Our Burning Questions – Simulation Debate

Are we living inside a computer simulation? Is artificial intelligence truly conscious? And what happens to us when we die? Neil deGrasse Tyson and cohost’s Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly tackle more questions from inside the StarTalk team.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming up, burning questions asked of me by the StarTalk team. Gary, am I supposed to be some ointment that'll soothe the burning sensations they feel?

• 0:08Gary O'Reilly?

  I think you should be, yes. Twice a day.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Call me in the morning. Coming up, StarTalk special edition.

• 0:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

• 0:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk special edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Special edition means I got Gary O'Reilly right here. How you doing, Gary?

• 0:44Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm good. Thank you, Neil.

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, recently an official American citizen. Congratulations.

• 0:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, and we've recently been watching the Winter Olympics and I'm pleased to say I enjoy being an American citizen because we win way more gold than the Brits.

• 0:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, yeah, we also have multiples of the population and the resources, but yeah, okay. And Chuck, I got you here. How you doing, man?

• 1:07Chuck Nice?

  Always great, man. Feeling good.

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very nice, very nice. So, you know, this is one of those episodes where I get to hear these murmurs from you and the producers that you guys have questions as well.

• 1:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like burning questions. And even though you didn't pay the Patreon fee to gain access to my answers, you're sneaking ahead of the line.

• 1:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 1:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could you be a little more, a little more, you know?

• 1:41Chuck Nice?

  I like the fact that Gary just owns it. He was like, yeah, you know, he's like, when the bouncer lifts up the rope for you at the club, you don't question that. You just walk in.

• 1:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you have, Gary?

• 1:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, like I say, our, our production team and our associates have their burning questions and we tried to burn through them the back end of 2025, but we've got nowhere near completing them. So we've got to pick it up. So it's burning questions take two.

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bring it on.

• 2:10Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, here we go. Here's one. Maybe it's an unknown answer, but how about this? I was watching a truck the other day.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, who is this from? Who, who, who's asking this?

• 2:20Gary O'Reilly?

  This is me. This is me.

• 2:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, a question from you?

• 2:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 2:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A Gary O'Reilly question.

• 2:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, I have pushed to the front of the line. I've just ignored the bouncer. And what's happened is a truck has passed me on the road and I'm thinking, wow, that really looks like it's heavy. And it's loaded up with dirt. And then the, the thought pops into my head. How heavy is planet Earth? Is, is that some, is that unknowable?

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 2:48Gary O'Reilly?

  It is.

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 2:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Go on then.

• 2:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Earth is weightless.

• 2:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, thank you.

• 2:57Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 2:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so just the same way astronauts in the space station who are orbiting Earth are weightless. Earth orbiting the sun is weightless.

• 3:12Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that makes perfect sense because the astronauts are falling around the Earth. We are falling around the sun.

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the sun. So Earth is weightless. Maybe that's not the answer you're wondering, but.

• 3:27Gary O'Reilly?

  I know, but you know what? It's, it's the answer. It's, it's the answer I think most people, myself included, didn't quite see coming.

• 3:35Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 3:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't see that coming. You didn't see that coming.

• 3:37Chuck Nice?

  That's a great, I love that answer because that's the, that's the case. However, let's say that, uh, we fall into another planet. What scale, what, what will we be on the scale?

• 3:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's different. That's its force of attraction on you.

• 3:54Chuck Nice?

  You, right.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And yes, you can weigh the Earth that way. You can weigh a planet that way by asking it how much you weigh on that planet. But you, you're asking about the truck, Gary.

• 4:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's a, there's a clever way to get the weight of something that has tires. If I may. Okay. Here's what you do. Look on the side of the, on the sidewall and look at what air pressure those tires are under. Okay. Generally, the bigger the wheel, the lower the air pressure. I don't know for sure what truck tires are. They might be thirty pounds per square inch, something like that. Heavy cars are like sixty pounds per square inch. Your bicycle, if it's like a racing bike, is ninety pounds per square inch, right? So, large tires tend to have lower per square inch, but, so let me just pick a number and let me say it's, just say fifty. Alright. Let's just say fifty. That's a good round number. A nice round number. Fifty PSI.

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fifty PSI. Then, here's what you do. Walk up to the truck, not while it's on the road passing you, and get a tape measure and measure the area of each tire's contact with the road. It'll be like a square. Yeah. You know, because it's round and then it flattens a little, and that flattening will have an area, okay? It'll be like maybe five inches by six inches, let's say, whatever. And you multiply those per tire. So, let's say it's five inches by six inches, how many square inches is that? Thirty.

• 5:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thirty. And these full-size trucks have eighteen wheels. We know that because they're eighteen-wheelers. Yeah, right. Okay. So, thirty times eighteen is, let's just, let's just use round numbers here. Let's call it twenty. So, thirty times twenty, that's six thousand. Oh, six thousand. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. Five hundred. That's five hundred. I mean, six hundred. Six hundred, okay. Six hundred. So, there's six hundred, we're round, very roundy here, six hundred square inches of tire in contact with the road. If it's fifty pounds per square inch, multiply the

• 6:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  fifty times the six hundred, and what do you get? Thirty grand. Fifty times six hundred is thirty thousand pounds. That would be fifteen tons. That's a fifteen-ton truck, right there. Wow.

• 6:31Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 6:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, or, or. Well, it's written on the side. It's a little style. Little teeny triangle.

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or you could just read it on the side of the truck.

• 6:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But on the side of the truck is its maximum.

• 6:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 6:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gross weight.

• 6:51Chuck Nice?

  Ah, I got you.

• 6:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 6:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that's how much it's allowed to be. It doesn't mean, it doesn't mean that it's actually that weight at that time.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At that time. And the 15 tons would not only be the truck, but also.

• 7:04Chuck Nice?

  So tractor unit. The cab?

• 7:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The tractor unit, yeah.

• 7:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, right.

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's the, because you did it for all tires.

• 7:10Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly, yeah. But yeah, I see what you're saying, because the tire itself, the more weight it has, the more surface it will take up.

• 7:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 7:20Chuck Nice?

  And because of the change in that surface, that is how you can calculate the weight based on whatever's in there. It doesn't make a difference because you're going by that area.

• 7:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. And the old trick that any trucker knows is that if there's an overpass and you're like an inch too tall for the overpass.

• 7:41Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 7:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You let air out of the tires.

• 7:45Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 7:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And watch what happens. You let air out. What happens to each surface area?

• 7:49Chuck Nice?

  It gets wider.

• 7:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 7:50Chuck Nice?

  And it's.

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wider and you let air out. So you've reduced, so you've made the surface area greater and the air pressure lower.

• 7:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that when they multiply together, you still get the correct weight of the truck. It'll be correct every time.

• 8:05Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that's cool. All right.

• 8:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how you do that. Gary?

• 8:10Chuck Nice?

  So next time you're on a cross-country trucking trek, Gary. Bring your tape measure with you.

• 8:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or read the side of the frickin' truck.

• 8:20Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah. There you go. Cool.

• 8:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 8:24Chuck Nice?

  We're gonna do Alex. This is our boy Alex. I wonder which Alex. It doesn't say which.

• 8:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have two Alexes.

• 8:29Chuck Nice?

  We have two Alex. Oh, it's Alex P. It's Alex P.

• 8:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alex Picardis, yes.

• 8:34Chuck Nice?

  This is from Alex P., our producer, and he says, "Google's new quantum chip can, in five minutes, complete computations that would take modern supercomputers longer than the age of the universe. Some view this as evidence of us living in a multiverse. What other proofs might cement the multiverse theory in your view?"

• 8:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm. Yeah, I don't, I think, let me restate what he's trying to say there. If we have that power. That means we have the power to create a whole very convincing universe within our computers. And you can create like Mario, you know, the Mario universe where Mario has free will and is thinking complex thoughts rather than just trying to collect coins. And so I think that's where he's coming at. It means we have risen to the power of a civilization that can simulate other civilizations. Right. And maybe we have been created with the power to then reach that level as well, possibly implying that we are creating-

• 9:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A living in a simulation. Yeah, and so we briefly hinted at this in an earlier recording, but it's worth repeating, that when you, I don't know if you've ever programmed the computer, but when you do, up at the top, you have all these parameters, okay? What's the value of pi? What is the, you know, what is the gravitational constant? What are the, and these are your, your variables that get preset right at the top. And then you just call them in any of your subroutines for when you need it, okay? You can, and you reuse them, you interact, you, you calculate with them. But you have to set up something there, okay?

• 10:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, how many digits of pi am I going to hand the computer for when I calculate with pi? When I programmed it, six digits was good enough, but if I want to feel luxurious, I'll give it 12. But pi keeps going. Hmm. Okay? Now suppose you measure something in the universe and it's only accurate to 12 digits of pi. And you make more measurements and it's getting the wrong numbers for pi. That would be evidence that you have reached the programmer's limit of what they established for your world. And that's like in The Truman Show where he paddles his rowboat to the edge- And hits the wall.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Horizon and hits the wall. And it's a painted wall. And so the this example's version of the painted wall is the limits of certain physical constants or other phenomena that have unnatural limits that you encounter. And another one was we have cosmic rays are formed by high energy phenomena in the universe. We see them. They arrive here on Earth and they come from halfway across the universe. You can measure how many cosmic rays have a given energy. Okay, so there's a lot that have this energy and you go to higher energy, there's fewer and fewer. Okay, all right, just follow me here. You go to higher and higher, there's fewer and fewer.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Suppose you get to a point where there's a cutoff and it doesn't sort of blend into nothingness. That could be the upper energy limit of the programmer. They're saying they'll never get there. Let me just put this well beyond. And in fact, we've been humans for at least 100,000 years in our current form. Several hundred thousand years, so maybe the programmer had no expectations we ever come near that.

• 12:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yet we did.

• 12:16Chuck Nice?

  Cause he walked away from the program or they walked away from the program and came back like, oh shit.

• 12:26Chuck Nice?

  Oh my gosh. Hey Jim, come over here. Look at this, Jim.

• 12:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We busted.

• 12:33Chuck Nice?

  They they've gone nuclear on us, man. Who they walked away to get a sandwich and we were we we had just discovered fire. We were like and they went to lunch and they came back like, oh God. What the?

• 12:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because you know, a thousand years unto us could be a day unto the programmer. However, that biblical phrase goes.

• 12:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it could be that we start finding the limits in in the universe, the measurable limits. And that would be a way to show that there's a programmer out there.

• 13:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm.

• 13:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 13:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Do you expect it to be infinite and just have no limits and just keep going on and on and on?

• 13:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no. So I guess what I'm saying is in a software,

• 13:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm, right.

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't just put infinities in it because it has to hold it and then calculate with it. So you have to truncate it in some arbitrary place that you think is sufficient. So when I went to 12 decimal places on the value of pi in my programming, so I've written in my life about 50,000 lines of code, plus or minus. And in there, you know, you get your favorite variables you put in. I went to 12 decimal places because that's more accurate than anything we have ever needed to calculate out to the radius of the universe. So I'm good for anything I needed there.

• 13:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 13:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So with my software, I was not likely to hit the limits of creation. But it's a way to think about it for sure.

• 14:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Absolutely. I mean, we've discussed this on a number of occasions. We need to be thinking differently to solve problems that have so far stumped us.

• 14:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not only that, we need to be thinking differently to even know what questions

• 14:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Questions to ask.

• 14:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. That we didn't even, we're not even aware, were visible to us in plain sight because our brain wasn't ready to even think that way. I lose sleep over that.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  Hello, I'm Vicky Barok Allen and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Nailed Grass Tyson.

• 14:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With these burning questions, I think there's an ointment.

• 15:04Gary O'Reilly?

  I wonder which one you're thinking of.

• 15:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Oh, no, okay. Let me, no, let me say it the way Sylvester Stallone would say it. You have a burning question? And I'm the ointment for it.

• 15:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know, I can't imitate him.

• 15:20Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, that makes me hate Sly Stallone even more than I do.

• 15:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No!

• 15:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm the ointment for your burning question.

• 15:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Right, this is from Bryant, he's a community manager.

• 15:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh Bryant, Bryant.

• 15:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Bryant.

• 15:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he looks after our, our fanbase, basically. Our Patreon memberships and things, so this is cool. Okay, what's Bryant have to say?

• 15:43Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, how does the debate shift when comparing AI that only imitates life to computational systems built from living neurons or biological substrates that may actually experience something?

• 15:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 15:59Chuck Nice?

  What a question.

• 16:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, so the question was, how does that debate play out?

• 16:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, how does the debate shift when comparing AI that only imitates life to computational systems built from living neurons or biological substrates that may actually

• 16:16Chuck Nice?

  Actually experience something.

• 16:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 16:19Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's a wild question, but yeah.

• 16:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe, maybe, I want to, I want to give a cop-out answer here.

• 16:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  May, maybe the distinction is artificial between those two. Maybe if something can calculate and can do things you need it to do, and it's way smarter than you, and it can answer all your questions, because it has the sum of the world's knowledge of all humans, and then you have another entity that can think up questions as well and respond to you. Like, does it really matter what it's made of? Who, who, who cares?

• 17:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, it might, it might do.

• 17:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you want to do, you, you, you want to measure, maybe philosophically, for sure, but in practice... This, this is the whole point of the Turing machine. The Turing machine, which came out of his research paper called The Imitation Game, which, and the title of that paper became the title of the movie.

• 17:19Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 17:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That starred Benedict Cabbage Patch. And Keira Knightley.

• 17:29Chuck Nice?

  I love Benedict Cabbage Patch.

• 17:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cumberbatch. That's gonna, that is so gonna stick now.

• 17:36Chuck Nice?

  Let me tell you something. He will be forever now Benedict Cabbage Patch from now on.

• 17:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how I gotta remember up the name.

• 17:44Chuck Nice?

  Awesome.

• 17:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So brilliantly acted and the whole movie, an important slice of history there. Point is, in that research paper, he hypothesized, he suggested that a computer is functionally conscious. If you can interact with it and do not know whether it's a computer or a human being on the other side of that conversation.

• 18:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So then the race was on. How do we get to do that? We need a computer that understands language. We need a computer that knows what verbs and nouns and adjectives are.

• 18:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 18:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That can compose a sentence. We need a computer that can interpret what you said enough to then speak back with you. So when I was in college, I interacted with an early version of this. And this was a, it was a, a, an interactive computer that took some cues from psychologists. Okay?

• 18:45Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 18:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you would say, dear computer, I'm not feeling too well lately. Tell me about why you think you're not feeling well. Okay? Well, I'm having problems at home. Tell me about your mother and your relationship. So, so it knew enough to put words in a place and just come back to you the way a seemingly concerned psychologist would.

• 19:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this got to a point where you did not know if it was a computer or just a concerned psychologist you were having a conversation with. And this, as far as I was concerned, fully satisfied this imitation game. And therefore, I did not know if that was a person or a computer. There's an early New Yorker comic that has a dog at a console. And there's a room of dogs on consoles. And one dog says to the other, this is early internet, so this is like late 90s, something like that. The good thing about the internet is no one knows that you're a dog.

• 19:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's, that's funny.

• 19:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right. And so, who cares if it's biological or neurochemical, neuroelectronic? I don't think it matters. All that matters is, in the end, is the behavior that you're interacting with.

• 20:07Chuck Nice?

  So what about, what about self-awareness? Because that becomes, I mean, we don't, so what you just described, the consciousness is no longer functional once it stops the interaction. Because it's not being, if it's not being engaged, it's not asking questions. We ask questions irrespective of whether we are being engaged or not. We have questions of ourselves, we ask questions of the universe. We never stop asking questions and we never stop having that conversation with ourselves. So that self-awareness is what we would say is an integral part of our consciousness. So what about that?

• 20:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so the self-awareness, if that only manifests to others if they interact with you, then who cares? Whatever's going on in your head will never matter to me or anyone else in the world unless

• 21:04Chuck Nice?

  Unless we interact.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or unless we interact with decisions you made in your own head because of your thoughts.

• 21:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, one of Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics.

• 21:16Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, forgive me if I can't recite them in order precisely. One of them is, no matter what, you will not harm

• 21:27Chuck Nice?

  A human being.

• 21:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A human being, that's the first law of robotics.

• 21:30Chuck Nice?

  First law, right.

• 21:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The second law is, You will not allow harm to within your power, you will not allow harm to occur to a human being.

• 21:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you will prevent it if you can. Third one is, you will protect your own existence, provided it does not conflict with law one or two.

• 21:51Chuck Nice?

  Right. Okay. So your self-preservation is contingent upon the protection of human beings as well.

• 21:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In those, in those three laws. So here you are, thinking to yourself, I want to do this, I want to do that, I want to harm someone else. Uh, I will react when I see that engage, but I'm not gonna, I'm not going to respond to your pure thoughts. There's a whole Twilight Zone episode on that, where this guy was flipping a coin and it landed on its edge. And at that moment, he heard everyone's thoughts. And, you know, he walked into a bank and there's a bank guard, banks used to have guards. There's a bank guard, and he heard the bank guard saying, when the bank closes, I'll take the keys and I'll steal the money from the vault, and I'll do that tonight. And so, so the guy's freaking out, he's calling the police on the bank guard, and then he

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  learns that the bank guard just has these fantasies every single day.

• 22:47Chuck Nice?

  Every day.

• 22:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every day. We all have thoughts.

• 22:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and so if he never acts on them, doesn't matter to anybody else, it's your own little world. So if I'm a computer and you're not talking to me, and I'm not having any thoughts, what do you care? You want to go in and say, one is conscious and the other isn't? When everyone's interaction with them is no different? So I'm not, philosophically, I agree, it makes a difference. In practice, I think it doesn't. That's my point. And the robot's gonna want to protect itself? You can program into it that it wants to protect itself.

• 23:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is. So.

• 23:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and so I see what you're saying. Like, if I programmed into you compassion, and that by doing so, I pretty much anticipate all the scenarios where compassion should be shown, or, um, I just make it a, a default setting, where you show compassion even before you do anything else, which is, you know, kind of an understanding, an acknowledgement, and, you know, a, a.

• 23:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, that'd be Jesus.

• 23:52Chuck Nice?

  Ah!

• 23:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You done made Jesus right there, right?

• 23:56Chuck Nice?

  I am Jesus, but um bless you, my son.

• 24:02Gary O'Reilly?

  The thing is, everybody has to build in these guardrails. Everybody has to be the good actor, not the bad actor. And I don't think any of us in this conversation right now believe that that is always going to happen. There'll always be a bad actor.

• 24:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, but wait, but Gary, that's true for humans. That'll also be true for robots.

• 24:20Chuck Nice?

  It's gotta be.

• 24:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For robotic humans. If I program the robot, like Chuck said, one variant is hugely compassionate. And another doesn't have the guardrails. That robot is going to do harm, just the way humans do harm.

• 24:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what do we do? We arrest them, try them, put them in jail. So again, I think it's it's artificial to distinguish what you're made of versus how you actually get interacted with. And I'm going back to the Turing test.

• 24:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, the one, the one thing I would say about the sort of artificial, if you want silicon intelligence as opposed to a biological intelligence is the biological intelligence is generally a low energy intelligence. Whereas the other is a high energy consumer.

• 25:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know. So the the high energy one, you're talking about all of the AI farms where they're high energy consumption.

• 25:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 25:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's happening there is they are mining the whole internet of all of its information. It is having way better access to knowledge than you do.

• 25:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And with your own lonesome self. So if.

• 25:26Gary O'Reilly?

  But a human mind doesn't consume anywhere near that amount of energy.

• 25:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you ask AI to think no more deeply about a question than an average human does, I bet it's not using much energy either.

• 25:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay. All right.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm betting.

• 25:45Gary O'Reilly?

  See the point you're making.

• 25:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just betting that.

• 25:49Chuck Nice?

  And that's when we'll start electing them to public office.

• 25:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 25:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 25:55Chuck Nice?

  When they start using as much energy to think as we do.

• 26:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Is that another, is that a guardrail anyone's considered right now?

• 26:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 26:05Gary O'Reilly?

  That AI could not be or should be elected to an office.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think because AI can be programmed to be completely rational. Uh, in my experience, no one likes rational leaders because they don't, they don't, they're not as susceptible to emotional appeals.

• 26:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I, I'm, I'm not saying I want it that way. I'm saying this is my read of how people behave. It's like in courts, you, they want to bring in a jury that can be emotionally swayed.

• 26:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By arguments from a lawyer, not because the arguments are so logical, but because the arguments have.

• 26:41Chuck Nice?

  Are emotional.

• 26:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are emotional and passionate.

• 26:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Towards the goal of the, of the lawyer themselves. So it seems to me politicians need to be people who know how to listen to you and can internalize your feelings. That's how you get to vote for them. Uh, what, what you could do is have an elected official who has this emotional connection. But this should be at least one member of their cabinet. That's a completely logical bot.

• 27:12Chuck Nice?

  Now that's kind of cool. Uh, uh, an advisor.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's, it's a bot logical advisor. So you say, I want to do this, that and the other. And you go up and say, what do you think of that?

• 27:21Chuck Nice?

  And it says, that is a wonderful idea. Uh, however, you will be voted out in the very next election.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or, or that's a wonderful idea. You've already hit your term limits. Go ahead and do it.

• 27:35Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Right. Yeah.

• 27:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you got another one?

• 27:38Chuck Nice?

  Sure thing. This is Peter from Legal, our business affairs.

• 27:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yes, yes.

• 27:42Chuck Nice?

  Yes. Peter says, there's an old saying, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. Uh, the second best time is today.

• 27:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that.

• 27:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's a pretty cool saying, huh?

• 27:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless the tree's life expectancy is less than 20 years.

• 28:00Chuck Nice?

  But go. Okay.

• 28:04Chuck Nice?

  He says, with an eye toward a much needed future thinking effort that could begin today. If you were able to snap your fingers and make it so, what one thing would you change about the way children and young people are educated in the US and even worldwide? In other words, where have we gone wrong in our approach to education? And what would you do to correct that?

• 28:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, okay. So I have, I have a lot of thoughts on this and one day I'm going to write a book, an education book, not yet, because it's still, it's still percolating.

• 28:45Chuck Nice?

  Still, yeah.

• 28:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have a lot of ideas on this, but let me, let me distill it down to just a couple of key points. One, we need to train people not what to know so much as how to think.

• 28:58Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How to see information and analyze it.

• 29:01Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 29:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we're, we're valued in what to know, but you either know it or you don't. And do you know it? And, and, and you perform well on Jeopardy, but real solutions in this world come less from what you know and more than from what you can figure out when confronted with a problem that has yet to have been solved.

• 29:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So in the workplace, here's an example, a little contrived, but it's an example. You hand a task to someone in a workplace, I'm a manager and I hand a task and the two extreme responses, one of them is, this was not in my job description. This, I don't know, this is, no. Okay, that's one. All right. The other one is, wow, I've never seen this before. Give it to me, I will see what I can do with it. These are two completely different pathways of employees in a workplace. One of them will ossify in place, the other will continue to ascend. Do you see a new problem as something that someone else should solve because you're not trained?

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or a new problem as something that you will gladly take on because you like solving the unknown? Schools should be taught as something where you solve problems more than as a place where you're just loaded with information. So that's my first point. Second.

• 30:21Chuck Nice?

  Amen to that.

• 30:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Second, we need to have schools where at the end of the day, you are sad that the school day has ended.

• 30:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Think about that.

• 30:33Chuck Nice?

  So what you want is all day recess.

• 30:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so think about it. You know, you're in class and you're looking up at the clock, can't wait for the buzzer to ring. At the end of the day, you can't wait for the day. At Friday, you can't wait till the weekend begins. At the end of a holiday, before the summer, even graduation day. That you say you are now graduates and you toss your hat in the air. And you're celebrating that you don't have to continue to learn. When that was your only job was to learn. And I'm not going to blame you. Of course, we have the rock anthem celebrating this.

• 31:16Chuck Nice?

  Schools out for summer.

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Summer.

• 31:22Chuck Nice?

  To get the schools out forever.

• 31:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I'm not blaming students for this. I'm blaming the school.

• 31:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because what's going on in the school where students can't wait to get out? And if what went on the school was a celebration of learning. Where your curiosity is fed every day. No one would want to leave school. You would want to stay in there and continue to be enlightened for every waking moment. A, B, it also means when you graduate. You graduate to a life of continued curiosity. A life of continued learning. And right now you have people getting out of high school. Let's say you're not, you don't go to college. You get out of high school, you get a job. You say, I'm done with school, school. Now you have just ossified in place. Because you are done learning.

• 32:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't buy any books, you don't keep, you've got no curiosity beyond just your jobs task. You want to be good at your job, of course. But there's the rest of the world that keeps moving. Because you were trained what to know, not how to think and how to be curious. So you got to change that as well. Last thing. I've come to learn that in a free society. You cannot legislate behavior in a progressive direction.

• 32:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless doing so can benefit you financially. Okay? True. So, oh, you don't want to integrate the lunch counter at Woolworth's? We're not going to go to Woolworth's. Right. Okay? That affects your bottom line. In order to make the change, I could not have convinced you just by conversation. I had to hit your pocketbook. And I hit your pocketbook. Oh, the lunch counters are now open, are now integrated. Back in, as they needed to be in the 1950s and early 60s at F W Woolworth Lunch Counters. They each had a lunch, a luncheonette within the, the buying floor. Right. Of, of, of the store. So.

• 33:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's why they are all out of business now.

• 33:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they integrate. They integrated. They had D E I. D E I lunch counters.

• 33:46Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, Neil, let's step up.

• 33:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, we're almost done.

• 33:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 33:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, consider when whaling was a big business. Okay, we're going back into the early 1800s, let's say. Right. Whaling. Why did we hunt whales? Cause they had it coming.

• 34:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why.

• 34:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get your big ass out of my ocean. Exactly. Taking up all this ocean space for yourself.

• 34:14Gary O'Reilly?

  We, we were harvesting blubber and we were.

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This blubber.

• 34:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 34:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. The blubber that keeps the whales warm. Yeah. Insulates them. Yeah. Cause whales are warm blooded was a fuel source. It's a great oil. Oil for our lamps, everything, everything. Clean whale blubber.

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Big, beautiful, clean whale blubber.

• 34:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Burn, baby, burn, the whale lover. So you could have, you could have started a movement back then, as some did, to save the whales. These big, beautiful creatures, and we're just slaughtering them for their fat. I mean, come on now. That didn't work until what happened? Uh, alternative fuel source. We discovered oil in the ground. That was safer and cheaper to process and use. Then the whole industry shifted. Right. And so I don't, I'm not going to expect you to just say to people in a free country that they need to behave in a progressive or green way.

• 35:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I would tell the people, getting back to the question, I would tell people in the, in the pipeline, in the educational pipeline, be inventive, economically inventive, about how you can create solutions to problems that are not just emotional, philosophical, or even scientific, that are also economic. Because when you make an economic solution to something, it flies. Because everybody wants a piece of that. And that's just being practical here.

• 35:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Let me then throw in the chatbots. Because I can get the chatbot to do my homework. I can get the chatbot to write a paper. So are we going to see students not necessarily being in higher education in a bricks and mortar campus? They've got their chatbots and they do their, their learning there? Or is that taking them out of the knowledge?

• 36:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's the problem. Here's the problem. Okay? So let's go back to when, because I'm old enough to remember when the four-function calculator dropped in price from $200 to $30. Okay, that happened relatively quickly. Like within like a year and a half or two years. Over that time, the big question was, should we allow calculators in the classroom? And the answer was yes, because there are some things you're learning that were not as important as other things, and some of them is just drudgery work. Okay, like long division.

• 37:04Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 37:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does anyone know how to do long division anymore? Like, when are you gonna be somewhere where you need to do long division? And you won't have access to a calculator? That's not gonna, you're not gonna be in caveman, you gotta start a fire. It's, well, I need long division and no one taught me.

• 37:20Chuck Nice?

  That fire didn't start because you didn't carry the two.

• 37:27Chuck Nice?

  The hell is your dumbass problem? Now we're all gonna freeze to death.

• 37:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it didn't carry the two. So there were, there's a place for that. And before calculators, we had slide rules. Was slide rules cheating? No, it was just another way to get to an answer. Uh, but you had to know your steps.

• 37:47Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To get to the answer, because garbage in equals garbage out. So here's the problem with the chat box, ChatGPT, et cetera.

• 37:56Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 37:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is revealing to us that the school system values grades more than students value learning.

• 38:06Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And as long as that is true, everyone at all times will cheat on all exams.

• 38:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To get a grade. But if the system instead were, who is learning?

• 38:19Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 38:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nobody would use the chat box, only just to help themselves to learn more, rather than to, as a substitute for their own ability to write or to know, because they themselves would want to learn, because the curiosity would be built in. And so until the day that happens, then teachers need to give oral, oral exams. So we need a higher student to teach your ratio to make that happen. I grew up in public school, thirty two, thirty four kids per class. Private schools are what, between ten and fifteen?

• 38:52Chuck Nice?

  Fifteen, tops.

• 38:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, tops. So that's the kind of ratio you need to give everyone an oral exam.

• 39:00Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and, and they get a, and they get two teachers assistants, by the way.

• 39:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 39:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's like you have the teacher and then you have like Ms. Betty and you have, you know, Ms. Judy that helped the teacher. And, and there's only thirteen kids in the damn class.

• 39:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So those that those are my three bits of advice there.

• 39:23Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 39:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Four, when you include my comment about using AI to do your term paper.

• 39:28Chuck Nice?

  I say if you really wanna learn Chinese and. Careful where you go. Learn Chinese and get ready to work for him cuz.

• 39:43Chuck Nice?

  Just saying.

• 39:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I time for only a couple more questions. So what you got now?

• 39:50Chuck Nice?

  This is Frank's burning question.

• 39:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he's. That sounds fresh.

• 39:53Chuck Nice?

  He's our editor Frank.

• 39:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 39:55Chuck Nice?

  And and Frank says, help me, I am on fire.

• 40:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know if he smokes cigarettes? I don't know if he smokes.

• 40:07Chuck Nice?

  He better.

• 40:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Otherwise, your imitations don't work.

• 40:11Chuck Nice?

  That's right. Okay, he says, hey, Frank here, I might be editing this video right now.

• 40:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:19Chuck Nice?

  It looks to me like this office is a vault to the universe, talking about your office. Could you grab your very favorite item and describe it to us ASMR style?

• 40:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 40:35Chuck Nice?

  Look at that. Mm hmm.

• 40:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But there's so many.

• 40:38Chuck Nice?

  I mean, there's so much crap in your office.

• 40:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 40:42Chuck Nice?

  Jesus Christ, I swear to God, it looks like Sanford and Son went to the universe.

• 40:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sanford and.

• 40:52Chuck Nice?

  The cosmic Sanford and Son.

• 40:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That means you're calling all my stuff junk.

• 40:59Chuck Nice?

  Well, it's not junk, that's for sure. But I mean, some of it is junk, but it all has it all has sentimental and personal value. Some of it has actual monetary value, too. Some of it is, I don't want to put it out there, but some of that stuff in there don't, thank God they're security cuz you know, some of the stuff is.

• 41:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll get something simple. Let's keep it simple. Okay?

• 41:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 41:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right here, hang on. Okay. Oh, ASMR style.

• 41:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, many years ago,

• 41:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the Planetary Society caught notice of me. They, cofounded by Carl Sagan, have a mission to promote the public's understanding and appreciation of space exploration, especially that of the planets. I was invited to join the board of the Planetary Society. That's when I met Bill Nye. He was a member of the board. That's where I met Anne Druyan. Anne is the widow of Carl Sagan, who founded the Planetary Society. Well, after a couple of years of that,

• 42:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the idea came up. Should Anne Druyan, who owns the rights to Cosmos, resurrect the series? She mentioned it. I said, "I'd be delighted to help. I have modern insights to get a next version." She said, "Have you thought about being host?" And I said, "No, I don't want to be a TV star." She said, "But you may be able to do this uniquely in the memory of Carl." So I said, "Okay." So I agreed to do Cosmos.

• 42:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then, who was going to fund it? We went to PBS, and they said, "We want to put in our own writers." And we said, "No, we got writers. No." And so it didn't land on PBS. No, it didn't. Then Seth MacFarlane took interest in this, because he's a science geek. You will know if you watch any episode of Family Guy. He's had like the whole cast of Star Trek, and he's got time machines and weather machines and all. Okay, so Seth MacFarlane says, "Why not take it to Fox?" To Fox. And we took it to Fox, and Fox said, "We'll bankroll the whole thing."

• 43:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we said, "Okay, what kind of control are you asking for?" And they said, "We don't really know how to make documentaries, so just do whatever you want to do." It was like, "Oh, my God." So... While that's happening, Fox acquires National Geographic. This gives Fox a world distribution for Cosmos to show up on TVs in 40 other countries in ways that would not have happened had it just been Fox, or definitely had it only been PBS.

• 44:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I create a relationship with National Geographic. Then Cosmos ends, and National Geographic says, "Neil, is there anything else we could do together?" And I said, "Well, I got this podcast called StarTalk, and they said, 'Let's put that on TV.'" And I said, "Whoa, you mean like a talk show on TV?" They said, "Yeah." So we put StarTalk as the very first late-night television, science-based talk show. And it was nominated for an Emmy four times, four times.

• 45:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, why am I saying all this? Because right here in my hand is a StarTalk mug created by National Geographic. It's a huge beer mug. I think it holds a pint. It's a beer mug that has StarTalk on it and National Geographic that could have only come about because it went to Fox after Fox acquired National Geographic, which could have only come about because Seth MacFarlane's worked for Fox, which could have only come about because I became host of Cosmos, because I was on the board of the Planetary Society.

• 45:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is this keepsake right here. This is not a metal stein, it's a glass mug.

• 45:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gary, I think it holds a full pint. That's what you guys do in the UK, right?

• 46:00Gary O'Reilly?

  That's right, yeah. Might even be called a tankard.

• 46:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh. So this stares at me on the shelf every day. Packed with decades of memories that are the origin of its existence. There it is.

• 46:22Chuck Nice?

  Like I told you Frank, some of this stuff is junk, so...

• 46:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you say?

• 46:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright Gary, what are burning questions? How's my ointment doing?

• 46:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Um, are you sitting comfortably?

• 46:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Then I shall begin. Uh, right.

• 47:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go.

• 47:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Dr. Tyson, how do you personally position yourself in relation to...

• 47:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, who's this from?

• 47:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Sorry, this is from Zhao, one of our editors.

• 47:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of our editors, excellent.

• 47:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. How do you personally position yourself in relation to religion? Would you describe yourself as an atheist, or agnostic, or something else? And depending on that position, how do you approach the question of death? Even if one is not religious, do you consider it possible that something metaphysical might exist beyond the physical universe? Or does science suggest that death is simply the cessation of existence? What happens to the complex thoughts, memories, and emotions a person developed through their life, throughout their life? I ask this from the perspective of someone who was strongly atheist, atheistic, and scientifically-minded, now facing an incurable illness.

• 47:50Gary O'Reilly?

  My father is suffering, and trying to convince myself that perhaps there is something beyond. In light of this situation, how would you approach the question yourself? Or what would be the best intellectually honest way to even consider, from a scientific standpoint, the possibility that something metaphysical might exist? That's a long question, but I think it's a, it's an interesting one.

• 48:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Well Zhao, thanks for bringing us down.

• 48:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know. God damn Zhao. Uh, okay.

• 48:20Chuck Nice?

  A couple of things. Yeah.

• 48:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I recently learned... That Stephen Colbert, who is himself religious, he's a devout Catholic.

• 48:27Chuck Nice?

  Devout Catholic, yeah.

• 48:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, that he calls people who say that they're agnostic as having no balls.

• 48:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is an atheist without balls, okay?

• 48:39Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 48:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, I would say is an atheist without gonads, because they're not, they're afraid to commit one way or another.

• 48:47Chuck Nice?

  I disagree with that. I think a lot of agnostic people um did believe in God and then realize there's not a lot there to hold on to, but they they still want to hold on to it.

• 49:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He just wants you to commit.

• 49:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, he wants you to go one way or the other. Gotcha.

• 49:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So I I I'm a different kind of agnostic.

• 49:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Based on what I've seen and what I've read. I call myself an agnostic only because the definitions of words are how people use them. Unlike what we normally think of as a dictionary defining a word, a dictionary describes a word as it has come into use. Okay, so if you look at leading atheists of the day, Richard Dawkins, who's been on the show several times, you look at uh um Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, now deceased, these are leading atheists who each had atheistic books that they've written.

• 49:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you look at their behavior, there's a lot of their behavior that does not overlap with my behavior. For example, I will defend the use of AD and BC in reckoning years.

• 50:03Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For uh BC is before Christ, AD is Anodamini, Latin in the year of our Lord. I will defend the use of that because the Catholic Church put the Jesuit priest on the case to figure out how to fix the calendar that was broken. And it out of that came the Gregorian calendar, which all the civilized world uses. So I give props to where it's due. Whereas, ardent atheists strip that from the calendar reckoning and use.

• 50:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  CE, Common Era, and BCE, Before the Common Era. Who are they fooling? Yeah, they're not feeling it. Okay, so this is a, this is a cleansing of the communication channels just to put distance between them and anything religious. That's not me, okay? My single favorite Broadway musical is Jesus Christ Superstar. My single favorite choral work is Box Mass in B Minor, with Handel's Messiah a distant second, but it's still second, okay? How dare you?

• 51:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Handel's Messiah is actually written in English. Yes. Yeah, was it the King James Bible? But it was, anyhow, I am not ardent against people who have strong or even mild religious faith. Not up in their face debating them this. Whereas all these other folks I just listed have debated devout religious people in their lives. That's not me. Therefore, I don't want to say I'm an atheist if by saying so you think I'm going to be like that. I need some other word that's softer than that because I personally am softer than that.

• 51:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And my best evidence for this was I had a friend of mine go up on the space shuttle and I, on my Facebook page, I said, "Godspeed." My friend's name and STS, I forgot which, you know, STS is how they numbered the space shuttle missions. And I said, "Godspeed, space shuttle." People in the comment thread said, "Godspeed. I thought you were an atheist." Complaining that I used that word. How dare you use that? Exactly. These were atheists trying to claim me. You have blasphemed your no one.

• 52:39Chuck Nice?

  Damn it, you blasphemed nothing.

• 52:43Chuck Nice?

  This is so frustrating.

• 52:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You heretic of no idea. So, so that was very telling to me. That there's certain behavioral characteristics that are expected. And to the extent that I do not fulfill that, I will not count myself on the, among the ranks of atheist. Because it's the behavior of the leading atheists that are defining people's understanding of the word today.

• 53:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 53:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why I'm agnostic, okay? And the only reason why. Otherwise, there'd be no question here, okay? All right. Now, how do I deal with death? As I get older, I'm thinking more and more about that. And the last chapter of my book, Starry Messenger, Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization. You know what I'm gonna do?

• 53:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna read you those last two paragraphs.

• 53:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 53:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then that'll give you all the wisdom and insight you need to take to your father. Speaking directly to Zhao. So I've thought long and hard about death. And, yeah, I'd lean towards the scientific sense of death where your state of non-existence in death is not fundamentally different from your state of non-existence before you were born. Think about that. Before you were born, you weren't saying, where am I? How come I'm not anywhere? You just had no existence.

• 54:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And my confidence in a non-existence in death comes from people who've had mini-strokes. And with mini-strokes, different parts of your intellectual functioning go away, bit by bit. Your ability to recognize other people, to know where you are, to remember to eat, to, to, to, to speak. Do you remember have short-term memory, long-term memory? And these are neuro-synaptic failures of the brain.

• 54:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in death, where there is no neurosynaptic activity at all, to require of death that somehow your brain is restored into some newly functioning whole, for me, as a scientist, is unrealistic. But that doesn't alter other thoughts that I have. For example, we are made, not figuratively, but literally, of stardust. We are of the stars. We are the same ingredients the stars are made of. Our ingredients came from the stars. So it's not just that we are alive in the universe. The universe is alive within us.

• 55:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's a gift of 20th-century astrophysics to civilization that borders on the spiritual. Okay, so now, in death, you've got pretty much two choices in modern society. You can be buried, that's my choice, so that the energy content of my body, which is still there when you die, you have no neurosynaptic thoughts, but your molecules were built up from your lifetime of eating and exercising and the building of your organs and your muscles and other tissue. In death, those molecules still contain energy. If I'm buried and I decompose, all that energy gets absorbed by microbes, by flora

• 56:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and fauna, dining upon my body, the way I have dined upon flora and fauna my whole life. In that way, giving back to the earth what I had taken, or literally borrowed, over my life. If you're cremated, the energy content of those molecules, it doesn't go away, it gets transferred to heat. This is what heats the air column over the crematorium. That then radiates infrared energy, that was once the energy content of the molecules of your body, radiates it out into space, moving at the speed of light.

• 57:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if after someone has been cremated, you can keep a timeline. Where has their radiant energy reached by now? If they died four years ago, if they were cremated four years ago, they would have reached the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri. Twenty years ago, you can look at a map and see where that has touched. So that in a way, you're still a part of the universe. You're still in the universe, just in a different form. In order to presume you are fully alive and functioning, that requires religion, which is strongly based on belief systems rather than on anything science would tell you about it. I'd like to end, Zhao, with a reading

• 57:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  from the last several paragraphs of a book I published a couple of years ago, Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization. I'll be reading from the last chapter titled "Life and Death." Do you know, do you really know how precious life is? The total number of people who have ever been born is about 100 billion. Yet the genetic code that generates viable versions of us is capable of at least 10 to the 30th variations. That astronomically huge number is a 1 followed by 30 zeros,

• 58:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  producing a million trillion trillion possible souls. Each of us, for all practical purposes, is unique in the universe now and forever. Being alive is the time to celebrate being alive, every waking moment. Along the way, why not strive to make a world a better place today than yesterday, simply for the privilege of having lived in it? On my deathbed, I'd be sad to miss the clever inventions and discoveries that arise from our collective human ingenuity, presuming the systems that foster such advances remain intact.

• 59:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what fueled the exponential growth of science and technology in my lifetime.

• 59:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I further wonder whether civilization's arc of social progress will continue with all its fits and starts, and thus reward any time traveler from the oppressed spectrum of humanity who choose to visit the future rather than the past. On the whole, I don't fear death. Instead, I fear a life where I could have accomplished more. An epitaph worthy of a tombstone comes from the 19th century educator Horace Mann. "I beseech you to treasure up in your hearts these, my parting words. Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."

• 1:00:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our primal urge to keep looking up is surely greater than our primal urge to keep killing one another. If so, then human curiosity and wonder, the twin chariots of cosmic discovery, will ensure that starry messages continue to arrive. These insights compel us for our short time on Earth to become better shepherds of our own civilization. Yes, life is better than death, but life is also better than having never been born. Each of us is alive against stupendous odds. We won the lottery only once.

• 1:00:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We get to invoke our faculties of reason to figure out how the world works, but we also get to smell the flowers. We get to bask in divine sunsets and sunrises and gaze deeply into the night skies they cradle. We get to live and ultimately die in this glorious universe.

• 1:01:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Zhao, your father needs you now.

• 1:01:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He, whatever are his ailments. He not alone in people whose lives have been hit by disease, ailments, accidents, war, pestilence. Regardless, we are the lucky ones because we got to be born at all. So I spent a lot of time wondering if I had never been born. You have to be born in order to then die. So the birth is a privilege and so is the death. Because that's the package of life that we're handed. And everybody else in that 10th to the 30th variations of the human genome

• 1:02:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  will never know either end of that celebration of this universe. And that is a cosmic perspective. Gary, Chuck. I love these, hearing from the, from all the folks. And I'm sure they love hearing from you. Who are in the StarTalk family.

• 1:02:29Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A pretty cool group. Our fanbase gets to see that our people got curiosity too, right?

• 1:02:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're not alone.

• 1:02:37Chuck Nice?

  And that a lot of, there's a lot of people behind the scenes making StarTalk happen.

• 1:02:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep. Right, exactly. All right, I think that's a wrap. Gary? Yes. Call it a day. Thanks for being here. No, pleasure Neil, always a pleasure. For all that, and Chuck, we love you especially in that, that, that comedy special.

• 1:02:55Chuck Nice?

  Oh, you mean just smart enough that you can actually watch on the StarTalk main channel? That's...

• 1:03:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that, that?

• 1:03:01Chuck Nice?

  That one? That comedy special? I forgot about that, but now that you mention it, yeah.

• 1:03:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This has been another installment of StarTalk Special Edition. This is the burning questions from the StarTalk family of producers and editors coming in. And I delighted in that. I like being the ointment for the burning sensation that all of you feel.

• 1:03:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apply twice a day. As good as new by tomorrow. All right, until we meet again, as always, keep looking up.