StarTalk Live! Big Brains at BAM (Part 1)

Delve into the human brain when Neil deGrasse Tyson and Eugene Mirman host The Big Bang Theory’s Mayim Bialik, Dr. Heather Berlin, Michael Ian Black, Paul Rudd and Bill Nye at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Read more and listen to the full show: http://www.startalkradio.net/show/startalk-live-big-brains-at-bam-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.

• 0:21Eugene Mirman?

  Welcome to StarTalk here at BAM.

• 0:27Eugene Mirman?

  Yes, it is now my incredibly great pleasure to bring on your host, a wonderful man, a hero to science, ladies and gentlemen, Neil deGrasse Tyson!

• 0:41Eugene Mirman?

  As promised, there's Neil. I will now bring on our two comedic guests tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Ian Black.

• 0:52Eugene Mirman?

  Hello. Thanks Eugene. Hello, Michael.

• 0:59Eugene Mirman?

  And the always delightful Paul Rudd!

• 1:08Eugene Mirman?

  Welcome, Paul.

• 1:12Eugene Mirman?

  So handsome!

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now, this is the science side of the house, right here. First, let me introduce, this is her second time as a guest on StarTalk Live. She's a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Columbia Presbyterian. Heather Berlin, come on Heather.

• 1:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I stumbled, not because I didn't remember her name, but in fact it's Mount Sinai Medical Center, not Columbia, so my apologies there. It's her second time, thank you. This is a neuroscience show, we have one more guest, and I'm a big fan of hers. Please welcome, warm Brooklyn welcome, to Mayim Bialik from The Big Bang Theory.

• 2:06Michael Ian Black?

  This is a hell of a lineup.

• 2:09Michael Ian Black?

  I'm just saying what they're thinking.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, we're gonna talk about the brain. And, you're here because, Mayim, you have a PhD in neuroscience. You don't only portray one who does on TV, you actually have one, right?

• 2:22Mayim Bialik?

  Yes, I'm a doctor and I play one on TV.

• 2:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You do both. You also have a new book that just came out on being a vegan.

• 2:30Mayim Bialik?

  Correct.

• 2:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we have 12 vegans.

• 2:32Mayim Bialik?

  Hey, we're in Brooklyn, there's plenty.

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I try to say, how do I weave veganism into StarTalk?

• 2:43Eugene Mirman?

  By just discussing it.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I noticed that the United States actually has plans, unfunded though they are, plans to go to Mars by 2030. And if you're on Mars, they're not gonna be bringing cows with them.

• 2:58Mayim Bialik?

  You just found the perfect way to incorporate it into the season.

• 3:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, in fact, they're developing vegan recipes to go to Mars. Because the first colonists there, they wanna be able to eat efficiently.

• 3:09Mayim Bialik?

  And not damage the environment of Mars.

• 3:13Michael Ian Black?

  But don't we need to damage the environment of Mars to make Mars habitable? Isn't that the entire point?

• 3:19Eugene Mirman?

  Mars is just one cow away from being a place people could live.

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, right, so, it's an interesting, what does damage mean? If you change what it is, that's damaging it technically. If you turn Mars into Earth, you totally messed with it, right? So, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

• 3:36Michael Ian Black?

  But was Mars actually like Earth at one point?

• 3:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't know, but we have evidence that it had running water.

• 3:42Michael Ian Black?

  Right.

• 3:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So something bad happened on Mars, long ago. And so...

• 3:46Eugene Mirman?

  George Bush.

• 3:51Eugene Mirman?

  Just a theory.

• 3:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, are you a candidate for NASA to retain as an advisor in this capacity?

• 4:01Mayim Bialik?

  No.

• 4:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why, you just wrote a book on veganism?

• 4:04Mayim Bialik?

  No, I wrote a book on the vegan things that I feed non-vegans that they enjoy. It has nothing to do with Mars, space. I should be on that side of the room to talk about it, not this side.

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it's tasty vegan food for the skeptic, I guess.

• 4:19Mayim Bialik?

  Sure. I write for a website called Kfeller, and I would often write about recipes that I had made vegan, just kind of in passing, and people wanted me to publish them. I'm not like a fancy celebrity chef, like, I never look like this. I usually am in sweats and an apron in my kitchen. So I wasn't looking to be a celebrity chef and say like, "This is how you should eat. It will make your family perfect." But what I know is what I've sort of cooked my whole life and things that I've made vegan that taste good, this still has nothing to do with science, but I'll be done talking.

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it does have to do with, because being a vegan means you're eating efficiently, given the ecosystem. That matters.

• 4:53Mayim Bialik?

  Right. One of the reasons that some people do choose to eat vegan is out of sort of deference to the planet and environmental concerns. It shouldn't cost more to store food than it does to actually give it to people, and sometimes that happens.

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and so I'm just saying, if you make food that non-vegan people are happy with, that makes you a really valuable person.

• 5:10Mayim Bialik?

  Why, thank you.

• 5:11Michael Ian Black?

  Speaking as someone with a perfect family, I have a question about veganism. Is applewood bacon, is that vegan?

• 5:21Mayim Bialik?

  It's got the word "apple" in it, it must be healthy.

• 5:24Michael Ian Black?

  Okay, good.

• 5:26Speaker 04

  I was just thinking of your book, "Pesto Pasta for Martians."

• 5:29Michael Ian Black?

  Yes.

• 5:30Speaker 04

  That was what you were working on, right, Wes?

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if you go to Mars, it takes six to nine months to get there, and then you have to wait for the planets to realign.

• 5:40Mayim Bialik?

  By then, you can digest the meat you ate last night. What? Sorry.

• 5:45Eugene Mirman?

  I just want to point out that most people are more omnivores. And don't just, like, nobody ju-- anyway, go on.

• 5:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, no, you're there, it takes that long to get there, and then you're there for the planets to align again, that's another year and a half, two years. So, it's a three, four-year round trip to do this. So, I mean, people are thinking serious and hard about this. And until Mars becomes terraformed, you're gonna have to sort of make do with plants and-- what, Paul?

• 6:15Speaker 04

  I read this article.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nothing good ever begins that way.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  I swear to God, did I?

• 6:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except I read this article on the internet.

• 6:22Speaker 04

  It was a very sketchy magazine. I'll throw it out there.

• 6:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which magazine?

• 6:25Speaker 04

  Uh, We. Life. Oh, a We. We, which is French for life. And this was, I want to say it was about 20 years ago, about the terraformation of Mars. And they talked about churning oxygen out of the rocks, creating some kind of... Atmosphere. Like, well, we retain an atmosphere. Is that what it was? Let's call it an air shield. An air shield. That's what I'm thinking. It's like an ozone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That would trap in the air and we would have these kind of habit trails, greenhouse, where we would grow food. They would populate Mars with about 50 or so people and over time, it would turn into,

• 7:07Speaker 04

  like, Judgment City, where it's 73 degrees and sunny all the time.

• 7:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you could have your cows that you were missing.

• 7:14Speaker 04

  Yes, so you would eventually, you would have cows.

• 7:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because a cow is a machine to convert...

• 7:19Mayim Bialik?

  You have to have like 10 for every person, though, because that makes sense.

• 7:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, a cow is a machine to turn leaves into steak, right?

• 7:29Mayim Bialik?

  In theory.

• 7:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What else is a cow?

• 7:32Mayim Bialik?

  That's what it was made for, apparently.

• 7:35Speaker 04

  I guess really, the only point I was, I just wanted everyone to know that I read life magazines.

• 7:41Speaker 04

  Because you certainly didn't have a question at the end of that. No, no, no. There was no, in fact, I was kind of ma, I was talking about it, not really knowing where I was gonna go with it.

• 7:50Mayim Bialik?

  There's a lot of big words, though.

• 7:51Speaker 04

  Terraformation, guys. I don't know, just check it out, if you get a chance.

• 7:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 7:55Mayim Bialik?

  Descend.

• 8:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now, another thing we may know you for is as Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory.

• 8:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I actually had a cameo on Big Bang Theory. Maybe before you became a regular character.

• 8:27Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, I was brought on the season finale of season three and then I was made a regular along with Melissa Roush, who plays Bernadette, about midway through season four.

• 8:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I'm a fan of the show. If you're not familiar with The Big Bang Theory, it's the number one sitcom on television, but otherwise, if you're not a TV-watching community, it's a caricature of geeks in their lives and they're professors at, I guess that's Caltech.

• 8:51Mayim Bialik?

  It's a group of physicists and one engineer with only a masters, which she's always teased about, yes.

• 8:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and it's been criticized for its stereotypes and I'm thinking it's a TV show, you know, I mean, just let it do what it has to do. You play a, I don't want to, a sexually frustrated...

• 9:08Mayim Bialik?

  Like every woman in science.

• 9:12Mayim Bialik?

  Not every woman.

• 9:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You preach, sister.

• 9:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's interesting to me is they each have some kind of psychological issues. I think your love interest, who is Sheldon, I think he comes closest to what anyone might describe as having Asperger's or some other kind of non-social behavior.

• 9:34Mayim Bialik?

  Right, so all of our characters are, in theory, on the neuropsychiatric spectrum, I would say. Sheldon often gets talked about in terms of Asperger's or OCD. He has a thing with germs, he has a thing with numbers, you know, he's got a lot of sort of that precision that we see in OCD. There's a lot of interesting features to all of our characters that make them technically unconventional socially. I think what's interesting and kind of sweet and I think should not be lost on people is that we don't pathologize our characters, we don't talk about medicating them or even really changing them, and I think that's what's interesting. For those of us who are unconventional people or who know and love people who are on any sort of spectrum, we often find ways to work around that. It doesn't always need to be solved and medicated and labeled, and what we're

• 10:18Mayim Bialik?

  trying to show with our show is that this is a group of people who likely were teased, mocked, told that they will never be appreciated or loved, and we have a group of people who have successful careers, active social lives that involve things like Dungeons and Dragons and video games, but they also have relationships and that's a fulfilling and satisfying life. And I think that's what we really try and show on our show.

• 10:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heather, there does seem to be this trend in society that if someone finds themselves on some extreme of some behavior spectrum, that you have to put them back in the middle like everybody else. And that can't be a good thing, right?

• 10:57Michael Ian Black?

  Can I tell you what we in the Church of Scientology...

• 11:06Heather Berlin?

  I think there's a movement in psychiatry now, so while I think labeling is important in certain respects because it can help clinicians talk about people in a certain way, it can help with treatment, but there are other, you know, negative aspects to it. People can get labeled with something that sticks with them for life, and the whole...

• 11:21Eugene Mirman?

  Like psychopath?

• 11:22Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 11:29Eugene Mirman?

  Not easy to get around.

• 11:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  His heart says shake that label, yeah.

• 11:35Heather Berlin?

  So, people normally come for treatment when they're feeling distressed. And there are a lot of people who are labeled with a disorder who can get on perfectly fine, who don't necessarily need treatment. And even now...

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then it's not a disorder, it's just an order.

• 11:47Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, it just has to do with the amount of distress it's causing to the person. And now, I think, the new DSM, which is the Diagnostic Statistical Manual that we use to diagnose different psychiatric disorders, has now actually taken away the label of Asperger's. And now, things like autism, or pervasive developmental disorder, Asperger's, are all put under this name of autism spectrum disorders.

• 12:08Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and also, Thomas Insal is trying to sort of do away with the structure of the DSM IV or V as we know it, to say more that we are all along the lines of many spectrums, right?

• 12:17Heather Berlin?

  So, yeah, Tom Insal is the head of the NIH, the National Institute of Health, and the way psychiatric diagnosis is going, and the way that I apply for grants, let's say, to do research, is that instead of saying, "I'm gonna study a disorder," because a lot of people with different psychiatric problems can be labeled as one disorder, we're now gonna look at these different dimensions and say, "Okay, is this person having problems like emotional instability, or impulsivity?" And try to find the neural basis of those particular traits, and treat that rather than the disorder.

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And never think of it as a disorder. This is good. So, the Big Bang Theory is leading the way in this?

• 12:48Heather Berlin?

  We are at the four... oh, yes.

• 12:51Michael Ian Black?

  This is some discussion. I know, like, I sometimes suffer from depression, and when I get stressed out, I just burn down a building now instead of taking my pills.

• 12:59Michael Ian Black?

  That works great for me.

• 13:00Heather Berlin?

  Did you learn that from the Big Bang Theory?

• 13:02Michael Ian Black?

  No.

• 13:05Michael Ian Black?

  I learned it from burning down buildings.

• 13:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, so, Maim, do they have neuroscience advisors on the show? I met the physics advisor there.

• 13:12Mayim Bialik?

  Dr. Salzberg, yeah, David Salzberg, from UCLA, a very fine university.

• 13:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where you got your PhD?

• 13:18Mayim Bialik?

  And my undergrad degree as well. Yeah, we have a physics consultant who, he also has, you know, a vast knowledge of general science, as those of us who are trained in science tend to. We have, you know, a smattering of this and that.

• 13:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you use him for even the neuro stuff?

• 13:29Mayim Bialik?

  Um, sometimes I'm used.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:34Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, we have a really exceptionally intelligent, interesting group of writers, many of whom have science backgrounds. But, yes, sometimes I get strange emails, like, "What part of the brain needs to be not working for us to have this happen?" Or, you know, "What should Amy be doing in her lab?" Or, we had a couple scenes in the episode we just filmed where I needed to have three different activities that I'm doing in my lab. And, you know, Amy's lab is not a perfect neurobiology lab. So I tried to at least make things look, you know, authentic for what we're doing. Get a lot of interesting comments, like, "Why would she be doing research in social affect in capuchins if she's also counting spores?"

• 14:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had that question.

• 14:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's a good point. I gotta say, though, that is a pretty obvious...

• 14:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I watched that episode and I was like, "That's bullshit."

• 14:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's no... No way.

• 14:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The whiteboards that had equations on the episode that I appeared. Racist.

• 14:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There used to be blackboards. What happened?

• 14:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it had equations drawn from my research. And the guy asked me, he said, "Did you recognize something on the set?"

• 14:34Mayim Bialik?

  It's a nerd fest over there.

• 14:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it turns out, he got equations from another Tyson doing research in astrophysics. Not from me.

• 14:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was it the male model Tyson Gay? Because he's wonderful. The reference nobody got.

• 14:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in your own life experience, or in the show, tell me about women in science. How's that treated and thought about?

• 14:59Mayim Bialik?

  Um, gosh, I mean, lots of different ways in my personal brain, but in terms of presenting or representing a female scientist, there were no other neuroscientists at my audition, you know, when I auditioned to play Amy Farrah Fowler. It was a group of very talented actresses, but, you know, as actors, we are paid to play whatever's on the page. We don't have to really be that in real life. So that was really just sort of an accident. I feel very lucky that I had that.

• 15:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was so disappointed when I learned Raj was not an actual actor. He was an actor.

• 15:26Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, we're all actors, but...

• 15:30Mayim Bialik?

  No, but, you know, I think when people especially criticize or say it's such a stereotype, you know, I know people like all those characters. I promise, I hang out with them sometimes. I know women like Amy Farrah Fowler. I was asked to do a female Jim Parsons impression, was literally the audition. I had never seen Big Bang Theory, and I was told they are looking for a female Jim Parsons. I said, "That's great, who's Jim Parsons?" I Googled Jim the night before, and I saw about 10 seconds of him doing his Sheldon bit, and I thought, "I can do that." You know, I know tons of people like that. So, I didn't have to present as a scientist per se that way, but Amy is based on a few female professors in particular, and a few male professors as well.

• 16:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Out of your own life, that you've assembled?

• 16:09Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, I mean, I spent 12 years in academia, I've met a lot of interesting people in neuroscience. So, yeah, she's based on a lot of real qualities and real things that exist, and there's all sorts of men and women in science. And, you know, there were professors in my department who looked like models, both male and female, and there were those that looked like the characters on Big Bang. And, you know, the fact that we present Amy as sort of a, you know, frumpy, like they dress me a couple sizes too big, and very kind of low on the aesthetic level, that's not a statement that women scientists can't be attractive. That's a very specific thing that our writers wanted to craft for this Sheldon-Amy relationship. But the Bernadette character is a microbiologist, and she gets to wear false lashes, and she wears, you know, fancier clothes than I do.

• 16:52Mayim Bialik?

  But I love that I get to go to work and put on slouchy clothes, I don't have to wear Spanx, I don't have to spend long hair and makeup.

• 16:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wonder, is there any correlation between extreme science talent and absence of social grace, Heather? Is there any research? The reason why I ask it, because that's the stereotype, it's been with us forever, and it's exploited on the Big Bang Theory.

• 17:13Eugene Mirman?

  Name one stereotype that's not true.

• 17:19Eugene Mirman?

  Fine, name two.

• 17:22Heather Berlin?

  So, people in academia, there is a stereotype. And the reason for that stereotype is there are a lot of people in, particularly the sciences and engineering, that, you know, you have to think very methodically. And the types of personalities, the types of dedication it takes to be an academic, in essence, you have to be a bit asocial. So I think it attracts people who tend to be a bit asocial, who think very rigidly. You need to be a bit obsessive compulsive about whatever it is that you're studying.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But isn't that it attracts asocial people? Or that the field does not reject asocial people, the way so many other fields would?

• 17:52Heather Berlin?

  Well, it could be a little...

• 17:53Speaker 06

  Yes, Neil, that's what it is.

• 17:57Heather Berlin?

  Well, one thing that people think is that high intelligence necessitates these personality characteristics, and that's not particularly true. There's not a high correlation between high intelligence and, say, Asperger's. So I think it's more that it attracts people to that field, rather than it's correlated per se with high intelligence.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the shows, you have live rhesus monkeys or something. Are they projected in, or are they really on the set?

• 18:38Heather Berlin?

  They're fantasy monkeys that you have to imagine. It appears on every screen. Yeah, we have real capuchin monkeys.

• 18:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 18:45Heather Berlin?

  Yeah. I'm a vegan, you shouldn't ask me too much about that. Acting monkeys. That's what I am. I'm just an acting monkey.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  Ed, you had real rhesus pieces, right? On the craft service table? Yeah.

• 18:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I skipped over a note here, I want to go back to it. After you got your PhD, you were a schoolteacher.

• 19:04Heather Berlin?

  I taught in the homeschool community in Los Angeles for junior high and high school. I did basic neuroscience, I designed a course on technological advances in neuroscience. I also taught high school biology in the homeschool community and a little bit of chemistry.

• 19:15Michael Ian Black?

  It's so crazy to me, because our resumes are almost identical.

• 19:20Eugene Mirman?

  My question, what does it mean to homeschool as a teacher that isn't? You know what I'm saying?

• 19:26Michael Ian Black?

  You don't live there.

• 19:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you homeschool?

• 19:29Eugene Mirman?

  Is there a... yeah, exactly. Is there a community of homeschool people that all meet up to have their own secret school?

• 19:35Mayim Bialik?

  Yes. Well, so often for higher level classes like junior high and high school science, a tutor or a teacher is hired and you meet usually in a home. Sometimes people meet in parks or community centers.

• 19:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a pack of kids there who are all homeschool.

• 19:47Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, I taught 10 high school students who were getting ready to start taking community college and the person on The Big Bang Theory was their biology teacher. It was kind of freaky for them.

• 19:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and you've also involved in a STEM initiative, I've been reading.

• 19:59Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, I'm the spokesperson for-

• 20:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.

• 20:02Mayim Bialik?

  I'm the spokesperson for Texas Instruments, which is the-

• 20:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 20:05Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, I've been their spokesperson. This is my third year, so I've had a TI-81. Depends on how old you are, what TI version you had. Yay, there's people my age.

• 20:13Eugene Mirman?

  I-

• 20:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the Terminator that comes back to kill on the church.

• 20:19Michael Ian Black?

  He's the scariest one of all.

• 20:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  TI-82.

• 20:23Eugene Mirman?

  What is a TI-81? Say we're not whatever the age they were.

• 20:26Mayim Bialik?

  So it's a handheld graphing calculator. So I got mine, I think, when I was 14 and that same graphing calculator took me all the way through junior high, high school, into college and grad school. There's a new one called the TI Inspire that now is in color and you can download images and you can create parabolas from, you know, images of basketballs being shot. It's exciting. And so there's also a bunch of physics. There's a bunch of physics and chemistry stuff.

• 20:48Eugene Mirman?

  I had no parabola machine.

• 20:51Eugene Mirman?

  But I had a notebook that was great, covered in bands I liked.

• 20:55Speaker 04

  Can you type in those letters and then you hold it upside down and it says hello?

• 21:00Mayim Bialik?

  You can still do that.

• 21:01Speaker 04

  You know it's good then.

• 21:04Mayim Bialik?

  Yes.

• 21:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In my day, there was the TI people and then the HP people who had reverse Polish notation. And those were the cool kids.

• 21:12Mayim Bialik?

  There's still that debate going on when I go to conferences, yes.

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 21:16Michael Ian Black?

  In my community, it's between Twizzlers and Red Vines.

• 21:21Eugene Mirman?

  You can spell boob in both.

• 21:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so Maya, everyone has odd relationships with their parents, yet, I mean, in the show.

• 21:30Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, God.

• 21:31Speaker 06

  Yeah. Go on, Neil.

• 21:33Mayim Bialik?

  Wow.

• 21:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your character, we don't know your, will your family come into a future episode?

• 21:39Mayim Bialik?

  There was one episode with, um, I'm laughing, it'll be funny in a second. There was an episode where Amy wants to convince her mother that she's dating someone. This is before she and Sheldon were dating. So she asks him to pretend like he's her boyfriend and they Skype with her mom. So there was a mom scene. And he says to her, because he's trying to convince Amy's mom that they're dating, "I just made love to your daughter's vagina."

• 22:05Mayim Bialik?

  And that was the end of the Skype call, was that?

• 22:09Mayim Bialik?

  Sorry. Is that okay to say?

• 22:12Speaker 06

  It's okay to say.

• 22:13Mayim Bialik?

  I didn't write it. I don't get it.

• 22:17Mayim Bialik?

  I'll tell you later.

• 22:18Speaker 06

  If you can say it, CBS.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, on the subject of sex, in The Big Bang Theory, there's a lot of sexual tension everywhere.

• 22:28Speaker 06

  In restaurants, in butts.

• 22:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Maya.

• 22:33Mayim Bialik?

  Yes, I'm listening.

• 22:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have this sort of dual attraction to Sheldon and to Penny.

• 22:38Mayim Bialik?

  Amy is bi-curious.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bi-curious, there's a word for that, okay?

• 22:42Mayim Bialik?

  We're in Brooklyn, of course there is.

• 22:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's bi-curious and it's charming to watch that.

• 22:49Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, there was a lot in season four, there was a lot of the understanding that for some people, and Amy was one of them, who arrive late to kind of social interactions like that, and especially sort of sexual feelings and feelings of intimacy. There's an appreciation of all kinds of beauty. And obviously Sheldon is very attractive to Amy for a lot of reasons, but Penny is as well.

• 23:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's also Raj, I think he's bi-interest, what was the word?

• 23:13Mayim Bialik?

  Bi-curious?

• 23:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bi-curious, yeah.

• 23:14Speaker 06

  Are you learning about bi-curious right now?

• 23:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, just the word.

• 23:18Speaker 06

  That makes me very happy.

• 23:23Mayim Bialik?

  Yes, Raj and Howard have a very special relationship.

• 23:29Michael Ian Black?

  Somebody doesn't go on Craigslist.

• 23:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Well, to take us out of this segment,

• 23:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  there's an episode, The Gothwick's Deviation, I think it was called, where there's a discussion about modifying people's behavior. And Sheldon modifies Penny's behavior by offering her chocolate. And he changes her behavior instantly, essentially, for this. And that brings up the question, do you modify behavior by training people to learn how to behave? Or do you just reward good behavior and punish bad behavior? Like BF Skinner was famous for...

• 24:10Heather Berlin?

  Well, he took it to very far extreme behaviorists. They all thought that we're...

• 24:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he did this with his kids.

• 24:14Heather Berlin?

  He might have, yeah.

• 24:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you have a newborn, I understand.

• 24:17Heather Berlin?

  I do, she's three months old.

• 24:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Three months old.

• 24:20Mayim Bialik?

  Isn't it fun to be a scientist with kids?

• 24:22Heather Berlin?

  No, it's amazing.

• 24:23Mayim Bialik?

  I know.

• 24:24Heather Berlin?

  I like put her in front of the mirror, "Do you recognize yourself yet?"

• 24:29Mayim Bialik?

  I did it too.

• 24:30Heather Berlin?

  She's gonna be messed up.

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. At least the children who write books about their parents.

• 24:35Heather Berlin?

  Exactly.

• 24:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The following show is a live show we recorded on February 24, 2014, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In addition to my co-host, comedian Eugene Mirman, we were joined onstage that night by neuroscientist Heather Berlin, comedian Michael Ian Black, the actor Paul Rudd, and star of the hit TV show The Big Bang Theory, Mayim Bialik.

• 25:18Heather Berlin?

  BF Skinner's idea was that we're born sort of tabula rasa, blank slate, and you can make anybody into anything just by training, by giving them rewards and punishments and modifying their behavior accordingly. What we know now is that we're born with certain genetic predispositions to behave in certain ways, and then you can modify behavior within a range that you're given biologically. So for even something like intelligence, for example, you can be born with a genetic predisposition to be within a certain, let's say, IQ range. Then your environment can push you sort of towards the top end of that range or maybe, you know, towards the low end of that range. Then we're knowing now from mapping out the brain and looking at the genome that what seems to be most affected by the environment is the way the brain is wired. So you're born with certain genetic predisposition in terms of the structures of the...

• 25:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But let me just ask you. Can you teach someone math faster by giving them candy than just by teaching them? I mean, I'm just wondering...

• 26:06Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, well, actually, yeah.

• 26:07Eugene Mirman?

  ...or holding them underwater and being like, "Learn it, learn it." And then raise... Waterboarding, I guess I'm describing waterboarding. A towel on the face, a little bottle of water, and some math.

• 26:21Heather Berlin?

  Well, we know that people discount delays with rewards. So if you give someone like a reward right away, they'll put more emphasis, they'll want that rather than waiting for a reward later.

• 26:29Mayim Bialik?

  Well, I think the issue there is motivation and not necessarily a skill set and a cognitive ability or a technical ability. So the fact is, yes, candy makes everything better, no matter what you're trying to learn, because it's a very strong motivator and it's a potent motivator.

• 26:41Heather Berlin?

  It might not make you better at math, but it might make you study for longer, for example.

• 26:45Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and also, it's a great...

• 26:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What will cocaine do for my math skills?

• 26:50Eugene Mirman?

  Yes. A kid could learn French in a week on heroin.

• 26:57Eugene Mirman?

  Now, that's a reward.

• 27:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  OK, so a little of both might help, I guess. I mean, this is the gold star that children get in elementary school, right? That's the...

• 27:07Heather Berlin?

  I mean, it does work to a certain extent. As I said, it'll help motivate behavior, but it won't give you a skill set that you don't have.

• 27:12Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and I think also as parents, it's one of the early things we learn when we're talking about how we discipline children. And waterboarding joking aside...

• 27:20Mayim Bialik?

  Threats and fear and punishment and pain are very, very strong motivators to change behavior. The "do you want to condition a child with fear?" is a much larger question, which is probably not funny at all, and I won't go into it.

• 27:31Heather Berlin?

  There's positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. There's also taking away of a positive, which can be another way to help somebody learn. So, there's a whole variety of ways you can model behavior.

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought about taking away, so if someone lives with a positive, you threaten to take that away.

• 27:45Eugene Mirman?

  Like a finger. Don't tell me it's not a positive. I don't have a child, so it's fine that I'm saying all this.

• 27:58Michael Ian Black?

  I have two children, and it's fine that you're saying this.

• 28:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back on StarTalk Radio, more from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, StarTalk Radio. Give it up for our panel.

• 28:10Michael Ian Black?

  Thank you.

• 28:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want to thank you all for coming. Can I get the house lights up just briefly? There's someone in the audience I just want to introduce to you all. There's, there's a... Bill Nye!

• 28:49Speaker 06

  He follows me everywhere. I can't get rid of this guy.

• 28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He kept it a secret for you. How you doing, man? I'm gonna put Bill on the panel. Why not?

• 29:09Eugene Mirman?

  He should probably, yeah. He should go between science and comedy.

• 29:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right here, there you go. How you doing, Bill? You happy to be in town? Thanks for showing up.

• 29:18Speaker 06

  We just did Bill Maher together.

• 29:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

• 29:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, Bill, you're not actually the person I was first gonna introduce.

• 29:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can we bring the lights back up again, please?

• 29:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we have in the audience- President Barack Obama.

• 29:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, he doesn't know he's being introduced. Will Phil Larson please stand up? Phil! Where are you? Yeah! There he goes, Phil Larson, everyone is-

• 29:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't know who he is yet. Hold your applause until you find out who he is. He's-

• 30:00Eugene Mirman?

  The first person to ever eat a baby.

• 30:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Phil Larson comes to us from the President's Office of Science and Technology Policy. So he's representing the White House here at this StarTalk. Thank you.

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks, Phil, for coming. Alright.

• 30:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we wanna take this deeper into the brain. Heather, what is consciousness?

• 30:46Heather Berlin?

  We're gonna start easy and then build it up.

• 30:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, what is consciousness?

• 30:49Heather Berlin?

  I mean, that's a great question.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And self-awareness?

• 30:52Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 30:53Eugene Mirman?

  Don't pull any punches, just let us have it.

• 30:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what my biggest question is?

• 30:57Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 30:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How come identical twins don't think they are each other?

• 31:01Speaker 07

  That's your biggest question?

• 31:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, why am I me and not you?

• 31:08Heather Berlin?

  Are you high?

• 31:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you can say it because we're different people. But if you have an identical twin, you're the same person, but you're not.

• 31:14Speaker 07

  Do I just make that much?

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so what's up with that?

• 31:17Heather Berlin?

  Well, first of all, what is consciousness? We can define consciousness very simply as first-person subjective experience. So you only are aware that you have it. I don't know what your consciousness is like. I only know what it is from internally. How is it tied to the brain? We're still trying to figure that out. Now, that's different than self-awareness. So you can be conscious without being self-aware.

• 31:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like in a coma? Or asleep?

• 31:37Heather Berlin?

  Um, yeah.

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like my old boss.

• 31:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill, I don't think you ever had a boss.

• 31:45Speaker 07

  Oh, no, I used to have a job.

• 31:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you didn't? Okay.

• 31:49Heather Berlin?

  Well, so, for example, babies, they can be conscious, meaning you can have raw sensations, like seeing the color red, or feeling something soft, or smelling a rose, without being aware of oneself, or having sort of metacognition, like thoughts about other thoughts, or I'm the one having these thoughts.

• 32:04Mayim Bialik?

  There are syndromes also where we see that people have an experience of being conscious, of experiencing things in the environment, correct, without a notion of concrete self-awareness?

• 32:14Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, there are certain dissociative disorders where people lose their sense of self, but they're still conscious. So consciousness is very unique. You don't need to have necessarily memory for it, you don't need to have self-awareness, you don't even need language.

• 32:24Michael Ian Black?

  Alex Baldwin, in his New Yorker, says, "Seems to be displaying this," is that what you're saying?

• 32:31Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 32:31Speaker 07

  It's an article you read.

• 32:32Michael Ian Black?

  Yes.

• 32:34Speaker 07

  I read articles.

• 32:36Speaker 04

  Just check out this one in Life magazine I read about 20 years ago, about terraformation of Mars. I'll tell you about it later.

• 32:43Eugene Mirman?

  They're saying a baby could hear Bruce Springsteen, but like not know why it's having so much fun.

• 32:52Speaker 04

  What about, like, lucid dreaming? Boo.

• 32:56Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, it's another form of awareness. Your brain is in a different state. It's conscious, but it's in a different state of awareness.

• 33:01Speaker 07

  What is lucid dreaming?

• 33:03Heather Berlin?

  Lucid dreaming is when some people are able to be in a dream and know that they're themselves dreaming, and they control their dreams.

• 33:09Speaker 07

  Can I say, "Been there, done that"?

• 33:10Heather Berlin?

  Oh, yeah. Was it good?

• 33:13Speaker 07

  Well...

• 33:17Speaker 07

  For me, it was...

• 33:19Heather Berlin?

  It was awesome.

• 33:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wait, so a lucid dream is a dream that you're self-aware you're in?

• 33:28Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 33:28Mayim Bialik?

  I have these all the time, where I will, well, I mean, I speak other languages, I speak Spanish, and I speak Hebrew, and I will often have a dream where I'm trying to...

• 33:34Speaker 07

  Enough, Maya.

• 33:41Speaker 07

  The PhD wasn't enough.

• 33:44Mayim Bialik?

  I'm just, I, anyway. Sometimes I will be trying to consciously figure out how to communicate something in my non-native tongue. I know that I'm having a dream where I'm trying to communicate and I'm literally computing what to say and how to say it and in which tense, but I'm very aware that this is going on.

• 34:01Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, so normally in a dream state, the part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex is down-regulated. It's decreased in activation so that you're normally not so aware of what's going on and these subcortical processes are allowed to come through without being monitored.

• 34:12Speaker 07

  The subcortical processes.

• 34:13Heather Berlin?

  The limbic system, the emotional part.

• 34:15Speaker 07

  The amygdala?

• 34:16Heather Berlin?

  The amygdala is part of that.

• 34:18Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 34:19Heather Berlin?

  Exactly. The reptile brain, yes.

• 34:21Speaker 07

  Reptile brain.

• 34:22Heather Berlin?

  So it's very active in a dream state, this reptile brain, this limbic emotional brain and...

• 34:27Michael Ian Black?

  I had a reptile brain.

• 34:28Speaker 07

  Reptile brain. One thing leads to another.

• 34:35Heather Berlin?

  In lucid dreaming, you can be in a state where you can actually engage the prefrontal cortex a bit more and have some self-awareness infuse this dream state.

• 34:42Speaker 07

  Do you see that on an MRI while somebody's asleep? Are we able to do that or can you light it up while someone's unconscious?

• 34:48Heather Berlin?

  So there are a lot of sleep studies which usually don't use MRI because you have to put them in a sort of scanner. Yeah, it's very loud and they can't sleep. Exactly, it makes a lot of noise. So there are EEG studies which look at different sleep states and dreams.

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're telling me asleep you are conscious, in a coma are you conscious?

• 35:03Heather Berlin?

  So that's a really interesting question. There's new studies now that are showing there are certain people who are in a coma, you can actually put them in a scanner, the one that makes all the loud noise, the FMRI, and you can say to them, "Okay, we want you to imagine either say walking through your house or imagine playing a game of tennis." Now, they can't respond at all. And we know what a healthy person's brain would look like if they're imagining walking through the house or imagining playing tennis. And there's been some cases of people who we think they're in a coma and nothing's getting through, but if you just simply tell them, "Imagine this," their brain lights up in the right corresponding way.

• 35:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So hence this story, I thought maybe it was just fiction where you can read books to a person in a coma and they might still be...

• 35:37Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, and it's not every person in a coma, so...

• 35:39Mayim Bialik?

  If you want to hedge your bets, read the book.

• 35:40Heather Berlin?

  Exactly. Just in case. But it was maybe like 1 out of 50, they found this person really was having awareness.

• 35:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 35:47Michael Ian Black?

  Are those people more likely to emerge from the coma?

• 35:49Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, they now have something called the PCI, which I think is called the Perturbation Complexity Index. So what you do is zap a part of the cortex with a magnet,

• 35:56Mayim Bialik?

  TMS.

• 35:57Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, TMS, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. And then you look at if there's a cacophony of activation in response to that, almost like if you hit a bell and you hear it ring. You know that there's a lot of connectivity, and those people are more likely to come out of the coma than if you just give them the TMS and the activation only happens locally.

• 36:12Michael Ian Black?

  Do those people ever have memories of their time in the coma?

• 36:17Heather Berlin?

  That varies.

• 36:18Mayim Bialik?

  And also, this is a very small N we're dealing with.

• 36:19Heather Berlin?

  Yes.

• 36:20Mayim Bialik?

  To run the stats on this kind of thing, you'd have to take so many people who would qualify for this kind of coma study. It's a very small N. I wouldn't be making any...

• 36:28Heather Berlin?

  Oh, no, obviously.

• 36:29Mayim Bialik?

  Not you, but...

• 36:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like the record show, Mime said "small n", meaning small sample size.

• 36:34Heather Berlin?

  Right, thank you.

• 36:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 36:37Speaker 07

  It's not going to be a fraction. That's what "n", it's a traditional method.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 36:41Speaker 07

  We are geeking out.

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to StarTalk Live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. We'll have more of the show next week. Until then, keep looking up.