StarTalk Live! at the Apollo (Part 1)

It’s not your typical night at the Apollo when Neil deGrasse Tyson and Eugene Mirman welcome Senator Cory Booker, science evangelist Dr. Ainissa Ramirez and comedians Maeve Higgins and Phoebe Robinson to the historic theater in Harlem, NYC.

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.

• 0:15Eugene Mirman?

  It is now my incredibly great pleasure to introduce your host, America's wonder of science communication, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 0:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Live. So Eugene, what guests do you have on your side of the fence there?

• 0:34Eugene Mirman?

  We have...

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is Eugene Mirman.

• 0:37Eugene Mirman?

  Hi.

• 0:39Eugene Mirman?

  Ladies and gentlemen, she is here on a visa that is of an alien of extraordinary ability. All the way from Ireland, the incredibly funny Mae Higgins. Thank you Eugene. Hi. Thank you Eugene. And she's very, very funny. I'm very excited she could do this. Ladies and gentlemen, Phoebe Robinson.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So tonight's topics, we're going to talk about social media and technology. We're going to talk about football. We're going to talk about education. I have someone who's formerly professor of mechanical engineering at Yale, who wrote a book on the science of football, and has specialized in the role of technology and education and STEM, and all like the right ingredients. Plus, she's an expert in the science of football. Give us a warm welcome to Anissa Ramirez.

• 1:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our featured guest this evening is, in fact, a former college football player. Tight end was his position. He's also thought a lot about science and technology, and what force that could play in the future of the country. And he's also active in social media. In fact, if you triangulate on those data, you get one person, and that is Senator Cory Booker from New Jersey. Senator Booker.

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let's get busy.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  So you're some Newark love out there.

• 2:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you got Jersey in the house.

• 2:19Speaker 03

  Jersey.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You sure you didn't bring them in for just to stomp the audience there?

• 2:24Speaker 02

  The bridges are open, people.

• 2:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Corey, you, I think, is it true, you have more Twitter followers than like anyone else in both houses of Congress, is that correct?

• 2:39Speaker 02

  I am, I am pretty sure that is true.

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe as many as the sum of all Twitter followers of both houses.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Actually, you know what, that is not true. There's a guy that ran for president in the senate that I think still might have a little bit more than me.

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Someone named Barack Obama?

• 2:52Speaker 02

  No. He is no longer in either house of the Congress. They kicked him upstairs.

• 2:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they kicked him upstairs. He's got like a billion Twitter followers now.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  No, it's John McCain, ran for, ran for president and has a whole bunch of folks that follow him.

• 3:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know that, okay? All right.

• 3:09Eugene Mirman?

  But he mostly tweets [BLEEP] pics.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Hold on, hold on.

• 3:16Eugene Mirman?

  Sorry. It was, I could not say it.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Tonight, I'm your love translator. What he means is, pictures of Dick Cheney.

• 3:23Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  I'm gonna translate your comedy.

• 3:32Eugene Mirman?

  Yes, please do. I hope this doesn't become your last day as senator.

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Senator Booker, for those who might not know who you are, you, you cut your teeth in New Jersey State Legislature?

• 3:44Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Newark.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Newark, I was a mayor there.

• 3:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Newark Legislature. Newark people can't finish getting it out of their system there.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  We're Brick City proud.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that kept going, and you became mayor of Newark.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And mayor's my favorite political position.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  It is.

• 4:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep, because it's, above that, you don't really influence the quality of an individual's life in a town. You, you do policy and things, but mayor, if the garbage isn't collected, the mayor, you gotta talk to the mayor.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  You gotta pick up the snow, you gotta pick up the garbage.

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  You're responsible for just about everything that touches.

• 4:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you were mayor as recently as like, a year and a half ago?

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 4:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then, and the senate next?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  And then Senator Frank Lautenberg passed away. United States senate seat was open and I ran for that and, and I got elected.

• 4:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why didn't know you slipped into an empty seat? You didn't tell me that.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  You make it sound almost illicit.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  No, the seat was vacant and there was a special election called. I ran and I got inaugurated on the auspicious day of Halloween 2013.

• 4:58Speaker 04

  What did you dress as? A senator.

• 5:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Senator.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Yes, Cory Booker.

• 5:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just accidentally created.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  This is, I'm gonna get booed off the Apollo.

• 5:18Speaker 04

  All the Newark people are like so embarrassed now.

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's okay, when you become a certain age, it's okay to tell what are called dad jokes.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Dad jokes.

• 5:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, there's like you're getting some...

• 5:28Speaker 04

  No, I think you have to be a dad.

• 5:35Speaker 04

  And tonight I'm here to tell you are a dad, not...

• 5:42Speaker 02

  When you're a mayor, you get called mother often, but usually followed by something.

• 5:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you've got, so let me just ask you, if you tweet and you're a politician, what are you tweeting? Vote for me? I mean, what, where are you going with this? Where's it gonna land?

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Well, for me, I've used the platform, started to use it when I was mayor, and we found out that it was in a phenomenal way to be very responsive to constituents.

• 6:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the spot.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  So in Newark, what we found, once we started using social media, is that my residents, instead of just sort of driving past a pothole, they would take a picture of it and say, Cory, fix this.

• 6:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you'd be out there fixing potholes.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  No, but the reality is, I started to find out about potholes before my road crews would. I found out about traffic lights out before my engineering crew. It went from just being sort of... E-government to we-government, everybody began to participate. And so we started increasing the efficiency of our response time, thanks to everybody getting involved.

• 6:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you have a million eyes watching the city.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Thousands of eyes. So as soon as a water main break, we would hear about it before, people often even.

• 6:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Before the news got there.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  The news, the news cameras got there. And so, in, in, in, in really bad situations, like in Hurricane Sandy, we started getting tweets from people out of the city, out of the state. "I lost contact with my disabled senior citizen great-aunt. Could you please find her?" And so we located people in that storm, who were in crisis situations, often through social media.

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so this is a whole other, I mean, rather than, "I'm having a hamburger now, I'm going to the movies now", this is a real civic, social good that you're describing here.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Well, I, I, I do still tweet about movies.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Because I'm a bit of a movie addict.

• 7:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  But, uh, but.

• 7:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You also, you got some geek in you, too.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  I, I, that's why this is like, when I got the call to be sitting next to this man, you have no idea. My staff was like, I'm like, I am a groupie. I will go, if you call me, I don't care if I'm in a heated debate with Rand Paul. I will say, "Rand Paul, you've got, you've got to wait." You would leave Rand Paul's company to come here? I would leave Rand Paul, I would leave John McCain, yes.

• 8:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, next time, bring him.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Bring him, I will, I, I would, I'm sure he would love to come here. Because in many ways, science should be a, a, above politics, right? And we should be.

• 8:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how I view it, yeah.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. Except global warming.

• 8:20Speaker 04

  Alleged, alleged global warming.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. There was a snowball on the senate floor, so that was an indication.

• 8:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right, that wasn't the house, that was the senate.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  That was the senate.

• 8:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, you got, that's your senate.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those are your peeps.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Those are, those are. So that's what I call them. I say, yo, what's up?

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we had someone named Biz Stone, which is a cool name.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  He's amazing.

• 8:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's the, one of the founders of Twitter.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we had him on StarTalk and I didn't know where that conversation would go and he took it to a place I hadn't even imagined. Just speaking of Twitter as an engine of social change. Things like the Arab Spring, the, like you said, people trying to get the neighborhood, neighborhood fix. I know Anissa is, is very active in social media trying to promote STEM interest and STEM education. And so would that, would this mean that you would encourage everybody to kind of do this?

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Well, I'm a big believer, and we've talked about it before, and I said to you earlier that, you know, Alice Walker said the most common way people give up their power is not realizing they have it in the first place.

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a profound statement.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  And it's true. We all have the power to influence our surroundings. And in fact, I've looked at this from lots of different social science data, even in voting.

• 9:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You actually, you're in Congress and you look at data?

• 9:43Speaker 02

  I do, I do.

• 9:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good. Spread that.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  No, I look for my favorites.

• 9:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just get that out there, alright?

• 9:52Speaker 02

  When I was mayor, one of my favorite savings to my team was I said, "In God we trust, I'm the man of faith, but everybody else bring me data. Let's make decisions based on the science and not on opinions, but based on the facts." And, and so, social science data shows that the most powerful influence you have is with your circles of friends. If I show you 10 campaign commercials, "Vote for X," that's not as persuasive as your friend saying, "Hey, I know Cory, he's a really good guy, you should really go out and vote." In fact, if you know your friends are gonna know if you voted or not, you're much more likely to vote.

• 10:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's interesting.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  So, so social media then becomes on, on Facebook pages and, and Twitter pages and all the way we connect with each other. You are a very powerful persuasive force in this world.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  You know, I was gonna say that technology's had this role for a long, long time. It's new to us. But, you know, Martin Luther, when he wanted the reformation.

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn, you go back.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  Hey, 500 years.

• 10:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was ready, Martin Luther King. No, no, no. Martin Luther.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  You know, when we had to do wood cutting and paper. I mean, that was new. That was hot at one time. And that's how, you know, at that point, there was this discontent about something. So we spread an idea.

• 11:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And hammer it on a door.

• 11:02Speaker 03

  That's right. And similar to Twitter. I mean, it's the same thing with the Arab Spring. So we've been, you know, technology has helped us in terms of changing things for a long, long time.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  But the power you have to understand is that, that, that technology, whatever the platform is, radio, TV, they are neutral forces. What affects the reality is what we pour into them or what we, how we influence them. And I was sitting on a, on a, in a committee hearing, in a subcommittee hearing, on how well ISIS is using social media. They're running circles in many ways around us in terms of their ability to use social media, influence other people and recruit.

• 11:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And all we have is the radio, is, is.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  Air America.

• 11:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Air America. Yeah. Old fashioned way to do it.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  We spend tens of millions of dollars using this old fashioned way of communicating. When the majority of people younger than you and I, we were talking about millennials, they're getting the majority of their news now and their information is coming from social media. And so if we don't change with the times, this is not the 1940s where we're putting out radio. It's now, you know, the 2015.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  This is a radio show.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  No disrespect to anybody listening to my voice.

• 12:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, wait, so it's, so it's more than just the social media tweet. But it's also a podcast and we.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Okay, good.

• 12:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Thank you very much.

• 12:26Eugene Mirman?

  So it's also a podcast you can download?

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:29Eugene Mirman?

  Like a radio show?

• 12:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then listen on the treadmill.

• 12:33Eugene Mirman?

  So we need, basically, the US government needs to take some of the money we put into like weapons and put it into Snapchat.

• 12:41Eugene Mirman?

  An army of...

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, it's more than that. It's not just what's the tweet you put out. It's, is your tweet meme-ifiable? Right? Is that a word?

• 12:53Speaker 04

  It is today.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  I think this goes from...

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Snap. It's gotta become something that people wanna repeat. And it gets in their skin.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  But think about technology in general. And you see this powerful wave throughout every element of society. The democratization of society. And it goes to a simple understanding. The power of the people is greater than the people in power.

• 13:15Eugene Mirman?

  So what's ISIS doing that's actually effective? Like, I get, everyone talks about how they're really great. Is it just to get teenagers to come over and join them?

• 13:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're talking to people all over the world. And they're sending like, to people that wouldn't have access to them otherwise. And like, you don't even know who it is, right?

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, but the power... They're using very persuasive propaganda, these memes. Uh, they're communicating relentlessly.

• 13:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  A lot.

• 13:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The word meme was invented 10, 15 years ago to be a thought counterpart to a gene. I don't know if you knew this. So, you would inherit genes from your genetic parents. And these are, this is a property of you physically or biologically that get carried on. A meme is sort of a mental gene. It's something that, it comes into your head and you can't get it out.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it is so tasty and so easy to re-say that it goes to someone else and they can't get it out and it spreads. So that's where we get the word meme relative to gene.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Thank you for that.

• 14:16Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For this, this college, small college in the, in the west coast. The junior, junior university. Called Stanford.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay, just checking. And you, you played tight end?

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so that meant you, you not only would receive a toss ball, but you would also...

• 14:57Speaker 02

  That's not really how he said it.

• 14:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  The tossing of the ball.

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tossing, sorry.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Yes, tossing.

• 15:05Eugene Mirman?

  I can't tell if, were you, were you an escort?

• 15:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but the only point I'm making is that you would run with the football or occasionally block for someone else.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so if you block, that means you are running into people.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Yes, very hard.

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  You hit them as hard as you can.

• 15:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As hard as you can?

• 15:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. And the harder you hit, the better a player you are?

• 15:28Speaker 02

  No.

• 15:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, because, because, and, and there was a day when you would hit people like with, with your shoulder.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  But there's a, there really is a physics that we are taught on the field. You want to get leverage, you want to hit them in the right places.

• 15:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  There are certain places to hit that are illegal.

• 15:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  And so it's not just the how hard you hit, it's really how effective you hit.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and so lately, people have been hitting other people with their heads?

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, did you hit people with your head?

• 15:53Speaker 02

  I, I had some very bad head collision experiences.

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that sounds like a yes. Okay, so, now, is that... That was a politician yes. Right, is that, so did anyone tell you that your brain is in your head?

• 16:09Speaker 02

  They didn't teach that at Stanford.

• 16:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They didn't teach that at Stanford.

• 16:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so...

• 16:15Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, my, my most nightmarish experience in football.

• 16:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell me, what, yes, tell me.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  It was, we were playing UCLA, so I'm running down on, on the kickoff team. You know, I would just go down there like kamikaze, and they would form what's called a wedge. They'd bring the four of the biggest guys together.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and that wedge is protecting the...

• 16:30Speaker 02

  The guy with the ball.

• 16:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the ball.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Who's received the kickoff, and I was running down as fast as I could. I put my head down to blast through that wedge, hit it with the wrong way, the way that I was not taught, and my, I guess my spine compressed. I just, my whole body below my neck went numb, I fell to the ground.

• 16:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my god.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  And I just remember lying there thinking, praying to God that I would be... Able to get up again and walk.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So everything below your neck is animatronic now.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  No, but the interesting thing is.

• 16:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your handles are doing very well.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  To be good, to be good at anything, public speaking, fearlessness or courage is not the absence of fear. It's going on anyway, but my fear after that, from that experience, you need that sort of fearlessness or that courage, and I lost it. And so I became very ineffective on the kickoff team and was soon pulled off.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  I don't think that's fearlessness. I think that's being smart.

• 17:20Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, you're like, I was afraid to run at people with my head. Seems super reasonable.

• 17:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you went numb, so that was some neuroelectrical impulse going down your spine?

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And were you taken off the field in that play?

• 17:40Speaker 02

  No, I sort of, I watched it on the videotape the next day. I sort of got up as I started to feel sort of my body again, and I just sort of gingerly walked off to the sidelines.

• 17:51Speaker 04

  There's some controversy in Ireland. We don't have American football in Ireland, but I mean about like concussion in sports. Because like in rugby where it's also like really big tackles, they don't have helmets. And it used to be if you got a bad concussion, you would be off the pitch for a week. And then they were like, actually, just a game, you know, because they want the players.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  But it's actually, it's football that has the greatest concussion rate, and it's because we have a helmet.

• 18:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wait, but before you get there, let me ask you something.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are other animals in the animal kingdom that are banging their head like there's nobody's business, like a woodpecker.

• 18:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Why doesn't a woodpecker's brain get scrambled every time it's pecking its head at the side of a tree?

• 18:34Speaker 03

  Well, woodpecker pecks 12,000 times a day, the next day, 12,000 times a day.

• 18:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's crazy.

• 18:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 18:40Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. What's it thinking?

• 18:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what's up with that?

• 18:48Speaker 03

  So, we talked to some folks who study birds, ornithologists, just to use

• 18:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The "we" is now your actual...

• 18:54Speaker 03

  Myself and my co-author, when we wrote Newton's Football. We talked to an ornithologist, just to speak Cory Booker talk.

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  And, what they told us-

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ornithologist, one who studies birds.

• 19:04Speaker 03

  Ones who studies birds, thank you very much. So, what they told us is that the bird has a smaller brain. From the science point of view, when something's smaller, it can undergo greater forces. So if I had my laptop here, and I had my cellphone here, and I dropped them both, my cellphone would be fine, my laptop, I'd probably have to take to the store. Well, that's what's going on. Smaller brains can handle larger forces. Bigger brains, like what we have, can't handle those bigger forces, so we get concussions. Also, around the brain of a bird, they don't have that fluid, so the brain doesn't slosh around, it's in there tightly fitted. So, those are some of the reasons. So, woodpeckers don't get concussions, but there's nothing that we can learn from woodpeckers to make it, so that we don't get concussions.

• 19:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, the reason for concussions is the face mask-

• 19:49Speaker 03

  That's right, so-

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of the helmet.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  Of the helmet, exactly.

• 19:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you, check this out.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm ready. Alright, so, the reasons, the reason why we had helmets to begin with, is that people used to die from the game. And they died because their brains were being, they had skull fractures. Yes. So that's where helmets came from.

• 20:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, wait, so rather than stop playing that game-

• 20:11Speaker 03

  No, keep going, keep going.

• 20:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we just say, "We still want to smash heads, now let's just protect the head."

• 20:17Speaker 03

  Let's protect the head, let's put a leather head on top of it. And so that-

• 20:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Leather helmet.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  Leather helmet, that's right. And so that became a little bit more sophisticated, until it got to, like, a hard shell. Now, in the 1950s, there was a player, Otto Graham. He had a gash on his face, and his coach wanted to protect him, and so he put this plastic around his face, that was the first face mask, and then that became a standard issue. What that did is that changed the way that we tackle. We used to tackle with our shoulders, then we started tackling with our heads. So by putting the face mask, the helmet became weaponized, and so that's what gave rise to the concussion.

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 20:49Speaker 04

  Did you get any bad concussions that you can recall?

• 20:53Speaker 02

  I can't remember.

• 20:53Speaker 03

  He doesn't know what I just said.

• 20:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Senator, I mean, you have a sense, I didn't know this, but one of the committees you serve on has oversight over professional sports, is that?

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Well, just so you understand that the Commerce Committee in the Senate oversees sports and science, and so that's why I'm very excited to talk about this.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  I got no money from that part of the Congress.

• 21:19Speaker 03

  You should tweet him. I have both. Tweet him. I need to talk to him.

• 21:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that means you have, you not only have the fact that you play ball as an infusion of interest in this, but you also have your interest in science, so that's, that's great. You're the right guy for the job.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  I really enjoy the committee, it's one of my favorite ones.

• 21:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So give me the full name of that committee, just a...

• 21:38Speaker 02

  It's got a lot of words after it, commerce, science.

• 21:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Transportation is in there too.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Transportation.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  Does it use commas?

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think that's the committee I testified in front of about NASA's budget.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Oh, right, yeah, it's overseas NASA.

• 21:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You weren't there, though?

• 21:53Speaker 02

  I was not, I'm a newbie on the Senate.

• 21:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a newbie, okay, yeah, yeah, I testified in front of that committee. I was surprised how many, how many things they've had oversight over.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's one of the broadest jurisdictions of any committee, but to your point...

• 22:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But does that mean you have to worry about concussions in NFL?

• 22:07Speaker 02

  It, it means that we worry about concussions, period, in the NFL, but also we worry about, I mean, the NFL was granted a lot of authority by Congress, like antitrust exemptions they were given, the NCAA is under, under, under that, we have this illusion in this country that I think was created purposefully, that somehow the young people that are doing those sports are amateurs, so we don't pay them, but yet they are working 50, 60, 70, 80-hour weeks.

• 22:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that ship sailed back in the 70s when... Amateurs in the Olympics. I mean, Olympics amateur, amateur this and amateur. My father ran track and it was amateur, AAU, Amateur Athletic Union. I mean, everything was split up amateur, professional. Now that, that boundary's gone.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  It's blurred, but-

• 22:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And everywhere else but the NCAA.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  Look, my, my, my, football was my ticket in many ways. I got, I joke that I got into Stanford because of a 4.0, 1600, 4.0 yards per carry, 1600 receiving yards.

• 23:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very good.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  And, and so, I-

• 23:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A 1600 would be a perfect score on your SAT at the time.

• 23:15Eugene Mirman?

  I think everyone here knows that.

• 23:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, because, wait, because the SAT now is three parts and so it's not 1600.

• 23:21Eugene Mirman?

  Oh.

• 23:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a perfect score.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  2400.

• 23:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, 2400.

• 23:23Eugene Mirman?

  Well, I did very poorly, so what do I know?

• 23:27Speaker 04

  It's lucky you were a star athlete, Eugene.

• 23:28Eugene Mirman?

  Yes, yes.

• 23:32Eugene Mirman?

  I got a ping pong scholarship that I didn't waste.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  So, so what a privilege it was, I'm not, I'm not taking away from that. My ability opened up doors for me that were extraordinary. But my point is, is that it is gross, in my opinion, it's grossly unfair the way the NCAA treats a lot of our scholarship athletes, particularly football players and basketball players who work full-time jobs and go to school. And let's assume that they did get an injury. Now you can find yourself 10 years after you're playing football, by the way-

• 24:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They drop you like a hot potato, you get it?

• 24:04Speaker 02

  It's not even a four-year scholarship, it's a one-year renewable scholarship. So you have kids that are promised education, they serve the football team, they pack stadium seats, they get, blow out their knee and they're losing their scholarship. Or they, they have injuries 10, 15 years later and now have medical costs that the university's not covering. They, they work so much during school, they may not be able to finish in four years. Their scholarship isn't guaranteed for five or what have you. The scholarship doesn't cover the full cost, so if you're a poor kid coming there, your parents might not even be able to fly and see you play in games. You're, you don't, you can't work necessarily. So there's all these injustices that I see about the way the NCAA treats athletes. We had a hearing on it.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But how much of that is, is, to, to use the phrase, hoop dreams? People wanting to go pro one day. Rather than just, okay, I want to be exploited for four years and then go on to a regular job. I mean, a high percentage of, in Division One athletics, they think they're going to play pro, don't they?

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, look, I think the ambitions are there from a lot of folks, but the reality also...

• 25:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you, did you want to go pro?

• 25:06Speaker 02

  You know, I always said that football would be my ticket, but not my destination. I saw it as an opportunity, you know, I was the most highly overrated high school football player in the history of America.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  You know, somehow I was a high school All-American on the same team of guys like Emmitt Smith and things like that, who also came out of different state, but we made the same USA Today All-American team. So the blessing of choices, and the reason why I chose Stanford, I said, look, you know, I could get a full scholarship to one of the top educational schools. I said, let me go to that one, it'll open up more doors for me in the future. I was very clear on the stats that maybe 2%, 3% of kids are going to make from college, are going to make it to the pros.

• 25:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you, you looked at the data?

• 25:44Speaker 02

  I looked at the data.

• 25:46Speaker 03

  He's got a bad habit.

• 25:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's not a bad habit.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  And so, you know, look, there's got to be some balancing here where folks, because they often find themselves five years later with no degree, with an injured body, medical costs, not prepared to enter the real world in a competitive way, and we should...

• 26:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're not honest with ourselves about the exploitation of the students in that realm? That's really what it is?

• 26:10Speaker 02

  Right, but the safety concerns that you're bringing up, they're real as well, and we need to begin to really take that seriously. And some of it has to do with, again, at the college level, how much is that kid actually playing? How much risk are we putting them in? Should they have, you know, we were doing two-a-days or three-a-days. What is the measure of success for a student athlete?

• 26:32Speaker 03

  What about Title IX?

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, so is the measure of success, how many games they win? Or how good of an education they receive? And so that's the, that's the balance. And so these schools are winning these championships, but have graduation rates that are horrendous, a lot below the actual student body. To me, that is exploitation, and it's a failure of the mission of the institution itself. And so...

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, wait, be careful what you wish for. So suppose we change this and then we say, okay, let's give them all very high salaries. And then they buy homes, you know, as undergraduates and then what is that?

• 27:11Speaker 02

  But no, but that's what often happens in my senator and congressional debates is people want to debate you by leaping to the extreme.

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  And what I'm simply saying is...

• 27:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a middle. There's a middle somewhere.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  There's a large middle area that you said. Why not, first of all, give a scholarship that is the full work, the full cost of an education at the school with, because even now, they even admit it's hundreds of dollars below the living costs. Why not have, instead of one year renewables, so if you get injured or something happens and we kick you off, you, when you sign that letter of intent, you are guaranteed, you know, X numbers of years or a degree or at least five years. Why not say that we're going to cover your medical costs if you get injured and a lot of those things?

• 27:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell me about Deflate Gate. What was that all about?

• 27:50Speaker 03

  Oh, man, that was crazy. But that was, that was science. That was great.

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why I brought that to you. I didn't accidentally have you on this stage.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  I figured that out. I figured that out.

• 28:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 28:01Speaker 03

  But we know, the thing that we know is that pressure and temperature in this dance, wherever temperature goes, pressure goes. Temperature goes down, pressure goes.

• 28:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 28:11Speaker 03

  So we knew that it was a cold day, so the temperature went down, so the pressure followed it. However, if you do the math, you're not going to cover for the two PSI that was missing. So what I like to say is Mother Nature is off the hook. She didn't do it.

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so just so I understand something, Corey.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 28:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, I don't know why deflating a ball would make a team win by forty-eight to seven, or whatever was the score. It seems to me you're really, you're really reaching here. To try to say that, oh, you, that's why you won by such a great margin.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  No, I think you're missing the larger...

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I so am, and I need you to help me out here.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  Okay, this is not the point, but anybody who's ever played Nerf football, you can grab it better, it's easy to catch a deflated football. When I used to play, you know, if you, football like this one had a lot less pressure than it should have, either grown, but that is not this point. The point is this, this is a professional. That has millions of Americans, millions of people globally, children, young people. I, when I was young, I used to dream, these guys inspired my dreams. And the point is, not if they, how much they won by, or what, or the points on the board. It really does matter, the integrity of the game. What message are you giving to the public? And if you choose to cheat, you're basically saying it is win at any cost necessary, even to cheat.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  And so what you, the damage you do to the game when you cheat, for that little advantage, whether it's putting, if you're a pitcher, putting Vaseline or, or what have you on your arms, that is, that is injuring the sport and injuring the game. So I don't care if they won by 50 points, 60 points, 70 points. They cheated, and that should mean something, it should have a consequence.

• 29:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm with you on this. I just didn't know why a, a 2 PSI, lower pressure ball, would be better for winning. I just, I thank you for telling me. So it's because you can grip it better?

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Oh my god, if you go out and play with a Nerf football versus the same football, fully inflated, you'll see the difference between being able to grip it, being able to throw it, the accuracy.

• 30:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I know, in the physics-

• 30:16Speaker 03

  And it was also a very rainy day, so it was a slippery, slippery ball.

• 30:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, this was up in New England, it was. So, so also, so then, if that's the case, let me just take this a few physics steps further.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  I think you want greater friction, that's why it's easier to compress, so you can get a better grip.

• 30:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A better grip?

• 30:32Speaker 03

  That's the physics of it.

• 30:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But throwing, or catching?

• 30:34Speaker 02

  But no, catching, as a guy who spent a lot of my years catching those, the footballs, the inflated ball for me was easier to catch.

• 30:40Speaker 03

  But the report had one paragraph that everybody overlooked. It said, can you take 13 balls and deflate them in two minutes? And they had engineers do this test, and they're like, yes. That was the test. What, you could do it? You could do it. In a bathroom? Well, you get one of those needles, and you just, you can deflate it. That was the test that they did.

• 30:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, and another point is, this is what it tells me, because we wrapped this segment up. It's, it tells me that the football players themselves, didn't know enough physics to realize they would get caught.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  You gotta, you gotta explain that one to me.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no. If, if you knew the physics of this, you would say to yourself, if we deflate this, you cannot fool Mother Nature. And the laws of physics will ultimately indict us, not the laws of the land. Right? And the laws of fi... Science! Yes. They needed the science.

• 31:32Speaker 03

  Well, they tried to hide behind science in the first, you know, back in January and February. They were, they were talking about, well, this can happen. You know, they were really trying to hide-

• 31:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it's cold, but they didn't do the calculation.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  They didn't do the calculation.

• 31:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Had they done it, they would've said, we better stop this right here.

• 31:44Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 31:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That wraps up segment two on football with Senator Cory Booker. More StarTalk when we come back.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  He's, he's related to you.

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Did you, were you a hip-hop fan when you were young?

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, yeah, I was around when, I was around...

• 32:11Speaker 03

  How come I'm the oldest one?

• 32:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're talking about Martin Luther like he was your friend or something.

• 32:17Speaker 04

  Were you using like gramaphones as decks?

• 32:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cory, we're now on a subject that's near and dear to everyone. And if it's not, it should be. Or just, are you even human? And it's, uh, education.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just education. Uh, yeah. And, uh, you, one of, for me, one of your most noble causes that was written all over you in New Jersey as a, as a mayor. It's still there. It's how we first met. It's trying to-

• 33:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Reduce recidivism in prisons?

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By educating prisoners while they're there? So that when they come out, maybe they got a new thing they can do? That's right, that's right. Why hasn't anybody been doing that since prisons were invented? Why is that a new thing?

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Right. Well, first of all, I wish, this is an area where the data should be controlling our decisions. But what was controlling our decisions was fear and I suspect a lot of other basic emotions. America went-

• 33:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fear of a criminal, of a felon.

• 33:42Speaker 02

  Fear of a criminal. I think there was a lot of race issues also in this. Let's just keep it real, that we have gone through, right around the end of the civil rights movement, we had this explosion in incarceration fueled by a failed war on drugs. Over 800% increase in the federal prison population. And we now lead the planet Earth dramatically. We are 4% to 5%-

• 34:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We as in the United States.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  The United States. The United States is 4% to 5% of the globe's population. But we have about 25% of the globe's incarcerated people. And then when you start breaking it down about who gets arrested, you begin, that's when you start to see that this affects everybody. White folks who are turned into the system, black folks who are turned into the system. But there is no difference between drug usage. Let's give marijuana usage, for example. The last three presidents have admitted to using marijuana. But if you are an African American in this country, you are almost four times more likely to be arrested for using drugs, even though there's no difference statistically between blacks and whites using. You're almost four times more likely to be arrested for using drugs than somebody white.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  And so we've got this massive increase in incarceration disproportionately in poor communities, disproportionately blacks. We have states like New Jersey that have blacks that are about 14% of the state's population, probably a little less, that make up over 62%, about 60% of the prison population. But then the problem is, is as you said, then we let people out of prison. Remember, the majority of people arrested, these are not murderers, these are not violent criminals. The majority of people we arrest are nonviolent offenders. Then we let folks out, and then we immediately put them into a caste system in which they're punished for the rest of their lives. Because when you get out of prison and you have a felony conviction for a nonviolent, say, drug offense, you can't get a Pell Grant, you can't get a job, you can't get business loans.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  Can you vote?

• 35:37Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 35:38Speaker 03

  Can you vote?

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Your voting rights are restricted, your serving on a jury is restricted.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  Prisons are a business. Their business model is crime, right?

• 35:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:47Speaker 03

  So, you want people to come back. You don't want to educate them.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Well, that's why I've railed against private prisons.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  But private prisons are kind of the problem.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  And so now you have this large population that is going to find it very hard to reintegrate into society, and we wonder why two-thirds or more of our people that we release go right back into prison, fueling this prison industrial complex, as you seem to be putting it. And so, this is an aberration. It should not be. And there are logical things, based on facts, that we know there are ways to do better.

• 36:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If they're in prison, somebody's paying for them to be in prison.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If they have a job, they're earning money.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  And they're paying the common treasury.

• 36:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right. So, is there... Now, we're in a century where fluency in STEM is going to make the difference between whether you lead the world economically or not. So, do you get pushback from non-STEM people saying, "Why don't you help out the other subjects too?"

• 36:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you know...

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like, literature and history?

• 36:47Speaker 03

  The liberal arts. I mean, I...

• 36:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get pushback?

• 36:49Speaker 03

  I do get pushback.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, one of my favorite people on Sunday Morning did a book in defense of liberal arts.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  That's right. They're assuming that it's a zero-sum game. I'm saying when we need to... You know, everything's going towards STEM, but we don't forget the other things as well. Because we need to know things in context. That's why I've been, you know, spitting out all this history. I'm a scientist, because we have to know that how things are related and how things are interrelated as well. So, I don't think those things get left out. I don't think we have the perfect model.

• 37:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, your commentary this evening is living proof of why the rest of these subjects are important.

• 37:19Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 37:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because otherwise, you would have no way to think about how what you do know from your sciences fits in to our culture.

• 37:25Speaker 03

  That's right. You're thinking this is an invention, and you're the first person to see it, and it's never been done before. But if you look at history, you'll say, "Hey, we've been here before." Twitter, yeah, that's fine, but that used to be the pamphlet some time ago. So, we have to know how these things are all interrelated, so we need all those things.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  But the tragedy, I think, in our country, and I love the way you put it, and that's definitely worthy of applause.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  It really is, again, what I was saying in the previous segment about the global competitiveness. Does America want to stay as a dominant global economic force? And if we do, we've got to change our ways dramatically, because we are failing to graduate people from the STEM subjects. And we're leaving, nobody would field a football team with only six players. You're the one that tweets with less words, but most people want to put the full team out there.

• 38:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fewer words.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Fewer words.

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He started it.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  I did?

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With your big old SAT words.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  Well, we had Sputnik. We had Sputnik, and that galvanized, everything was aligned.

• 38:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to be clear, Russia had Sputnik.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  I'm talking about the global world.

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, okay.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  But my point is that we're fielding a team in science, technology, and leaving large amounts of our team on the sidelines. A, women, only about 1 out of 10 STEM professionals are filled by women. That's outrageous, the genius we're leaving on the sideline.

• 38:47Speaker 03

  It's more outrageous, it's more outrageous if you realize, again, I'm spitting out history, but in the 1890s, there were more girls in a STEM class than boys. 57%. What happened is the home economics movement sucked them all out. And by the time that bubble collapsed... What did I say? So gross.

• 39:06Eugene Mirman?

  We were like, "Let's teach people to make pie", and then they were like, "Oh, we'll just do that instead of..." Instead of math?

• 39:12Speaker 03

  Instead of math, that's right, run the house.

• 39:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, you just blew my mind with this data. 1890, there were more women in STEM fields, however that was defined at the time.

• 39:24Speaker 03

  57% in an algebra class, a chemistry class, was girls. And then the home economics movement pulled them all out, and then when that bubble collapsed...

• 39:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't even know there was a home economics movement!

• 39:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.

• 39:36Speaker 04

  It was called domestic science in my school, and I was always like, "I don't know about this phrase."

• 39:42Speaker 04

  It's domestic, yes.

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But wait a minute, at the turn of that century...

• 39:46Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 39:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The suffrage movement was warming up. So women were ready to claim voting rights in the UK, here in America. You tell me women are ready to want to go out and vote and change the world, but they just go in droves to become home ec?

• 40:01Speaker 03

  Because we were sold a bill of goods, that this is what we need. This was a way to empower women so they can run the home, run the farm, and doing it a way that's very business-like.

• 40:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And everyone just did it?

• 40:11Speaker 03

  Everyone did it. All the girls had to go to this class. But then that home economics bubble collapsed. Girls tried to go back into the science classes and they adopt, they got this bad reputation that they can't do science. So when we talk about girls in STEM, it's erroneous. I'm trying to use a big word, I'm sorry, I'm not up to it.

• 40:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Erroneous?

• 40:29Eugene Mirman?

  It was great.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  It's because, you know, girls could always do STEM. We used to rock STEM. It's just that there's no, you know, there's no memory in the system.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  Right, and so if our STEM team now is missing 50-plus percent of the population, and then if you take blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, they make up less than 10%, about 10% of STEM too. So you're leaving that pipeline dry as well. And so we're not getting everything on the field. And so, we as a society have to begin to understand, we have to figure out how to prime these sources of our genius. Because this country's most valuable natural resource is not oil or coal or gas anymore. It's the genius of our population, but we're not doing enough to cultivate that.

• 41:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you're working on it, you've got a program.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  My new science podcast's called Science Underground. We explain science topics in two minutes.

• 41:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why not take four hours?

• 41:15Speaker 03

  Because...

• 41:17Eugene Mirman?

  So that people...

• 41:17Speaker 03

  Because schools can use it, schools can use it.

• 41:20Eugene Mirman?

  Why not over-explain it, though?

• 41:23Eugene Mirman?

  Why not have people tune out in the middle?

• 41:27Speaker 04

  But I feel like even that fact, that like, girls used to outnumber boys in STEM, like, I never heard that before. Like, if you get that message into like, one girl's head, that's so powerful. Like, that's just like one line it took you a few seconds to say. But if you don't know it, then like, you don't know it.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  That's right. You think that we've always been at the bottom, but we haven't. We used to rock it. But you can't say that for two minutes.

• 41:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you got these two-minute biscuits, really, of wisdom and insight.

• 41:53Speaker 04

  Oh, biscuits that you made in home economics.

• 42:00Speaker 03

  You busted, totally busted.

• 42:03Eugene Mirman?

  Is the show called...

• 42:04Speaker 04

  It's called "Mary Poppins."

• 42:05Speaker 03

  That's right, that's right.

• 42:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It, it, it, it happens, just so you know, that because many foods, especially fruits, are spherical, like oranges, apples, and many objects in the universe are spherical, food becomes a, a, a potent way to reference things in my field.

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying. So, food is always, it, in the, in the mind of the astrophysicist, food and orbs, they all go together. In your podcast, that's in progress now, it's one thing to teach people and then they learn something, but there's something every kid has, and it's the why. I, I say this often, you know, we spend the first year or so of a child's life teaching them to walk and talk. We spend the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down. And that, and, and, and this, this inquiry, which is a fundamental part of childhood, gets beaten out of us, or it gets, or it, it withers on a vine. And so, maybe, it is, it's not how much science do you know? It's how long do you keep asking questions?

• 43:11Speaker 03

  That's what a scientist is. A scientist asks questions.

• 43:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've seen, I've seen kids, toddlers go into an elevator, right? And, and...

• 43:21Eugene Mirman?

  With a rabbi? Like, is this a bit...

• 43:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 43:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Toddler walks into an elevator. So, and, and they'll go to, like, push one of the red buttons in the thing. And the parent will say, "No, don't do that." And I'll say, "Let the kid push the emergency button." How, what harm could that do?

• 43:41Speaker 04

  No.

• 43:42Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 43:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no. The siren will go off, and then the kid will never do it again. But they'll learn something about pushing red buttons.

• 43:48Eugene Mirman?

  What is the fire department doing anyway?

• 43:53Eugene Mirman?

  Let them meet this nice child.

• 43:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I get, so I, I get to the... My, my kids, my wife and I, she has a PhD in mathematical physics. So, people always ask if, like, we have really messed up kids. But I don't, I don't think they're messed up.

• 44:05Speaker 03

  So, what you're saying is that we should give young children a screwdriver and show them an outlet and say, "Hey, we're gonna learn about electricity."

• 44:13Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  I think that that idea that you learn so much by experiential world. Maybe you might cut yourself, but you're gonna learn a lot. And I'm still one of those guys, I'm sort of a big kid, and I say, "Should I push this button?" And when I first came into the senate, I might be saying something that you're not supposed to tell people, but senators in their offices have a panic button. And I didn't know what it was. And I started pushing this button, and I was like, "What?" And so Capitol Police stormed my office.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  And so...

• 44:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These freshman senators, my god.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  We can't like wrap our children in bubble wrap.

• 44:49Speaker 03

  But that's what parents do, right? They don't let them do anything.

• 44:52Eugene Mirman?

  You can wrap your child in bubble wrap, you just need breathing, breathing.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  But there's another great study about...

• 44:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is true, you can wrap your kids in bubble wrap.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  There's another great study about, over the years, they looked at the radius in which children are allowed to walk. Over three generations, has been shrinking so much more.

• 45:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kids are such wimps today, it's clear. When we, I tweeted this, I had a whole hashtag, "When I was your age," right? One of them was, "When I was your age, if you fell off the monkey bars, you landed on cement."

• 45:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Am I right? Who's old enough here?

• 45:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

• 45:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nowadays, it's these soft cushions, "Oh, I fell off the monkey bars, and oh, oh." You know how to grip if you know cement is waiting for you 20 feet down.

• 45:35Eugene Mirman?

  Did you play on Soviet playgrounds?

• 45:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Soviet playgrounds?

• 45:41Speaker 02

  When I went to a school today, I asked, "You guys play dodgeball?" And it was almost like I said a dirty word. We don't play dodgeball anymore.

• 45:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 45:49Speaker 03

  But I think this translates to, this is, kids are afraid to be, to fail. And that's what you need in the 21st century if you're gonna make something. This is how you learn stuff. But if you, if we bubble wrap them, they're reluctant to do that. And also, if we test them, and we tell them that you have to get this right answer, no one's willing to try.