Season 8 Time Capsule (Part 1)

Neil deGrasse Tyson takes us through your favorite episodes of the season featuring Stephen Hawking, William Shatner, Adam Savage, Terry Crews, Fareed Zakaria, Bill Nye, and others as they explore the future, human augmentation, science fiction, and more. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/season-8-time-capsule-part-1/

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. Welcome to StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I'm also the director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. This week, we bring in the new year and prepare to launch yet another season of StarTalk Radio. But first, we say goodbye to 2017 in the only way we know how: by our annual time capsule show.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, this completes our eighth season. Eight, count 'em. Every year, we send out a survey to you, our fans, and ask you to vote for all your favorite episodes, guests, co-hosts. Then, we create the single mashup episode of the winning picks. And so, we have done just that: selecting the best moments from this past season with your help. We kick this off with your number one favorite episode, "Let's Make America Smart Again", with Fareed Zakaria. This was the first of our several special edition episodes, where we highlight facts and root out fallacies surrounding the politics that influence science in America.

• 1:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria joins comedic co-host Chuck Nice and me to help us understand the impact of immigration, or absence thereof, on science and innovation in America. Check it out. So I look at things like the Manhattan Project, so crucial to what became 20th century politics and science, and it landed us where we became, where we were, for the entire second half of the 20th century. And, most of those scientists were foreign-born nationals. And, and, so, what, from your, from your worldview, could you just explain...

• 2:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How this works, just.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  You know, it's fascinating. You're absolutely right. We think that America was always the most scientifically innovative country in the world. You know, we look at the Nobel prizes and we take it for granted. Five percent of the world's population, we get about seventy-five percent of the world's prizes. And that doesn't even count Obama's Peace Prize, which I regard as kind of a weird one in his first year of office.

• 2:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Come on, it's like a lifetime achievement award.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, at age twenty-five.

• 2:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Twenty-five, it's, you know, it's like, well, you didn't really earn this, but we gotta give it to you just because we like you.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Exactly. But if you look at the early twentieth century, nineteen-ten, nineteen-fourteen, I forget the exact date. Germany had won more prizes in science, Nobel Prize in Science, than Britain and the United States put together. So the US becomes a powerhouse in science, basically for three big reasons. The first is the destruction of Europe. Basically, World War I, World War II, Great Depression, the place gets flattened, all the universities shut down.

• 3:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the last man standing.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  With the last man standing, and particularly Germany gets destroyed. Germany was the scientific superpower. Second, we take in all these immigrants. People forget, even in the thirties, with all the restrictions, a hundred thousand Jews came in from Europe. Many of them scientists, as you say, many of them worked on the Manhattan Project. After that, of course, the door opens even wider. And the third is massive government funding. So let's think about it. Europe ain't destroyed anymore. Government funding is down to half what it used to be. Our only hope, frankly, is that we keep taking in the best and brightest in the world. Otherwise, you already see the world catching up. You already see that, you know, Japanese scientists win Nobel Prizes routinely. That you now have the Chinese getting in on the action. So we have to recognize.

• 3:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beginning there.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  We're five percent of the world. We want to make sure that we're not winning just five percent of the Nobel Prizes.

• 3:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. That, well, that's, I mean, that, that, that very fact then is enabled only if you then not only have access to, but mutual interest in coming to the world's greatest talent. And the world's greatest talent isn't always in your country. Because everybody's human and innovation is not some.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Nobody has a monopoly on.

• 4:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, in innovation, it's just a matter of opportunity to express it. So when I go back to, again, the Manhattan Project, I go back to the Apollo Project. Each of those had sort of military motivations. I mean, we don't like remembering Apollo as military, but NASA was in response, of course, to Sputnik. And the threat that that that we perceived by that. But you look at, you look at, there was, of course, Einstein came over. Like you said, this whole flux of Jewish scientists. Then after the Second World War, we build our space program on the back of Werner von Braun. For example, and now you have all these people, Enrico Fermi. We have labs named after this guy, Fermi Labs, okay?

• 5:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's Italian, his wife is Jewish, and all of this is going on, and we, this is America.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  That's exactly right.

• 5:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not even being fine toothpick for for what that is, it's just, of course. You know, you go, I just look in our notes for this, that apparently, you know, of course, Benjamin Franklin. Let's go back to him, one of the first great scientists of the of the United States. He, I mean, I, he wrote books on research and electricity. So he's, he's probably, he might even be been a better scientist than founding father. I mean, if you look at what his record is and what he discovered and the books that he had published. But regardless, he, he, his parents fled England because of religious persecution. And he's here, and so he's basically an immigrant, his immigrant lineage, which would have been easy back then, I guess.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  That's pretty cool. See, the thing is, though, doesn't really count when you're, when you're not brown.

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What was that?

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm just saying, like, you know, it's just the way it works.

• 5:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's get to that.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  There are rules.

• 6:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are rules. Let's get to that. So, so, so, so, so Farid. Uh, let me be devil's advocate here. So, we have these, I could cite all the famous scientists of the 20th century that shaped modern, uh, you know, we have Werner von Braun from Germany who birthed, he, he basically designed the Saturn V rocket that got us to the moon. Because he had that knowledge and, uh, and, and awareness from his, from developing the V2 rocket, and that's basically the first ballistic missile. It left Earth's atmosphere, found its target, fell on the target.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, that's a ballistic missile.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  V2 being the rockets that the Germans developed and, and, and rained on London in 1945.

• 6:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, correct. Although rain would be a little too delicate a word for what these things did. Uh, so, yeah, they fall out of the sky supersonically. So, it's not, it's not like.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Not a whistle.

• 6:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, you do not, it's just, you're walking and then the block explodes.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's how that.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  So, my dad was a graduate student in, in, in London in 1945, and was having coffee with a bunch of his friends in a cafe. Um, he was, and they said to him, stay for a while. He said, no, I gotta get back, I gotta get some work done. He walks out, and he turns his back, and a V2 rocket hit the cafe. Everyone there, every friend of his died. If he had just stayed when they told him, just have one more cup of coffee, he would have, he would have been dead.

• 7:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 7:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  We'd be having this conversation.

• 7:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. Or, or I think of it the other way.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  That's how.

• 7:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many others might I have been having a conversation and not him?

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they would have had to say.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  And did he ever, did he ever use that as a motivating factor, to, a factor to get you to do your work?

• 7:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  (laughing).

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Let me tell you something, that would do, yeah, you know what, I got back to work and I'm alive.

• 7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  You know, there are different people at different, my dad had, had a tough upbringing as a self-made man, and he always said, I went through stuff I don't want you to ever have to go through.

• 7:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh-huh, uh-huh.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  That was his attitude.

• 7:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let me just complete this list. Uh, Steve Jobs, as we know, um, uh, he, he, his, his family lineage is traceable to Syria, if I remember.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  His actual father was, was a Syrian immigrant.

• 8:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Elon Musk, a South African, uh, Bavarian.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Sergey Brin, Google is.

• 8:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Google, right, all of this, all of this, and so, so.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Not to mention all the real, I mean, the scientists, these are all we're talking about.

• 8:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just the entrepreneurs.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Right, we're just talking about the entrepreneurs.

• 8:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  The real scientists.

• 8:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Devil's advocate. Um, this is a list of people any country would want. So, do you say, yes, you can immigrate? If you have these kinds of ambitions, or if you're gonna, if you're gonna, we'll, we'll let you in if you go get a degree in, in engineering. I mean, is that, is that, is that the devil's advocate posture here? That has not yet been resolved in this conversation?

• 8:48Speaker 01

  So, there's no question, we should take any of those kinds of people. I mean, there's, I think Michael Bloomberg had the idea, if you, if you get a PhD in, in science, you should have a green card stapled to your degree when you get it.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Makes sense.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  That makes a lot of sense.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Makes sense.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  There's no question.

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was also, also, um, Newt Gingrich was a very strong posture on that.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  And I, and I think that, you know, that seems to me a no brainer in one of the parts of immigration reform, one hopes eventually will get to. Um, the harder question, as you say, is we've taken lots of people who are not like that. That's called the family unification policy. I think we've probably taken too many that way and too few who are, who are skills and, and brain-based. But, you know, there's also something to be said for the sheer drive that, um, that low-skill immigrants bring. Obviously, in the right numbers and, and in a way that can, they can be integrated. But, the biggest problem for a rich country is, you, you lose that drive, you lose that hunger. I mean, you know, we all have children and, and the more fortunate the parent circumstance, the kids are gonna be great.

• 9:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fat and lazy. Say it.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Can't have, can't have the same drive, right?

• 9:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  And, but.

• 9:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  United Arab Emirates has a similar problem. It's a very wealthy country, but who's gonna clean the laundry and who's gonna?

• 10:00Speaker 01

  But, but some guy who comes from, you know, Mexico or, or Guatemala, Honduras, who's willing to risk everything, abandon, you know, home cu- culture and come there, come here to wash dishes.

• 10:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to do that.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Sixteen hours a d- a day, that's a good, some kind of drive and energy. And by the way, that person might end up doing something remarkable. His children might end up doing something remarkable.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  The real thing you have to keep into mind is, the children of those people tend to be the ones who have that same drive.

• 10:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  But they're also educated here in America, which gives them a distinct advantage when it comes to.

• 10:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bigger drive than American with the same American education.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  There you go, so they're, what we're doing is we're creating better Americans.

• 10:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  2017 saw StarTalk's fourth season on the National Geographic Channel and our third Emmy nomination. This next clip is from a Nat Geo interview with Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner. I was joined in studio with astrophysicist and StarTalk All-Star Charles Liu, as well as NASA technologist David Batchelor, to talk about the power of science fiction. Co-hosting this episode is Chuck Nice, who you selected as your number one favorite co-host of the season for a second year in a row. Check it out. Did your work on Star Trek introduce you to the world of science fiction?

• 11:19William Shatner?

  No, I had read science fiction prior to that. I was fascinated by science fiction. The greatest Star Trek episodes were stories suggested by the great science fiction writers, Asimov being one, the most obvious, but there were others who had great story ideas, but they did not write a well-made television play. So we had television writers take their great ideas and make the great Star Trek episodes. That magic of science fiction and its projection into the future, its ability to try to imagine

• 12:00William Shatner?

  an explanation of some of the things we can't explain, moving lights, back in time, that whole thing that astrophysicists wrestle with, science fiction wrestles with, but with an imaginative explanation.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Even Shatner is doing Shatner. He doesn't even look, he looks like he's doing an impression of himself. Explanations.

• 12:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, you're a colleague, we both work in the same field. And there's always some imagination at the frontier.

• 12:34Speaker 04

  Oh, 100%. You and I both know that if all we did, in the stereotypical sense, was as scientists, be in our white lab coats and do the same things over and over again that you expect that somebody who doesn't have any creativity to do, we would never get anywhere. We imagine answers to- Questions, whether we have the technical expertise yet or not to answer them. And it just turns out that in real science, we try to use our technical abilities to produce legitimate experiments. Whereas in science fiction, they are freed from that constraint.

• 13:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what they also do is not just imagine what science is in the future, in almost all cases, certainly the best cases. They're finding all the ways that new science affects culture, civilization, humanity.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 13:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And of course, Ray Bradbury is famous for-

• 13:23Speaker 04

  The Martian Chronicles.

• 13:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he, Ray Bradbury was accused of, why are you always all dystopic about the future? And you know what he said? He said, is this the future you, you're wishing we go to? He says, no, I write these futures so that we don't go there.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Oh, that's, that's pretty, that's pretty cool.

• 13:38Speaker 04

  We have to imagine both the good and the bad in order to prepare for either one.

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when you have science fiction and an imaginative palette, they're all, it's like a multiverse of options of where you can take the future of our civilization. And I'm trying to think, you go back a few decades, let's say to the eighties. People were already making movies, dystopic movies about pandemics, of course, nuclear destruction. We were still in the Cold War, cloning, a little bit of cyberspace was in there. So it's just fun to think about what the creativity of a science fiction writer will do and how much we have to pay attention to.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  That is so depressing. Not at all.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. The eighties were a few decades ago? Oh my God.

• 14:29Speaker 04

  It's, it's nice that you mentioned Ray Bradbury. Just as much as scientists of our generation were inspired by his, say Martian Chronicles. He too was inspired by scientists who were just studying Mars at that time. So it all interplays together. It's a very, very nice combination, creativity and technology.

• 14:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, up next in my interview with William Shatner, we'll be discussing race relations in America through the lens of Star Trek. And it was created, as you know, by producer Gene Roddenberry back in the 1960s. Let's check it out. Were you self-aware of Roddenberry's larger mission statement? That he was trying to make a difference in the world?

• 15:13William Shatner?

  Well-

• 15:15William Shatner?

  Both of those statements are suspect.

• 15:20William Shatner?

  I'm not sure how much of a difference Roddenberry was trying to make in the world. He had a wonderful idea, no interference, live long and prosper, whatever the edicts were, except the crew did go down and interfere. That was the... that resulted in a plot. That was the story.

• 15:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you didn't interfere, you'd just say, "Hi guys, we'll just fly by."

• 15:49William Shatner?

  Yeah, right. "Good going, guys." You know, so you had to interfere to have a plot.

• 15:54William Shatner?

  So we throw that out the window. But, those ideas that were in the individual plots, that each movie, each segment of the series was based on, those were great ideas. Half-white, half-black, half-black, half-white. Fighting over the stupidity of racial fighting.

• 16:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a time when the civil rights movement is in full swing.

• 16:21William Shatner?

  Right.

• 16:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, so this is a story in space, forcing us to...

• 16:27William Shatner?

  Forcing us to look at the inanity of race relationships. That's science fiction at its best. So that idea, I don't know where it came from, I don't know who suggested that idea. And I would imagine Roddenberry had the last statement, saying, "This goes, we'll do this story." So from that point of view, he was doing something. From my point of view, of whether I was aware, I read that story, I thought, "My gosh, what a wonderful story idea this is." How dramatic. "They fight." "I hate you, because you're black on that side."

• 17:11William Shatner?

  That's a great...

• 17:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's obvious I'm fighting you, because I'm black on the other side.

• 17:15William Shatner?

  Yeah.

• 17:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that was clear to them, for whatever reason.

• 17:18William Shatner?

  Right, right. So, it was clear to everybody, what a glorious story that was. And we had so many others, down the line, with other subjects in mind. So yes, I was very much aware.

• 17:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. This special time capsule episode is a mishmash matchup of your favorite moments from all of season eight. You cast your votes and as always, it was a tight race, but the results are in. This next clip features one of your favorite guests from all of season eight. Former NFL star, actor, and fitness enthusiast Terry Crews. He and I became fast friends. Exercise physiologist Dr. Felicia Stoller joined Chuck Nice and me in the Hall of the Universe to chat about the science of fitness.

• 18:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I asked Terry where his path to fitness began. Let's check it out.

• 18:17Speaker 05

  It was a lot of lonely nights and days as a 14-year-old boy in my room, looking in the mirror, doing this kind of stuff. And it's like, oh, and now you're paid to do it. But what so crazy is that?

• 18:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you were buff at 14, believe me.

• 18:34Speaker 05

  Well, you know what? I have to say, I always wanted to be strong. That was the thing. I think it comes from, I had a father who was addicted to alcohol and a mom who was addicted to religion.

• 18:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 18:48Speaker 05

  So it makes a very caustic mix. I mean, very...

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Combustible.

• 18:52Speaker 05

  I mean, it was like...

• 18:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there's no, there's no, there's no common path out of that.

• 18:56Speaker 05

  No, no, no. Because your life, you deal with shame and then you deal with being a child of an alcoholic parent. You want to be a pleaser. And the only thing I had to myself was the need to be strong, like the physical thing.

• 19:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, we're of the generation where, where if, if you were bullied, the advice was, "Become strong so you can kick their ass."

• 19:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. I just felt the need to be strong. And I remember, you know, I actually, my earliest memory is I would lift couches and chairs and stuff. And I actually had a hernia when I was five years old because I was always walking around, and my earliest video footage, "I'm going, I'm making muscles." And I'm like, "I want it to be strong." And once I discovered weights... I was like, I can, I'm going to do this, I'm gonna get my, I think it was because of fear. You know, I was always scared. I was scared when my dad come home drunk, I was scared I didn't do something my mom didn't want me to do, you know, it was that fear of just everything, fear of the world, you didn't know, and I had to protect myself.

• 20:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Felicia, in your life experience, do people lift weights more out of fear or out of fitness?

• 20:11Speaker 06

  I think more people lift weights out of fitness, I think.

• 20:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Today?

• 20:14Speaker 06

  Today, I think they do. I can totally understand where he was coming from, that it was something that he was able to put his energy into for himself, and he could make something of himself with that. But I think most people today, I mean, there's a difference between lifting weights for health and well-being versus bodybuilding, and he sort of is on that fringe of athlete and bodybuilder.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  He was afraid, I understand that. I had the same kind of experience. And then I discovered weights and I was like, oh, this is hard.

• 20:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He had a hernia at age five from lifting stuff, and all we can think of is Bam Bam from Flintstones.

• 20:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? And so that seems a little early in one's life. So, let me just ask then, if you go into a fitness center, yes, there'll be the bodybuilders,

• 20:59Speaker 06

  Right.

• 20:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  then the health, fitness people.

• 21:01Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 21:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then, how about the people who, are the people who do it for sex appeal?

• 21:06Speaker 06

  I mean, being fit is sexy, right?

• 21:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but, but, but I wonder if evolutionarily, there's a driver for that. In your studies, does that come up?

• 21:17Speaker 06

  Not so much in terms of sexy. I mean, we look at art throughout the years, and you look at what the evolution of beauty was, and what was maybe perceived sexy a few hundred years ago versus today.

• 21:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think the male Greek statue still holds today. I'm thinking lady, is that right?

• 21:31Speaker 06

  But, but.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  David, anyone?

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Ladies.

• 21:38Speaker 06

  But when you look at who's the sexiest man or the sexiest woman, they're usually fit, they're not necessarily bodybuilder-esque. So I think that there's a very big difference in that. And then when people are training for those types of events, they don't look like that 12 months of the year. That's the one thing that I always caution people about, when they are training for those events, you're looking at one moment in time, you're not.

• 22:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When they have to look that way.

• 22:01Speaker 06

  When they have to look that way for competition.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  So you're saying it's all a lie?

• 22:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's a charade? A one day charade. A one day charade.

• 22:08Speaker 06

  Yes, yes.

• 22:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A one day facade.

• 22:09Speaker 06

  Right.

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So I, but I can tell you flat out that when I was a kid, any incentive to lift weights was not for health. It was really because there were bullies out there.

• 22:21Speaker 06

  Right.

• 22:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bullies back then were physical bullies.

• 22:23Speaker 06

  Right.

• 22:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It wasn't any of this word stuff. It was physical bullies.

• 22:26Speaker 06

  Right.

• 22:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we were told, "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but birds will never hurt me." Yeah. So I gotta stop the sticks and stones from breaking my bones. The only way I can do that is to go build muscles. And the ads in the back of comic books, "Are you a 97-pound weakling? Go come lift weights with Charles Atlas, and then you can come back and kick some ass." And so, so I have to agree with Terry. At least in my childhood, the motivation was for protection. And so... But you were also an athlete as well when you were a kid. Yeah, but I wasn't lifting couches and stuff. And I'd have a hernia at age five. It was later, I mean, middle school. You got your hernia at 13.

• 23:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, so, so for me, I viewed myself as, because once I got bigger and stronger, I was protector of the nerds. Right. Yeah, I was, if I were to be a superhero, that's the superhero it would be. Like nerd shield. Yeah. I am nerd shield.

• 23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so let me just get back to this. So, does lifting weights make you healthier?

• 23:34Speaker 06

  Yes, it does, absolutely. So lifting weights does a few things. One is it increases your muscle mass. And we all want to increase our muscle mass because the flip side is that we burn more fat for fuel at rest, like when you're sleeping, right? The other thing is that the...

• 23:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that allows you to eat more.

• 23:50Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You actually have to eat more, right?

• 23:53Speaker 06

  You do need to eat more. Well, it depends on what your end goals are at the end of the day. So it's good for bone density. It's also good for overall, like, strength. So for activities of daily living, right? As we get older, we should continue to lift weights and to do resistance exercise. And the other thing is that when we're getting toner and our muscles get bigger, actually the circumference of our limbs gets smaller because our whole body, everything is round, right? Our arms, our waist, our legs. So as you get tighter and you get toner, everything gets smaller.

• 24:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is if you're not trying to get big muscles, if you're just trying to get fit muscles.

• 24:27Speaker 06

  Right, fit muscles.

• 24:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fit muscles, okay.

• 24:29Speaker 06

  Right, correct. So hopefully you're balancing out any of the strength training that you're doing with some stretching and flexibility training as well.

• 24:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love being well stretched, as I was when I wrestle. I could put my foot over my head and do a split. It was, it was the best kinda...

• 24:46Speaker 02

  I'm just envisioning.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Just sitting here enjoying the visuals. Neil with his leg right here.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Hi. Do you like the cosmos?

• 25:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so normally we don't think of lifting weights as strengthening joints. That's an interesting added feature to this.

• 25:12Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 25:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, so can you lift weights too much?

• 25:16Speaker 06

  Oh, absolutely. Overuse injuries can happen all the time. So it's important to allow rest in between. So that's actually a common problem. I see that a lot with individuals that I'm working with. I see that with people at the gym that think they can work out every body part every single day. The truth is, you need to allow your muscles at least two days of rest in between working that muscle group.

• 25:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To recover.

• 25:36Speaker 06

  To recover. Because in order...

• 25:37Speaker 02

  That's where I'm a Viking.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Allowing rest in between. I just never go to the gym first.

• 25:47Speaker 06

  So really allowing that rest in between muscle groups. I'm not saying you shouldn't exercise every day because you actually can exercise every day, do something physically active every day.

• 25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Upper body, lower body.

• 25:56Speaker 06

  Well, yes, that's how I actually do it. Because that whole back and bicep, chest and tricep thing, I got a problem with that.

• 26:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that. Back and bicep, chest and tricep. That's a whole thing.

• 26:04Speaker 06

  Right, right. Well, but that's been like the traditional mantra of weight training.

• 26:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back and bicep, chest and tricep. Alright, I got you.

• 26:11Speaker 06

  But the problem is, you need the other muscles to do those other exercises. So you really need to do everything from your chest to your fingertips in one sort of day of resistance training. Do your core and your abdominal stuff. And then do from your tush down to your toes, right? From your butt down.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can say ass on this show.

• 26:26Speaker 06

  Okay, alright.

• 26:29Speaker 06

  So then you would do your lower body and hopefully you're doing cardio in between and doing a little bit of everything.

• 26:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next up, NASA astronaut and Canadian hero Commander Chris Hatfield took over the driver's seat at StarTalk Live from FutureCon. Commander Hatfield hosted a talented panel to discuss engineering of the future, including the one and only Stephen Hawking, who joined the stage via hologram to lend his words of wisdom. Comedic co-host Eugene Mirman brought along comedic guests Maeve Higgins and Scott Adsit. Joining as expert guests, electrical engineer Kathryn Pratt and mechanical engineer Souveen Mathaudu.

• 27:13Speaker 07

  I was, I was lucky enough to do two spacewalks. And we understand pretty clearly what causes the northern lights. We know it's, it's energy from the sun being caught by the Earth's magnetic field and reacting with the upper atmosphere and, and the little electron states going up and down and, and fluorescing. And that's why the northern lights glow green and glow red. But while I was outside on a spacewalk, we went through the southern lights. And what, what started out as sort of a robotic, technical understanding of how a planet behaves, suddenly became so visceral and so beautiful and so, um, so

• 27:54Speaker 07

  entirely different than just the science that's behind it. To be surrounded by, and with it flowing between my legs and around the ship, to see our world that way. I think, I think that is very much the essence of discovery and exploration. And I don't think we're going to have robots that are, that are going to appreciate that.

• 28:14Speaker 08

  Well, Ray Bradbury always said that we should be sending up artists into space so they could capture emotion.

• 28:20Speaker 07

  I agree with you. I agree with you.

• 28:21Speaker 08

  But the thing is, we have three artists right here who have a great wealth of knowledge about science, but you all are artists as well. And I think that's very valuable.

• 28:32Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 28:34Speaker 07

  I validate you.

• 28:37Speaker 09

  And when you speak about like the two working together, like humans and robots, it makes me think of like the photos that we got back from, is it the little voyagers? Those two little crafts who went and took a picture of Saturn's rings and I took a picture. And like then when we could see them back here, like people who will never like walk in space, that made me feel like, oh, I am actually connected to this and I can picture it and I can see it. And that's magic too. I mean, it's not magic, it's science.

• 29:05Speaker 07

  So let's, we have the opportunity, I think, if the technology will allow us, to bring in an expert who has sort of thought about a lot of different things and has had time through an extremely long and successful career of invention and discovery and original thought to talk about a lot of different topics, including the idea of exploration in life. So could we ask Dr. Stephen Hawking to join us, please?

• 29:48Speaker 10

  Hello, can you hear me?

• 29:51Speaker 07

  Yes, loud and clear. Can you hear us?

• 29:54Speaker 10

  I can hear you too. I am delighted to have the opportunity to use Art Media's hologram technology to transcend time and space to be with you today.

• 30:06Speaker 07

  Well, if anybody can transcend time and space, it should be you, sir. We have a question for you, and that is, if the combination of humans and their technology and the robots, if it takes us far enough out into the universe, so that someday we eventually can find evidence of life somewhere else, what's it gonna look like? What do you think life in other planets or other solar systems might be like?

• 30:40Speaker 10

  Our civilization is only about 10,000 years old.

• 30:47Speaker 10

  But the universe is about 14 billion years old.

• 30:53Speaker 10

  Therefore, any other life in the universe is likely to be much more advanced than us, or so primitive that it hasn't even begun to evolve.

• 31:06Speaker 10

  In the former case, the Breakthrough Listen Project should be able to pick up their radio transmissions if they are close enough.

• 31:18Speaker 10

  But in the latter case, one has a rather boring universe, full of potentially dangerous bacteria or other life forms. A far cry from the usual science fiction picture of glamorous aliens.

• 31:36Speaker 10

  Any other life we discover is likely to be artificial, because robots with artificial intelligence are far better equipped than biological life to survive the long duration and radiation damage of interstellar travel.

• 32:01Speaker 07

  So that's intriguing, that one of the deepest thinkers we have thinks that if we do encounter life, in order for it to have survived over the immensity of distance and time, it will have had to no longer be biological, but will have had to transfer itself into some sort of technical or robotic kind of form, so some sort of hybrid between the two. But for now, we're kind of stuck with these biological forms. We're not far enough along yet, and we're fragile, physically fragile, psychologically fragile.

• 32:38Speaker 07

  The crew up on the space station is very much separate from the world. I was talking to Susan Helms when she was up there, back on my second spaceflight, and at one point Susan said to me in passing, she said, "Hey, Earth said that we need to do this tomorrow." And I thought, "Earth said?"

• 33:05Speaker 07

  That her psychological fragility, just her makeup was such... And she's became a multi-star general in the Air Force. I went to test pilot school with her, wonderful person. But in order to stay healthy, that far away from home, even that close, but that's separate, she had to completely split herself from the rest of humanity. You have to recognize that you are no longer an Earthling. You are a Spacelink. Earth is a separate, discreet entity from yourself, and you and your crew are that way. And I think as we go further, we're gonna have to honor that.

• 33:48Speaker 07

  We put a lot of psychological support equipment up on the spaceship. In fact, we have a big movie library up there. We have a huge audio library of songs, books to read.

• 34:04Speaker 07

  Yo-yos, yes, which are fun in weightlessness. You can walk the dog forever.

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next up, a StarTalk Live edition from New York Comic-Con. Former Mythbuster and king of nerds Adam Savage joined me onstage alongside comedic co-host Chuck Nice and NYU philosopher Matthew Lau to geek out over the promises and perils of human augmentation.

• 34:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're talking about Batman and Iron Man.

• 34:41Speaker 07

  Batman and Iron Man, those are my two favorite because their secret power is their brains.

• 34:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're human.

• 34:48Speaker 07

  Yeah, yes.

• 34:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we got some people taking issue with this out.

• 34:51Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 34:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't express that strong an opinion in front of this crowd. That's all I'm saying. But they clearly have augmentations to their bodies in some way or another.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  I think it's more they have augmentations to their bank account.

• 35:11Speaker 11

  You're bringing up, there's a poster that shows all of the philanthropic giving that Bill Gates has undergone in the past like 20 years, you know, thirty billion dollars. And that by conservative estimates, he's saved over six million lives. This is as of a few years ago. At the bottom, it says, "Suck it Batman, this is how a billionaire saves people."

• 35:30Speaker 02

  There you go! Yes!

• 35:36Speaker 02

  But does he have a utility belt?

• 35:41Speaker 11

  If Bill wanted a utility belt, I'd make him one.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  If Bill wanted a utility belt, I'd be it for him.

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let me ask Adam, what, how do we define "super" in this regard?

• 35:59Speaker 11

  Well...

• 36:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because is Batman a superhero? He can't fly, he can't, there's a lot of stuff he can't do.

• 36:06Speaker 11

  Yeah, the, where you, where super gets into the realm of the fictional is in both of the Batman and Iron Man augmentations. Because Iron Man's exosuit, while in any small piece of it is somewhat possible or plausible that there are mechanical linkages you could build that would be self-perpetuating and give you all sorts of extra strength, the idea that it would work without flaw repeatedly is an absolute fantasy.

• 36:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or, one might say, a myth.

• 36:39Speaker 11

  That's no longer my job.

• 36:44Speaker 11

  But I mean, there's a reason NASA has never used cables to assist astronauts in their grip or their ability to move the suit, because they, engineers at NASA, as brilliant as they are, understand that extra moving parts is extra things that can go wrong.

• 36:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're saying there are million ways Iron Man's suit would fail, and the movies don't show any of them?

• 37:03Speaker 11

  Oh.

• 37:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 37:04Speaker 11

  And Batman 2, I mean, I have actually tried to build a device that shot a cable into a wall that you could hang off of, and then I talked to the government, an agency that tried to build one of these for the government. And they failed in exactly the same way I did.

• 37:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I'm old enough to remember Batman in first run on television. And when he had that little device, you know, the gun that shoots.

• 37:24Speaker 11

  The grappling gun.

• 37:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I said, "How does that dart stay in the wall? That's like not happening."

• 37:28Speaker 11

  Actually, what I used-

• 37:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not happening. No. And, wait, see, you got me started on this. Then, then they throw the thing up and then climb up the wall. And I said, "They're not climbing up a wall, they're just walking along a flat thing." And he tipped the camera. Because the guy sticking a head out of the window is that, that, all the angles are wrong. And I knew this. Sorry, sorry.

• 37:55Speaker 11

  I feel you, brother.

• 37:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You feel, you feel my pain.

• 37:57Speaker 11

  Absolutely.

• 37:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, so here's my point. You have these, uh, in the modern Batman, he's got, it's really kind of an exoskeleton. Not an exoskeleton, uh, a, a body armor, I guess, is what you can call it.

• 38:08Speaker 11

  Yeah, it's segmented body armor.

• 38:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so is this, so, so if, between the two of them, who, who do you think would win?

• 38:17Speaker 11

  Oh, Batman.

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no.

• 38:22Speaker 11

  Understand.

• 38:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. No. Quick vote. Mike?

• 38:27Speaker 12

  I think Iron Man will win.

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Iron Man?

• 38:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait. Tony Stark for life, baby!

• 38:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you're outnumbered, so you're wrong.

• 38:42Speaker 11

  Thank you, one person, I appreciate it. My thinking is, is that Iron Man would be like, "I'm gonna punch-"

• 38:50Speaker 11

  And then he can't move, and Batman's like, "Dook."

• 38:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, the reason why I like Iron Man better is because he builds his own stuff.

• 39:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With Batman has, he's got like, other people who do it for him. Well, Wayne Industries. Wayne Industries. That's who builds all his stuff.

• 39:12Speaker 11

  Uh, technically, that's Wayne Enterprises.

• 39:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, true.

• 39:18Speaker 13

  Oh!

• 39:20Speaker 11

  You are correct, sir.

• 39:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, are there any real-life examples of exoskeletons used in the world?

• 39:30Speaker 12

  Yeah, so the military's been creating these exoskeletons for soldiers. I think, Adam, you probably know about them. Thank you. And they're prosthetic limbs for people who are disabled.

• 39:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And are they working the way, like Luke's hand worked in Star Wars? You know, where you look at the thing? I mean, are we there yet? Let me ask that question.

• 39:52Speaker 12

  Not yet, not yet.

• 39:53Speaker 11

  Can I bring this back, though? Like, is there... There must be an attachment that someone who has no arm below the elbow has asked a prosthetist to make, and the prosthetist has said, "No. I'm not gonna make a... I'm not gonna graft a 45-caliber pistol onto the end of your prosthetic." Or a buzzsaw, or a fist. Yes! That's good!

• 40:14Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 40:16Speaker 11

  But that's where we're talking about... That's an ethical problem that the constructor has with the goal of the person who needs the device.

• 40:24Speaker 12

  That's right, that's right. So, I mean, right now, they're just doing it mainly for treatment for people who are injured, right? So that they can move about. But eventually, you can think of, you know, you can sort of add more things to it. You can add weapons, you can add swords.

• 40:40Speaker 11

  I would totally do that.

• 40:41Speaker 12

  Laser pistols.

• 40:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You wanna be like a Swiss Army knife, human?

• 40:46Speaker 11

  My son... One of my sons once asked me when he was about four years old...

• 40:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was it thing one or thing two?

• 40:50Speaker 11

  Thing one.

• 40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 40:51Speaker 11

  He said, "Daddy, the penis is a very special part of your body." And I said, "Yes, you're right." And he said, because all children are jailhouse lawyers, he said, "Is it more special than a foot?" You should've said, "Son, just wait 12 years."

• 41:10Speaker 11

  Here was my metric. I thought, "Well, let's see. If I lost my foot, I could make an extremely usable, functional replica of it." Yes, the penis is far more important than the foot.

• 41:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so this is from the point of view of...

• 41:27Speaker 11

  Of repeal and replace.

• 41:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Remodel maker, yes, yes, okay.

• 41:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For our final clip, Bill Nye takes over the host seat to explore the pursuit of truth in a world of alternative facts. He's joined by co-host Chuck Nice and senior editor of The Atlantic Monthly, Ross Anderson, in the episode, "Science and the Search for Truth."

• 41:53Speaker 02

  Drew Huber from Facebook says this, "Are there still scientists that are using 'alternative facts' to claim that climate change is not real?"

• 42:05Bill Nye?

  Well, there's the cherry picking of data. Ross, you deal with this all day, I take it?

• 42:11Speaker 15

  Yeah, absolutely. You do have people who will, for instance, point to a particularly heavy snowstorm in California, or a cold day in January, and say, "Oh, see, yep, nope, climate's not changing, just like we thought."

• 42:27Bill Nye?

  Senator Inhofe showed up on the Senate floor with a snowball.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  With a snowball!

• 42:32Bill Nye?

  We laugh, but he, and his, the people that vote for him at some level, think he's on the right track.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  Wow. Stunning. That is absolutely stunning.

• 42:44Bill Nye?

  There are fewer snowball days than there used to be. That's something to consider. But it's confronting people, or embracing people, or becoming partners with people who have doubled down on ignoring scientific, what seem to be provable scientific facts. Let's try another query.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  All right, John Clemens from Facebook, "Is social media making us dumber?"

• 43:11Bill Nye?

  Not StarTalk on your electric phone, your handheld device, StarTalk's enriching your life and making you that much smarter. Right, everyone? Right, Uncle Will!

• 43:26Bill Nye?

  Ross, you deal with, you used to be a print magazine exclusively. But how much of, what fraction of your business is online now?

• 43:36Speaker 15

  Oh, I mean, the vast, vast, vast majority of it. I mean, we publish maybe 10 to 15 pieces in the print magazine monthly and we publish maybe 40 or 45 articles a day on the web.

• 43:48Bill Nye?

  Oh, wow. It's a factor of 100, thereabouts. So, do you feel that there's a, people who follow you online don't accept your reporting as accurate? Do you have the pushback because it's social media and it's dismissed as making us dumber?

• 44:07Speaker 15

  Sometimes. Well, I think there's a couple of things going on. First of all, I want to say that of course, like any human being, we beings, we make mistakes and we regret them and we try to be really transparent about correcting them and as quickly as possible. But yes, as far as social media making people dumber, I'm just not, I feel like any totalizing narratives around social media and it making us smarter or dumber are usually sort of themselves dumb. It's obviously a nuanced phenomenon. I don't know about you guys, but I've been, I mean, I've found social media making me smarter in all kinds of ways. I feel more kind of in touch with what's happening in the world on a moment-to-moment basis. Now, whether, what that's doing for me is-

• 44:50Bill Nye?

  But I remember Gil Scott-Heron with "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." Turns out it is being, if you have a revolution, it better be on Twitter. It's not happening.

• 44:59Speaker 15

  Absolutely.

• 45:00Bill Nye?

  So, to that end, imagine how much more difficult it would have been, no matter how you feel about these ladies, who, how much more difficult it would have been to organize the Women's March without social media.

• 45:13Speaker 15

  That's right.

• 45:14Bill Nye?

  With social media, it was, millions of people showed up in several cities, dozens of cities. And how do you, Ross, do you have any opinion about this proposed science march?

• 45:28Speaker 15

  Yeah, well, so, uh, one of the responsibilities of my job is not to advocate for uh, political activism of any sort, but um, we'll be watching it with interest.

• 45:39Bill Nye?

  Yeah, okay, alright, okay. Let's take another query, Chuck.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  Alright, uh, this is OI Ocha, uh, OI is how you spell the first name, I don't know how to say that.

• 45:50Bill Nye?

  Oi.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Oi, okay.

• 45:52Bill Nye?

  Oi Ocha.

• 45:53Speaker 02

  Oi Ocha, there you go. If people can't use facts and reasoning to make well-informed votes, and there's little hope of improving that situation.

• 46:00Bill Nye?

  It's the theme today.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  I'm telling you, this is-

• 46:04Bill Nye?

  Today on Everything Sucks Star Talk Radio.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  I'm telling you, and I'm just, I'm going through pages of-

• 46:11Bill Nye?

  I've got stacks of them.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  I've got stacks of them.

• 46:13Bill Nye?

  Is there a payoff phrase there at the end?

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Well, the payoff is, um, should we consider changing the way we vote?

• 46:21Bill Nye?

  Well, this is, hey, uh, Ross Anderson, you know, the, no matter what else happened, this is the second time in my lifetime, I guess it's the fifth time in my lifetime, that, uh, the popular vote did not determine who became president. Uh, is, do you think there is any way ever that the Electoral College would be modified in any way?

• 46:44Speaker 15

  Um, it sounded like that questioner was referring more to, uh, should we be selecting out people who-

• 46:52Bill Nye?

  Are stupid.

• 46:53Speaker 15

  demonstrate some capacity for, uh, evaluating judgments, uh, scientific evidence to vote, and I would say absolutely not.

• 47:00Bill Nye?

  Absolutely not.

• 47:01Speaker 15

  Uh, ugly history to ideas like that. Um, but, uh, Electoral College reform, uh, I'd probably want to bring on one of my colleagues from, uh, the political section-

• 47:13Bill Nye?

  He's blushing, he's blushing, everyone.

• 47:15Speaker 15

  But it's interesting, it's an interesting idea.

• 47:16Bill Nye?

  Well, everything's interesting, do you think it's possible?

• 47:19Speaker 15

  No, not in the near term.

• 47:21Bill Nye?

  And would it be any better, or would it just be... The Electoral College, as I understand it, was created to prevent New York and Pennsylvania from having too much influence.

• 47:32Speaker 15

  Right. I think Trump has a good point, too, when he says, "Look, I didn't campaign on that." It's a... The campaigns would have looked totally different. It's not the case that, "Oh, if we had run for a popular vote, Hillary would have easily won by 3 million." He would have lived in Texas, for instance.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, but he also said that the Electoral College is a disaster, so...

• 47:52Bill Nye?

  And also thought it was genius.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  And then it's the best invention ever, once he won.

• 48:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your host and your personal astrophysicist. Join me next time for Part 2 of our Time Castle Show. That's all for now, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.