34:17Chuck Nice?

  Uh, zero.

• 34:18Charles Liu?

  Zero.

• 34:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Zero.

• 34:19Charles Liu?

  Statistically speaking, the chances that we are unique are zero, but...

• 34:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, let me back up. Wait, let me back up, let me back up. So Earth spent billions of years...

• 34:30Chuck Nice?

  To create us.

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Featuring a single-celled life.

• 34:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then billions more with interesting life, but still by today's standards, simple. Okay? So the life we think of as complex and intelligent and all that is a very recent phenomenon

• 34:48Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 34:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  in the tree of life. And it's only happened in one branch of the tree of life, the vertebrates. And the intelligence we think of is even in sub-branches of that, the mammals of the vertebrates of the tree of life. All right? So, so the contingency of that. Suppose something happened on Earth way back that just snipped...

• 35:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At that frequency.

• 35:09Charles Liu?

  One chain.

• 35:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Snip, the vertebrate chain.

• 35:11Charles Liu?

  Yep.

• 35:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You would never have the apes, you would never have the hominids, you would never have the humans, and you just have everything else. So, I'm not asking you, do you think it's obvious there's life elsewhere? I'm asking you, do you think we could be alone in our intelligence? Wow.

• 35:27Charles Liu?

  Every species that has ever existed, or will exist, is unique in its own way.

• 35:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep.

• 35:34Charles Liu?

  So.

• 35:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is what unique means.

• 35:40Charles Liu?

  I have no rebuttal to that.

• 35:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right.

• 35:42Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 35:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just, you know, I don't mean to be Merriam-Webster here, but I'm just saying.

• 35:46Charles Liu?

  So, in that particular vein.

• 35:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:49Charles Liu?

  There is no other species like us, anywhere, ever.

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 35:52Charles Liu?

  Right? But if you want to compare ourselves to any possible aliens that have some, that have something like intelligence that we can recognize, that has a backbone or a spine like we recognize, or some other kind of combination or permutation.

• 36:10Chuck Nice?

  Or even intelligence without an invertebrate intelligence.

• 36:12Charles Liu?

  Then I.

• 36:13Chuck Nice?

  Like squid are pretty intelligent.

• 36:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they are, yeah.

• 36:15Charles Liu?

  Uh, octopi?

• 36:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless, look, they're spineless characters.

• 36:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you're right, you don't have to have a backbone to have intelligence, because we got squid and oct, you know.

• 36:26Charles Liu?

  So.

• 36:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The octopus is, by most measures, an intelligent creature.

• 36:30Charles Liu?

  So, if you, if you draw your boundaries in a way to say, is there life that we would recognize as intelligent and communicative and so forth, the odds of that happening are essentially 100%.

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. All right, I got a question for both of you. Yeah, but are they gonna be able to do, uh, uh, the Pythagorean theorem? Yeah, well, math is really the deal.

• 36:50Charles Liu?

  If they don't have a backbone, why would they need to do the Pythagorean theorem?

• 36:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't even know how you get that sentence.

• 36:58Charles Liu?

  If you're a super intelligent octopoid species, and you're zipping around the universe, why do you need hard angles?

• 37:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you're saying if you're squishy?

• 37:10Charles Liu?

  Why not create?

• 37:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not into straight lines.

• 37:13Charles Liu?

  That's right. Why not just have fluid boundaries?

• 37:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have a whole other kind of math.

• 37:18Charles Liu?

  Exactly.

• 37:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fluid boundary math.

• 37:20Charles Liu?

  And it is well known, even with our limited intelligence that relies on geometry and hard boundaries, that there are non-Euclidean geometries that do not rely on, say, all the triangles adding up to 180 degrees, things like that. I think there's a lot of potential that none of us have even thought about, if anything.

• 37:36Chuck Nice?

  I know, we gotta move on. But I wanna ask you guys this, since she's kinda based, not really. How much do you think that we know? Since you're talking about if there's life in the universe. What would you say is, from 1 to 10, using decimal places if you want, what is the amount of knowledge that we actually have with respect to what is knowledge that exists?

• 37:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One half.

• 37:59Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 38:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Between 0 and 10, one half.

• 38:01Chuck Nice?

  Between 0 and 10, one half? Oh, between 0 and 10, one half?

• 38:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 38:06Charles Liu?

  Neil is being generous.

• 38:07Chuck Nice?

  I thought you meant one half all the way to 0, like that would be a 5.

• 38:10Charles Liu?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 38:11Chuck Nice?

  You mean 0.5?

• 38:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, wait, wait, no, I, no, yeah, 0.5.

• 38:14Charles Liu?

  0.5?

• 38:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know why?

• 38:15Charles Liu?

  Why?

• 38:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because...

• 38:17Charles Liu?

  Go ahead.

• 38:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because dark matter and dark energy, we have no idea of what those are, and they comprise 96% of what is driving this universe.

• 38:26Chuck Nice?

  Alright, that's a very good...

• 38:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So on a scale of 1 to 10, we know half, basically.

• 38:30Charles Liu?

  Neil is being generous. Even in the part, the 0.5 out of 10, that we know about in terms of protons, neutrons, electrons, neutrinos, things like that.

• 38:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the familiar stuff that you know, he's in that half.

• 38:42Charles Liu?

  We still know less than 1% of what's actually going on in our observable universe alone.

• 38:50Chuck Nice?

  So in the stuff that we actually know, we still, we still don't know?

• 38:54Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 38:54Chuck Nice?

  In the stuff that we know?

• 38:55Charles Liu?

  So I feel like we're at 0.01 of 0.5.

• 39:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn, Charles, can't you give us a little... Man, what are you doing to our ego?

• 39:03Charles Liu?

  I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm saying that the fact that we've learned that much just being on a little mud ball here in the middle of the solar system is completely unremarkable.

• 39:12Chuck Nice?

  Mud ball.

• 39:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, he's in a dissing mode.

• 39:14Chuck Nice?

  You know what? I just see now an alien race showing up here. People of the mud ball.

• 39:22Charles Liu?

  And I would stand up to that alien and say, "And what?" Right? Because it's really neat that we have such humble origins from a scientific, biological point of view, and yet we still understand so much already, and we can't wait to learn more.

• 39:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Okay, here's why I think it's not that bad.

• 39:40Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 39:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right?

• 39:41Charles Liu?

  Sure.

• 39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I think I can convince you. Because we have similar brain wirings, we train the same, this sort of thing. So I think I got him here.

• 39:48Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 39:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He doesn't know what's coming.

• 39:50Charles Liu?

  All right.

• 39:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, you ready?

• 39:51Charles Liu?

  Bring it on.

• 39:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the history of civilization.

• 39:56Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 39:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Before science, up to the modern methods and tools of science, into modern day.

• 40:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Things would happen in the world that we wouldn't understand. And so you invent gods, you invent...

• 40:12Charles Liu?

  The god of the gaps.

• 40:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the gods of the gaps. And gaps implies you knew stuff to the left or right of it. There were not even gaps.

• 40:19Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 40:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything was explained this way. All right. As we moved on, things would get explained. It was no longer a mystery. Other things would show up. "Oh, that's, you know, what is that? This lightning coming from, you know, moving through the air. What is that? Oh, it's electricity. It's got electrons. All right, we got that. All right, what is this thing? It moves a needle on a... Oh, that's a magnetic field. So now we got that. Oh, by the way, they're two sides of the same coin. Electromagnetism. All right, we got that. What else? Oh, the atoms are behaving weirdly. Oh, let's discover quantum physics, and now we can explain that. All right? And so, my point is, how much today is in our world experience that's a phenomenon

• 41:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that completely defies explanation?

• 41:07Charles Liu?

  Ah.

• 41:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is my point.

• 41:09Charles Liu?

  Yes. You know, you make an excellent point.

• 41:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See, I told you.

• 41:12Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 41:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 41:13Charles Liu?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 41:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see what you're saying. When Faraday passed a wire through a magnetic field and a meter moved, that's mysterious. Oh, my gosh. We have to figure out a way to explain this. And we did.

• 41:24Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 41:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We understood electricity. Faraday tilled the soil for all of the later understanding of electricity to unfold, including the efforts of, um, which was partly based on what Benjamin Franklin, our boy, was able to write. He has a book called Experimental Researchers into Electricity.

• 41:42Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 41:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right? So... I'm asking today, are there things moving and we don't understand what's making it happen? Is there some force operating that defies our account?

• 41:53Chuck Nice?

  So you're saying that the reduction in the number of mysteries?

• 41:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Absolutely. By the line by, something's moving.

• 41:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Something's making it move and we don't understand what that is. So the forces of nature, which we've condensed down to just four operations in this world. The strong force, the weak force, um, gravity and electromagnetic forces. That accounts for all of this.

• 42:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Yes, we still don't know dark matter, dark energy. That's a big unknown, but that's, I'm prepared to limit our unknown to that right now. And I'm not going to go down, down that hole with you.

• 42:29Charles Liu?

  Fair enough. I, I can accept.

• 42:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look, he's just looking at me and nodding. Whoa!

• 42:34Charles Liu?

  I, I can accept your current explanation. There are little niggling skeptical holes that I would poke in that.

• 42:39Chuck Nice?

  All right, man, why we gotta get all racial?

• 42:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you can't use the word niggle in front of.

• 42:43Charles Liu?

  Oh, sorry, sorry.

• 42:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A black person on each side.

• 42:44Chuck Nice?

  What's, what happened?

• 42:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Niggle.

• 42:47Chuck Nice?

  It was a very, it was a very civil conversation and all of a sudden you just like, you know, niggle, please.

• 42:54Charles Liu?

  Gentlemen, gentlemen, I humbly apologize.

• 42:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's another word that got outlawed, uh, niggardly.

• 42:59Chuck Nice?

  Niggardly, which means, oh geez. Miserly and cheap.

• 43:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stingy, yeah, that word got outlawed long, long ago.

• 43:05Chuck Nice?

  Well, you know what? Somebody actually said that to me, like, no, niggardly means cheap. And I was like, no, it's gonna be me, you didn't punch. That's what it's gonna mean.

• 43:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's gonna be.

• 43:16Charles Liu?

  Please, gentlemen, let me rephrase.

• 43:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 43:18Charles Liu?

  There are small details of what you just said that I might poke at.

• 43:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Quibble.

• 43:22Charles Liu?

  Yes, but your idea is sound and I can see how you can defend the position that you've taken.

• 43:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very good.

• 43:27Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 43:27Chuck Nice?

  Excellent.

• 43:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very good.

• 43:29Charles Liu?

  Excellent.

• 43:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Livy had one last question for me.

• 43:31Charles Liu?

  All right.

• 43:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In this interview. And it had to do with invoking science to make sense of the world. Let's check it out.

• 43:41Speaker 03

  Do you know when people talk about like planets like oh when the moon comes in and it affects people this way or when Mercury is in retrograde? People will say, "Oh, Mercury is in retrograde. That's why they're like late or they're..."

• 43:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've noticed.

• 43:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, they say that a lot. Do you believe that the planets affect us individually?

• 43:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you can measure like how much light is coming from a planet or how much gravity you would feel from it. So you can measure this. So let's take, for example, let's say you're about to give birth. And there's Mars in view. Oh, you're born under Mars. Well, you can calculate. How much more light is coming to the delivery table from the lamp relative to Mars? Well, it's hundreds of thousands of times the intensity of light. Okay, well, how about the gravity from Mars? I can calculate that. We've known this since Isaac Newton, how to calculate that. And you calculate it and you learn that the gravitational field

• 44:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  of the midwife or the medical doctor who is helping you deliver the baby is greater than the gravitational force from Mars on you and your soon-to-be-born child. So if you're to appeal to Mars, you're gonna have to say, "Oh, there's something scientists have yet to discover about it." But you can't talk about the light. You can't talk about the gravity because we got that. Okay, so now you have to say, "There's some mysterious thing that's affecting us that scientists have yet to measure." Okay? Well, we have five senses, five traditional senses. Some people say they have a sixth sense.

• 45:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They can know what someone is thinking or know something that they don't otherwise have direct access to. I don't have a problem with people saying they have a sixth sense. What I can tell you, however, as a scientist, I have access to dozens of senses.

• 45:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is science if not? There is something to be measured in this world that my human physiology has no clue what it is or how it works. And I've built this machine that can tell you it's there. You'd have to say there was something going on between you and Mars that all of my access to my dozens of senses cannot measure.

• 46:05Speaker 03

  And it does make sense, understanding that when people want to blame other things, and that's a big part of it. That's why you see a lot of people who believe in all this stuff, where their lives are still just like, they're all anxiety induced. And you know, you're like, well, clearly it's not making things more peaceful for you. Because they've just got something else to blame it on. They've got something else to shift it on.

• 46:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have not taken control of their life.

• 46:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's the truth.

• 46:25Charles Liu?

  It's the gap that they're trying to explain using scientific language like mercury in retrograde, but it's not actually science. That's just pseudoscience.

• 46:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, but so I guess the point is, the power of science to explain what you think is a phenomenon is extraordinary.

• 46:42Charles Liu?

  Yes, amazingly so. And people who don't even understand it or don't know about it will use it even incorrectly because it helps explain the unknown.

• 46:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we need some parting thoughts. Chuck, do you have anything deep to share with us?

• 46:56Chuck Nice?

  Deep? No.

• 47:00Chuck Nice?

  You're putting too much pressure on me.

• 47:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Chuck, we need some parting thoughts. Do you have anything shallow to share with us?

• 47:05Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 47:08Chuck Nice?

  No, I just really appreciate the fact that Olivia is a person who is scientifically curious. And you know, I think the more that people in entertainment show that side of themselves, the more we might see a reflection of that in society.

• 47:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, how about you?

• 47:28Charles Liu?

  Hooray for Olivia Munn for not only embracing who she is as a geek, but also recognizing that she learns differently and that she is different from others. And yet she embraces all those things, owns them, and says, "Here I am." Just like the title of her book, "Suck It, Wonder Woman," right? She is great in her own way, and it doesn't really matter what people are going to compare her to, because she's cool just as she is.

• 47:59Chuck Nice?

  And only Wonder Woman hates her.

• 48:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I don't know that I can add to what the two of you just shared. What I will say is, it's a reminder that when you're growing up and you don't quite know who you are yet, or what you want to be emotionally, personally, professionally, and what is going on around you, there are social forces. Oh, yeah. To homogenize you into what others would have you become. And what that does is, it robs you of your individuality when you do such a thing. So true.

• 48:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so much of what has shaped this world has been via the expression of individuality. Mm-hmm, yes. So imagine what this world would be today if everyone were afforded the opportunity to not have to comply with social forces. Imagine how diverse in the expression of intellect this world would be. Imagine how much more fun the world would be. Yeah. And I think Olivia Munn is a best example of that, who's entered a field that previously

• 49:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  never really embraced who we are as geeks, and she's taken it right to the camera lens. And I agree with you, Charles, it's someone to applaud. Yes. And let there be many more Olivia Munn's. Yes. Well said, Neil. To grace the screen. Absolutely. All right, you've been watching, listening, you've been consuming StarTalk. Our edition on superheroes and geeks. With some cinnamon on top, right? With some Madagascar cinnamon on top. I just want to thank Olivia Munn for giving us that interview. And Charles Lu, always good to have you. Thank you so much. John Nice. Yes, sir. You're my man. You got it. All right, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always, bidding

• 50:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  you to keep looking up.