Science and Social Justice with David Crosby

Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about science fiction, folk music and social justice with rock and roll legend and science geek David Crosby. Chuck Nice co-hosts, Thomas Sugrue provides historical context for the 1960s, and Bill Nye praises “People Power” and “The Pill.”

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to the Hall of the Universe. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And tonight, we're featuring my interview with 1960's icon, David Crosby. And in that conversation, we talk about folk songs and politics and the universe itself. And I would learn when he came to my office during my interview, that he is as passionate about science as he is about communicating his passion for music. So, let's do this.

• 0:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got with me Chuck Nice. Hey Neil. Welcome back! Oh, it's a pleasure to be here. A day is not complete without a Chuck Nice in it.

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wish I believed you.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we have as my special guest for this evening, Dr. Thomas Sugrue, and you're an expert on everything 1960's. I think so. That's what people say about you. That's why we have you here.

• 1:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you're the right person in the right time for the right conversation, because my interview with folk singer and social justice activist, David Crosby, is tonight. In the 60's, he was part of the band The Byrds. B-Y-R-D-S, The Byrds. Right, B-Y. B-Y. And after that, he became the C in CSN Crosby, Stills & Nash. And he was active in the 1960's, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, the whole wave of political and cultural change that swept the nation of that time. David Crosby was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, twice. For The Byrds and once for his work with Crosby, Stills & Nash. He's also got some serious street geek cred. And you know how I learned this initially?

• 2:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was giving a talk in another city, in their theater, a talk on the universe. It happened to be the same theater that he appeared the night before with Crosby, Stills & Nash. Unbeknownst to me, I enter the hotel room and there's a basket of fruit, as there often is by the hotel concierge. Cause you roll like that. Cause, cause that's how I roll. And there's always a little note in the fruit. Why should I rush to open it? It's just from the hotel manager saying, "Welcome, thank you, call us if you need any help." So hours go by and I say, "Let me finally eat some fruit and open the damn letter." I open the letter, it is from David Crosby.

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he said, "I just saw them change the marquee, it's got your name on it. I've been a big fan. Uh, if you're still around until 3 o'clock, I'm in the suite down the hall, come by, we'll talk, we'll take a walk. I got a thousand questions for you." It was 3:15 when I opened the letter. Ah. He, I went down there and like the maid is in there cleaning the thing, nobody was there. So that's how I knew that we gotta connect at some point and, and we ultimately did. And so, I had to ask him, "Where did his passion for science get started? And how did he discover this inner geek within him? Let's check it out."

• 3:31Speaker 01

  The way it happened, man, was I was not a popular kid. I was a chubby little, uh, kid and a librarian said, "Here, try one of these." The kids seemed to like these.

• 3:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how old were you?

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm early teens. Had me a Robert Heinlein book.

• 3:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A great science fiction author.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Great science fiction author, great thinker. First guy I, I ever read to describe a cellphone or a nuclear power plant or a rolling road or a number of other things. Brilliant imagination, great guy. Uh, and it took me by storm. Right from the first one.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This was an epiphanic moment for you.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I read everything, everything he's ever written, I've read. But that led to Arthur C. Clarke and, and, you know, Asimov and early, you know, big guys.

• 4:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now, now, let me ask, not to get in your business, cause I'm, I, I'm a consumer, not a, a- You come with it, babe.

• 4:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let me, if you were sort of a short, dumpy kid and then you find science fiction, this doesn't necessarily play into your social life anymore than you had before you started that, correct? So, so...

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but that was okay?

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. I wasn't, I hadn't really discovered the other half of the human race yet.

• 4:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. The reason why I bring that up is, today, via the internet, geeks can find one another.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  This is true.

• 5:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, an entire social universe has risen up.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  They can mate.

• 5:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They can mate. They have little baby geeks.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  This is a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful, it was much more difficult before.

• 5:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's true.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  But, it is true now that we can breed more geeks, yes!

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I guess, you're right. It was difficult because non-geeks would, would never breed with geeks. And geeks didn't know, you were like the lone geek in a class.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You couldn't, you couldn't, uh, gather. And, you know, maybe there was like the chess club or something, but, um, yeah, the rise of the geek.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you know, I, I joke, wasn't that line in the Bible? Uh, I think it was mistranslated, it's, "And the geek shall inherit the earth."

• 5:49Speaker 01

  It was mistranslated. Because in the long run, intelligence is a survival factor. And in the long run, intelligence is how we evolve the race further. And it is much to be treasured. And with the current crop of, you know, people who, for whom science is inconvenient, you know, to their quarterly report, or they have a...

• 6:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or their philosophies, yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're, that's a good word. Nice euphemism. Uh, their philosophies contradict that, you know? No, really, it was made 6,000 years ago, really. No, he wrote dinosaurs, really.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  You know, it's really crucial that we do encourage it more. And it is great that they can communicate, that people with intelligence and an education can communicate with each other, and that they feel they have a sphere to exist in, and that they have value, that they feel, you know, that there is a life for them, and that they get recognized for achievement in that arena.

• 6:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what I think started it all was the rise of the people who were computer experts, and then you get people like Bill Gates, like a patron saint of the geekosphere. And if the richest person in the world is a geek, that something's going on there. And so I think the football quarterback stopped slamming geeks into the lockers at about the time the football quarterback recognized that they needed the geek to fix his computer.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. Why isn't this thing working? And the geek walks over and goes, and gives you this look.

• 7:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he walks off. So it's like, wait, hey, let me protect this geek.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  The quarterback is going, wow, what are you doing?

• 7:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, we're stereotyping, you know, dumb athletes. I was a varsity athlete in high school and college, but we're just making the point.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  I don't think you're fair. A, big, B, good-looking, C, smart, all at the same time. That's really not okay.

• 7:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't, but I don't think, I don't, I, no.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  You don't see yourself there.

• 7:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I just, I'm just.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Because you know what a buzzword you really are. That's me. Oh, Mr. Croce, you're just legendary. I know that I put my pants on the same way you do, one leg at a time, and, you know, we have different view of ourselves.

• 8:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I have a special machine that does it.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  No, it's not healthy for us to look at ourselves the way other people do, man. The entire rest of the world looks at you as the voice of science and reason. And I think that's good. You're a good spokesman. You do a good job. I don't think that you look at yourself the same way they do, because I know I don't look at the people.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look at yourself the way others do.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Because it's not healthy.

• 8:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, yeah, I agree. I agree with that. First of all, that's not why I don't. I just, I'm still feel like I'm a kid inside. And I have just some enthusiasm and just for life and curiosity and discovery.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  I do too. I'm older than dirt. Seriously.

• 9:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We need to carbon date you to verify that statement.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Absolutely, man. Carbon dating, what an inconvenient thing that is. Yeah. No, 6,000 years ago, really.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's dirt and there's David Crosby.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  And there's... Yeah.

• 9:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you're a little older than... So I'm pleased to discover that there's an inner geek. And I look for that in everybody. Not that I judge you based on it, but I like knowing if it's there.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  It is there.

• 9:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what it tells me is that many more people have a little bit of inner geek than has ever been admitted before.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  I think that's true. You know, I mean, at the basic level, people have curiosity. You know, intelligent people have curiosity about it. If they have any education, then they know that science is fascinating. If they have a fair amount of education and some reading, they know that it's terrifically fascinating. And then, you know, the geek comes alive.

• 9:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gets ignited with it.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Gets ignited. But the science fiction was so expansive and it was so unlimited. There was no... Anything could happen, you know, and that was just rich to me. And I lusted after it. And it led, you know, to better and better writers and better and better experience with it. You know, admittedly, you know, it didn't hurt to smoke a drink and watch Star Wars.

• 10:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, that never hurts. Right off the bat, we're like, there it is. I know, I'm hot just looking at him.

• 10:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, Tom, you know, sci-fi, particularly in the 60s, had some veiled politics and culture and philosophy in it, including some statements regarding active stories, contemporary, current events of the day, including civil rights. Especially, you know, of course, what comes to mind is Star Trek. In your studies, do you think much about the force that science fiction played in that era on anybody?

• 11:03Speaker 02

  It was a really important force. As he said, anything could happen. It gave people a sense of almost unlimited possibility.

• 11:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the storytelling?

• 11:11Speaker 02

  The storytelling did. It was envisioning a different society than the one we were living in now. It was a critique of what was going on, but it was also an imagination of what we could be if we wanted to be. And there's a profound sense of optimism in that work. But it was also subversive in all sorts of subtle ways. During the 1950s, when there was prosecution of folks for being reds, for being suspected communists, many of the, yeah, many of McCarthyism, many of the science fiction writers in the pulp magazines became havens for folks to talk about things like class struggle, things like, but disguised as inter-.

• 11:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they could do that and not show up in the McCarthy hearings?

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 11:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that was just science fiction?

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, and who reads science fiction? Just kids, who cares? It's minor stuff, it's in pulp newsprint.

• 11:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  It's not permanent.

• 12:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. That is brilliant. And subversive. I think that's really cool. Okay, so we established that there's an entire geek side to David Crosby that I never knew until that moment. So I wanted to know, was he able, did he care? Did he want to fold this geekitude into his music? So I asked, what, has his passion for science inspired him as a songwriter? Let's check it out.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  I wrote a song with Paul Cantor from Jefferson Airplane called "Have You Seen The Stars Tonight?" You know, you want to talk about it and you want to say, "I want to go out to the stars. It's humanity's destiny." But in order to communicate it, I looked at it through the eyes of somebody who was there on a ship, saying, "Hey, do you want to go up on A-deck and look at the stars with me tonight?" You know, and talk about their feelings from a human point of view. It's a tough thing. You want to look at, you know, the world, the universe out there through someone's eyes, who's feeling something about it, I think.

• 13:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Otherwise, you're not communicating with your...

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Otherwise, it's tougher to communicate, yeah.

• 13:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and so you've done this a few times, why not more? Or is it, do you just have a whole other secret life that you lead?

• 13:13Speaker 01

  It's not an easy thing to do. It's easier to write about love, because we all experience it, because it has such a wide spectra of, you know, things...

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I've never thought about it, but that is now so obvious a thing, now that you say it that way.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 13:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's because we all feel it or want to feel it.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That it always shows up in these songwriters'...

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Whereas the wonder for the universe happens to a person only when they get out on a clear night in a place like the high desert or out on the ocean, where I've seen it. And they look up and all of a sudden, it comes on them, and they realize, "Wait a minute, I'm standing on the side of a tiny mud ball."

• 13:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Starstruck.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  And they're starstruck. And there's a reason there's a name for it. Because at that moment, they're like me and you. And that's the moment I want to try to communicate. And I use that image when I can, but it's a much rarer feeling.

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. So what I learned from this is that if we get everybody feeling science, then all the love songs will be about science going forward. Because it's what people think about more often. And he's right, people think about love, or being in love, or falling out of love, or, you know, more than they might think about the universe, but...

• 14:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I can't wait to hear the songs about the black hole.

• 14:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just wondering if there's a lot of low hanging cosmic fruit to be sung about.

• 14:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you agree? Is it just need to get into pop culture and people start writing about it?

• 14:46Speaker 02

  He was writing about the stars, sure, but he was also very much shaped by his encounter with another plane of consciousness in the 1960s. I mean, "Eight Miles High", which was one of the Byrds' real big hits. It's one of the introductory songs to psychedelia, right? On one level, it's a song about looking down on the world from a transatlantic jet flying from Britain to the United States, or vice versa. But he's also writing about another kind of eight miles high.

• 15:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  He is flying high. And a lot of radio stations banned it at the time.

• 15:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, these are folk singers being subversive?

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Definitely. His song "Ohio", which was done after the Kent State shootings in 1970, takes on Richard Nixon, it takes on the National Guard. It's pointed, it's political. It was about what was happening in the here and now.

• 15:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, whether or not people write about the universe or society, it's clear that the folk movement of the 60s was bringing general awareness to the turbulence of the 60s. Turbulence that resonates to this day. The anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, pollution. And what I wonder about is how come we don't hear much of that kind of folk activism today?

• 15:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That will be next, in my interview with David Crosby on StarTalk.

• 16:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back. StarTalk, Hall of the Universe, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. As you know, we're featuring my interview with folk singer, songwriter, card-carrying, science geek, David Crosby. And, you know, when he wrote songs in the 60s, he took on the most heated issues of the day and made people pay attention. You know what I wondered? Today, with Facebook and Twitter and all of these other distractions, I just wondered if there's a place for folk music today? Do you need music to give you those messages if people are barraging you with social media? I just wondered what his

• 16:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  take was on this, given the long baseline of time over which he's observed it. Check it out.

• 17:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there low-hanging fruit in the folk-song storytelling universe to address the topics that face us today?

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Not as much.

• 17:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why not? Shouldn't there be?

• 17:14Speaker 01

  I thought you might ask me that question.

• 17:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shouldn't there be? Couldn't there be?

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are young people who are inspired to do that. They see the world, and they look at it, and they look at our Congress being bought, and they look at our air being polluted and our water.

• 17:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't hear songs about it.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  I... You have to listen to me now.

• 17:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh!

• 17:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Throwing down.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Got you!

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Jack's double. You know, I do. But I'm not the only one. There's a lot of us still writing anti-war and pro-civil rights and pro-women's rights and pro-equality and anti-violence and pro-human race grow up. There is... It is there. It's not there as much. Now, at the time that we were being so active anti-war, we had the draft. Big dividing line. All of those kids were facing it right here. That made it...

• 18:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even rich kids?

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Even rich kids. Every kid was facing it right here. Okay? So, that made activists big time. By the million.

• 18:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because today, you can have people who just simply want to enlist and go to war and...

• 18:31Speaker 01

  That's different.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a different...

• 18:32Speaker 01

  That's because, largely because they're economically got the deck stacked against them. It's not because they think war is cool. It's because they need a job and an education, and that's a way to get it.

• 18:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But there's no song that comes to my mind that captures this movement.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  There are.

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a dozen at least.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  They are not like "We Shall Overcome." They are not like... You know, we write the occasional anthem. The occasional "Ohio," the occasional "Teach Your Children," the occasional, you know... Part of our gig is to make you boogie. Part of our gig is to take you on little voyages, express stuff for you. Part of our gig is to be the town crier. "Hey, it's 12 o'clock, Congress is bought, things are bad." That's part of our job.

• 19:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He sees that as his job. So that's putting it right out there on the table. Can you reflect on the role of music in political and social activism in general, but specifically today? Based on what you know from that era? I mean, do you agree with him that it's still happening? What are the forces operating today? I don't see them.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  I'm not sure I see him either, at least not in the way that he does. The musical marketplace today is really fragmented. There's not the same anthems of the movement, anthems of politics that were so central in 1960s.

• 19:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I guess the question is, why?

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Why?

• 19:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unity expert, why?

• 19:54Speaker 02

  I think a lot of it has to do with the market, the way in which now folks sample from all over the place. They pick and choose, they don't listen to a canonical set of singers or music. There's a lot more diversity. Even among the more politicized genres of music, like hip-hop, for example. There's black nationalist hip-hop, there's libertarian hip-hop, there's misogynistic hip-hop.

• 20:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's geek hip-hop.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  I mean, it's fragmented. It doesn't have a single message anymore, in a way that for a moment in the 1960s, the confluence of civil rights and anti-war activism gave that a single powerful, we need to challenge the system message.

• 20:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you agree the fact that the draft kind of forced everyone to have to think about it, even if they didn't want to? Whereas today, you can just kind of turn a blind eye to it?

• 20:38Speaker 02

  It's totally possible to turn a blind eye to it for many people today. The number of folks who've served and died in Iraq in that long war was less than a tenth of the number who died in the Vietnam War. Your brothers, your cousins, your uncles, your nephews were on the line in the Vietnam War because of the draft. They served, or at least they were at risk of being drafted, and they had to think about how to dodge it, or how to keep them going.

• 21:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, you've taught a course for 20 years about the 1960s. Who does that? You do it. Okay, fine. So what made that era sort of more special than others? Or is it more special? Or is it just the nostalgia that you want to have for something at approximately that age?

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's definitely a lot of nostalgia about the 60s. It's a more complicated period than our conventional stories lead us to believe. It's a period, after all, that brought us Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon. But it's also-

• 21:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, we should be so thankful then.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Exactly. But it's also was a moment of a coming together of folks really imbued by the same optimism that you hear in David Crosby, a sense that we can change the world.

• 21:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But consider other parallels. In the 60s of the Civil Rights Movement, the 70s was the Women's Lib, basic modern Lib, Women's Lib Movement. Of course, a century earlier, there were movements then for suffrage and this sort of thing. But now we have the Gay Rights Movement, reaching certain points of maturity in legislation. And so, I still think we have these forces in society today. And I wonder if it's just gone out of style to write folk songs about it. I just wonder.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  The 60s combined both the idea that music was a vehicle for pleasure, right? It was a way to end the night in a way that you want to end the night. It was a way to seduce. It was a way to party. It was a way to have a good time. Because we're talking about-

• 22:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The 60s, yeah, okay, right, right.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  So let's do it.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  But it was also a way to build a collective consciousness, right? It was a way to build a vision for what you-

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A shared concern.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  A shared vision of where of an alternative. And that's what you hear in David Crosby, even looking out, I think, probably too optimistically at what's going on today.

• 22:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we'll have more of my interview with David Crosby when StarTalk returns.

• 23:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, Dark House. We're featuring my interview with, of course, David Crosby, the 1960s pop folk singer icon. And it's when I learned he's got geek credentials, science geek credentials. And he emerged from the heart of the folk movement in America in the 1960s. And it all happened here in New York. It began here, in Greenwich Village, where you now live.

• 23:41Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 23:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the faculty of New York University.

• 23:43Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 23:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very cool. Of course, the 60s, enormous cultural, social change. The response to the Vietnam War, the campus unrest. Counterculture was the thing, right? That was what was driving the news. But something else was going on in that decade. And guess what I'm gonna say it is?

• 24:05Chuck Nice?

  I hope it's not syphilis.

• 24:10Chuck Nice?

  Because, seriously, there was an outbreak.

• 24:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was gonna say we were going to the moon, but...

• 24:17Chuck Nice?

  Well, it was the sexual revolution.

• 24:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yes, it was a sexual revolution. All of this was going on, and we were going to the moon. So I had to know, given the geekitude that David Crosby of himself, that he was sharing with me, did that have any effect on him? Check it out. Did the fact that we were going to the moon, did that operate on you?

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Tremendously.

• 24:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It did.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  It was my dream, was that we get off of here and go out there. They're out there.

• 24:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's a weird juxtaposition. Vietnam War, Cold War, assassinations, civil rights movement, anti-war, and we're going to the moon. Like, who ordered that?

• 24:55Speaker 01

  That's the good part. You know, see, I've always believed they're out there. You look at the deep-field picture.

• 25:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They, you have to be a little more specific.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Okay. The "they" are out there. If you look at any...

• 25:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They, capital T, they.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  They, capital T, they. If you look at any picture of the sky... But the deep field shot is especially good. Because you think those are all stars, they're galaxies.

• 25:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whole galaxies.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  And every one of them is a billion stars. Now, you gonna tell me, now, there are very few laws I really believe in, but the law of averages? Oh, I do believe in the law of averages. You gonna tell me we're the only time?

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can believe in the law of gravity, too.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  I go for that, and the law of unintended consequences.

• 25:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got that one.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  But you gonna tell me that's the only time life happened, and the only time it made her into sentient life? Not a chance. They're out there, capital T, they are out there. They may not be near here, and they may not know about us, or they might. We might have been quarantined. They might have come by and said, "Oh, primitives, look." We'll just keep everybody away from them for a while, till they grow up.

• 25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 25:56Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that was...

• 26:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think that's leftover from the 60s.

• 26:02Chuck Nice?

  That was very X-Files, if you remember that. They are out there.

• 26:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he was like, intense.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  Really intense. But the 70s was a period when UFO books were on the bestseller list.

• 26:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they were.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Where people were reading about the Bermuda Triangle, and talking about how Easter Island had been, you know, created by extraterrestrials, and there was a lot of that stuff in the air at the time, and he was breathing it in.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you think the moon landing had an impact on this countercultural movement? Or was it conceived as mainstream establishment?

• 26:35Speaker 02

  I'd say it was a little bit of both. I mean, clearly, David Crosby was moved by that. It was a pretty profound moment. It was one of those moments even watched on television.

• 26:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's as event TV as it gets.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  That is. That is, and everyone was watching it.

• 26:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I got my notes here. There's "Mr. Spaceman," which was a song sung by the Byrds. It was the third track on their 1966 album, "The Fifth Dimension," which was a sort of a meditation on the existence of extraterrestrials. So they were totally in it. You know, I hear a song, and you don't create the total gestalt of what, where it's coming at, you know, what part of them it's coming out of. But after this interview, it's all wrapped up in it. I mean, it's there, in him.

• 27:15Chuck Nice?

  Yes, and he loves space, that is for sure. Which makes sense, because he just said it was Vietnam, it was social unrest, it was civil rights, and, you know...

• 27:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And aliens.

• 27:28Chuck Nice?

  And now we're getting out of here. Like, that made sense.

• 27:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they're getting out of here, right, right.

• 27:31Chuck Nice?

  Like, we're getting off this planet, we're going to someplace else we can go. That made sense.

• 27:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, when we come back to StarTalk, we will go into our cosmic queries. Part of StarTalk where we will take questions from our fanbase about the search for aliens. When StarTalk continues.

• 27:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk. So featuring my interview with David Crosby, he's a science geek, we got that established. This geekness, if you will, that infused some of his songs. He was deeply moved by going to the moon and he started thinking about aliens. And so are we at this moment for StarTalk Cosmic Queries segment. This is where I get questions sent by fanbase. They're given to my co-host, I have not seen them or heard of them. And if I don't know the answer, I'll just tell you I don't know the answer and we'll go to the next question.

• 28:26Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yes, we will.

• 28:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, who do you have there?

• 28:28Chuck Nice?

  Query one is a question from John McLinn from Livingston, Louisiana. John would like to know this, Neil, if we did find sentient life and we were able to communicate with it,

• 28:42Chuck Nice?

  what would you ask it?

• 28:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's beautiful.

• 28:45Chuck Nice?

  That is very nice of him. He wants to know what you would ask.

• 28:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:48Chuck Nice?

  Intelligent life from another.

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The first thing I do, I would lay out all the science we've discovered and compare it with the science they've discovered. And try to get as much science we have yet to discover as possible. Because in the discoveries of science, history has shown, lie solutions to society's deepest problems. As well as sources of our deepest evils. And so I would ask them, have they evolved their own moral code to accompany the powers that they wield in the science that they've discovered? That's what I'd ask them.

• 29:22Chuck Nice?

  So long story short, what you get for number six?

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Copying off their science exam.

• 29:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a way, just in a way, a little bit. All right, next question.

• 29:40Chuck Nice?

  All right, number two, this next question is from, okay, let's see, this is, uh, this is from David Crosby.

• 29:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 29:50Chuck Nice?

  And in his interview with you, uh,

• 29:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He asked me, he was asking me questions.

• 29:54Chuck Nice?

  Well, he was.

• 29:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You told me you snapped, you clipped the question?

• 29:57Chuck Nice?

  I clipped the question and he was very fired up about it, so let's see what he had to ask.

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 30:03Chuck Nice?

  What the hell?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  What, what, what? I totally don't understand what dark energy or dark matter are.

• 30:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why you like, you sounded angry with me.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Because I got nobody else, man.

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You called my office saying, "What the hell?"

• 30:20Speaker 01

  What the hell is going on with this [BLEEP]? This is messed up.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  It's your job then to be able to know this stuff. And who else I got to ask?

• 30:33Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so Neil, what the hell?

• 30:37Chuck Nice?

  Seriously.

• 30:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 30:39Chuck Nice?

  What is dark matter?

• 30:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I'm happy to answer that question. We have no idea.

• 30:45Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question.

• 30:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We do not know what dark matter is. It's probably misnamed. I know what it is. It's, well, sorry. What it should have been called is dark gravity. There's gravity in the universe. We have no idea what's causing it. If you say dark matter, that implies it's matter, but we don't even know if or is or is not that. But we do know it is gravity with no known source. So it's dark gravity. We can see it's gravity. We don't know anything else about it. We can't see it. We can't taste it. We can't touch it. Our light doesn't interact with it. It doesn't make spectra. We are clueless. Same goes for dark energy. Dark energy, a mysterious pressure in the vacuum of space that's pressing against the fabric of the universe, making it accelerate in its expansion

• 31:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  against the gravitational wishes of the galaxies it contains. We are deeply steeped in this ignorance. You combine dark matter and dark energy? It is 96% of all that drives the universe. And all we really have command of is that remaining 4%. All the known laws of physics, chemistry, biology are in those 4%. Now...

• 31:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Richard Feynman. Richard Feynman noted that the universe is like a cosmic chessboard. That you come upon, yet you do not know the rules of chess. You don't even have the instruction booklet to go with it. You can just observe it passively. So let's do that. You watch two people playing chess. Hmm, you make notes. This piece moves only this way. Oh, the littlest piece sometimes goes two spaces. And other times goes one. I wonder what conditions those are. I don't know yet. I'm just taking data. So the pieces go diagonals. Some stay only on their own color. Eventually, you're groping in the... You figure out the basics.

• 32:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then, the little piece becomes the most powerful piece. Whoa. It's rare, but it happens. Can you understand that based on all you've observed of the game before? No, you can't. It doesn't derive from earlier observations. Yet it happens. And it happens in many games, not all games. So, as we observe the universe, we are trying to figure out

• 33:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the game of nature in the absence of being in possession of a rulebook. Such is our challenge as astrophysicists in this universe.

• 33:20Chuck Nice?

  Man, that was the most fascinating way to say, "I don't know." I have never heard. That was awesome.

• 33:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 33:30Chuck Nice?

  That was pretty intense.

• 33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so he asked this question. But then, then he got, he got on a roll. He got on a roll. And he decided he was going to ask me another question. Okay? He, he just kept going. He has another cosmic query. So, I've just been told, like in my ear, earbud. So, let's go find out what that is.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  If there's four dimensions, up, down, sideways, forward, back, and time.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Why not a fifth, where the rules are different? Why not exactly what they do in Star Trek? Why not a way to pop out of this frame into another frame, exceed 186 and go faster than light, much faster than light, so we can get out there and look around?

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the burning urge of a curious man.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  It truthfully is, man. I want it bad.

• 34:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I hope you lose sleep over those thoughts.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  I do. I do. Absolutely. Please, Mrs. Tyson, please, tell me it's possible.

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In all the ways we have ever experimented, nothing has ever gone faster than light. We are contained within our three dimensions and we're contained. We are contained. If we figure out how to gain access to a higher dimension, that is a whole other cauldron of rules that we would then explore, figure out, codify, and exploit. And those rules will show, in probably most cases, that our previous constraints were only, were very contained.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Our vision was contained. We didn't have enough information yet.

• 35:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here it is. Yes. It can't go faster than light in that little universe that you call your home. But in fabric of space and time, yes. So this is what wormholes are. They're cutting through the fabric of our space and time, traveling great distances in short amount of time, effectively going faster than light. So, yes, it will require a dimensional expansion of our understanding of how this universe is put together.

• 35:47Chuck Nice?

  Oh my God. You guys sit around and talk about a fifth dimension the way I sit around and talk about Kate Upton.

• 35:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Taking you to other places faster than light.

• 36:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me, just quickly, Tom, is there, how common is this level of cosmic curiosity among 60's folk singers?

• 36:12Speaker 02

  I can't generalize from an N of 1, but what I will say is, he's a really interesting guy, for having these big-picture questions.

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, intense and intelligently formulated, and so I was, like I said, bring it on. You know, I was asking you questions all, until now, but why don't you just let loose? And that's what he did. But when StarTalk continues, we're gonna find out how science, literally, saved David Crosby's life. Check it out.

• 36:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Chuck, Tom. We're trying to understand the 60's here, and we've been featuring my interview with David Crosby, and we've been talking about his interest in science, in music, the era of the 60's, but of course, after the 60's, came the 70's. And in the 70's, the culture of folk music began to fade, relative to the 60's, and I asked him about this sort of transition, and what impact it had on him, so let's check it out.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  We got involved in drugs, hard drugs, they killed us.

• 37:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh-huh, 70's.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's when we started losing people, left and right. And then after that, disco.

• 37:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting that hard rock and disco kind of coexisted in the 70's.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  Kinda, but, you know, it was, it was rough. 70's and 80's, very rough time, very, not anywhere near as much creativity and an awful lot of downfall, and we lost a lot of really good people. How good would Jimi Hendrix be playing by now?

• 37:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  How well could Janis Joplin sing by now?

• 38:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  How much could John Belushi make you laugh by now?

• 38:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  We lost a lot of people. Very, very tough stuff. And then I went down the tubes, just like the rest of them, only I didn't die. I don't know why. And then you come to more recent times...

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You say that so casually.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Well, you know, what are you gonna do?

• 38:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't die.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Well, they saved me. Science saved me. If it had happened to me 10 years earlier, I'd be dead right now. But they were able to transplant somebody else's liver into me. And, uh, bang, I'm alive. And that's science winning. I like science. Science is good stuff.

• 38:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a matter of fact, dude. So, so I was wondering, because earlier, he was talking about the fifth, he wanted to go into other dimensions. And... Yeah, I think I already went to the fifth dimension. And the seventh, and the seventh, and the eighth. Yeah, other dimensions. Chemistry can help you get there, I think. That this was a common way to get there in the 60s, is that...

• 39:09Speaker 02

  It was a common way to get there, but it came at a high cost, as he tells us. You know, a lot of lives were wrecked, uh, because it often turned into serious addiction. And he struggled with it mightily in the 70s and 80s.

• 39:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, but he's still, today, he's, I mean, he's thankful in a very respectful way. And, uh, he's still kicking, he's still writing music. And, uh, some things get better with time. Wine certainly does. Uh, it can get better with time. I think people can get better with time if you make it a point to get better.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't just sit there on the couch and expect you to get, become a refined product as you age, right?

• 39:51Speaker 02

  I have found that out.

• 39:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I asked David, um, is he getting better over the years? Can he, how is he staying creative? What's his secret? So, let's find out.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  I have noticed, and this is a fascinating thing, that recently, a number of people in their late 60s or 70s have done some of the best work of their lives. James Taylor just put out one of the best albums of his life.

• 40:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, late-period creativity.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  There is late-period creativity. It is happening.

• 40:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It doesn't fit the romanticized stereotype of the young genius.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Our culture is aimed more at surface rather than substance. It has been for a long time. And that leads you to aggrandize young people who are good-looking and beautiful and attractive. And when they are also talented, they're sort of archetypes. And that's where the focus goes, because it's sellable.

• 40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's a steady train of them coming up in every generation.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Well, a lot of that's manufactured. A lot of them are just pop tarts. You know.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  But there are people...

• 41:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pop tarts.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are people who come along who are immensely talented and are carrying that torch of intelligent, good art.

• 41:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Tom, is there a connection between sort of intelligent, good art, using his phrase, and social and political activism?

• 41:23Speaker 02

  I think a good artist allows you to find something that you didn't know that you had or that you were interested in, right? They bring it out of you. They touch something that might be latent, but it's not right there out on the surface.

• 41:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that. Because if it's not there at all, it falls on deaf ears. But if there's some latency function, then it's a, hey, I feel something in me aroused and uplifted, enlightened, and then it's a call to action at that point. All this talk of latency and arousal has really sparked something in me.

• 41:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming up, we will find Bill Nye somewhere in the city and see what his take is on the times as they were a-changing in the 1960s on StarTalk.

• 42:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk. And featuring my interview with David Crosby. We've been talking about social change, and music, and being a geek, folk singer, and no matter what we're talking about, we always gotta catch up with my friend, Bill Nye, the Science Guy. And he's always somewhere in the city, offering his take on things. Let's see where this dispatch is coming from today.

• 42:47Bill Nye?

  When people talk about the good old days, they usually mean a simpler time. Let me tell you something, there was nothing simple about the 1960s. The Ruski's had us spending 5% of the federal budget to beat them to the moon as part of the Cold War. And then there was a very hot war going on in Vietnam. That's another war that didn't work out so well. Meanwhile, the British were invading. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and, uh, Hammond's Homies. And Fifth Avenue used to run right under this arch, right through here. But the local citizens got together and redrew the map. It was people power. And ever since then, this park has been a place where people come to celebrate our evolving culture.

• 43:32Bill Nye?

  There's a lot going on back then. There was the Futuristic World's Fair. People wore bell bottoms to march for peace and love in this very park. The Stonewall Resistance was right over there. And now, 46 years later, people say, "Well, you can marry anybody you want. It's no big deal." But the sexual revolution was a big deal, and the pill was spelled with a capital P. And that revolution's still going on. If you're ever here, by the way, greet everybody. Say hi to your fellow citizens, the ones you love. And I say if you can't be with the one you love, well, love the one you're with. Right on. Back to you, Neil.

• 44:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of the famous lines from the Crosby, Stills, Nash.

• 44:15Chuck Nice?

  One you with.

• 44:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 44:17Chuck Nice?

  And I'm alone.

• 44:20Chuck Nice?

  Chuck.

• 44:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had to ask David Crosby in my interview, uh, where did he think humanity was headed next? Because I knew he'd have some thought on the matter. However.

• 44:33Chuck Nice?

  Fifth dimensional.

• 44:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fifth dimensional.

• 44:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's pick up the last bit of my interview with David Crosby, with his reflections on the future.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  In order to function positively in the world, you cannot let war, death, disease, ignorance, plague, and all the other things defeat you right at the opening. As soon as you wake up in the morning, you got a choice. You can either look at that and say, "Ah, [bleep], I give up." Or you can say, "Okay, I get it, but I'm gonna believe that we can't. I'm gonna believe that intelligence can triumph. I'm gonna believe that kindness can surpass, you know, anger. I'm gonna believe that the human race can evolve into something that I would be proud of and go out there."

• 45:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. So that's profoundly hopeful.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  You know, for a long time, I've been saying, and I have felt deeply, that humankind's destiny is out there. That we need to stop beating each other over the head with rocks. Grow up.

• 45:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or any other implement.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  And, and other implements. And grow up. Build some stuff and go out and see who's in the neighborhood. And try and learn.

• 45:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lessons for life.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think that is our destiny. If we don't kill ourselves, that's what we should be doing and hopefully will be doing.

• 45:52Chuck Nice?

  Awesome.

• 45:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, that's, you know what that is? That's 60's hopefulness, but modernized to, uh, 21st century parlance.

• 46:05Chuck Nice?

  I love that he keeps saying, "Grow up." It's evolution. And, and, yes, it is. I, I just love he keeps saying, "Grow up." I think that that is really the greatest, um, challenge facing mankind, is that we are adolescent in the way that we, uh, look at and treat one another. It's, we, you know, I have a teenage daughter. It really is like living with somebody who is, uh, possessed by the devil. And, um...

• 46:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I was a, given the age that I am, I was a observer of the 60s, a participant in the 70s, and I actually owned Disco Pants, by the way. Yeah, yeah. And, one of the things, and I've tweeted about this, this decade, the 2010s, I did not want the 2010s to be all about celebrating the 50th anniversary of stuff that happened in the 1960s. Because I'm pretty sure that in the 1960s, nobody was reminiscing about the 1910s. No black people were, that's for sure.

• 47:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There weren't these, "Oh, now let's celebrate," you know. I don't think that was happening. We were inventing tomorrow, in the 1960s, with all the turbulence. There was such innocent, forward vision, that I miss that. I miss, I miss the vision, not the rest of the turbulence, I miss the vision statement. Am I biased to say that going to the moon was fueling that vision statement? I don't think so. And so I ask, what is the great grand vision statement, in this decade, that will fuel

• 47:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  another generation, the next level of cosmic perspective that we so desperately need? And I don't see that happening. And so, I don't want this decade to be only about reminiscing events of the 60s. What I want is people to take this decade by the horns, and say, "It is our decade, we will make the memories of the future within it." You've been watching StarTalk. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and as always, I bid you to keep looking.