When Science Crashes the Party

Janeane Garofalo engages in political warfare, delving into the furious debates between Democrats and Republicans and the science issues that divide them.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist and director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium. This week's subject, when science crashes the party. What do I mean by party? I mean political party. We're going to spend a whole hour analyzing how science gets made in Congress. The contents of that sausage is mysterious to most people. It's something I couldn't do by myself.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had to bring in a special guest co-host for this analysis. None other than the one, the only, Janine Garofalo. Janine, welcome to StarTalk Radio.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you for having me.

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, my gosh. I feel, I feel like I'm in the, in the presence of royalty here. I mean comedic royalty.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  That's very kind of you, but you, you, you need, I'm here, I'm here. I already agreed to do it. You don't have to, you don't have to.

• 1:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't have to keep kissing up to you.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Kill the lily here. I'm here.

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You may know her from, she has many TV and movie roles and I first learned of her existence as a stand-up comedian, but she, in recent years, she's been a writer and political activist, right? Very left-wing, like off-the-left-edge political activist, I would say. Would you agree to that?

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, well, I'll, I'll take it. I'll take left-wing and liberal, progressive, however you want to call it. I prefer to, if, if you mean by that, social justice issues and intellectually curious and a person who cares and has an I-thou relationship with the world as opposed to I-it, then yes.

• 1:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And you're, and you just started a new season of De-located on Adult Swim. That's what Comedy Central becomes at night, I guess.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, welcome, welcome.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I want to just talk about the skirmishes that have been going on between the Democrats and Republicans because, well, of course, they're going to argue about anything, but there's some things you think maybe they shouldn't be arguing about, and that's science. And what I have for this show is clips with a, a 20-year Republican

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he's served in the House of Representatives for twenty years, and he's Republican. We're gonna get to my interview clips with Bob Walker in just a few minutes. And so, but I just wanted to just talk about this with you a bit. Right now, of course, there aren't, there are no Republican, there are no Democratic debates, because I guess Obama's the-

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 2:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not yet, not yet. But right now, we've been, like, exposed practically weekly to Republican debates.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  And last night was the Huckabee debate. Where the Fox, the Fox Huckabee, ridiculous.

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I haven't, I haven't seen, I haven't been following them.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Well, you only need, you only need to see one.

• 2:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I did only see one.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  They're very similar.

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're all just variations on the theme. So how would you characterize them?

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Well, I'd characterize it the way that I would characterize Republican politics over the last thirty years, but especially over the last fifteen years. Just much more anti-intellectual, much more pandering, much more, uh, myth, you know, they love myth, they love a good story, but what had, the newest component-

• 3:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, such as they, apparently the public loves a good story.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  No, half the public, the public that, that, that responds to their messages.

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, but so you arguing about the candidates, or you arguing about the people who they're getting to vote for them?

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Well, it's the same thing. There's the cynics and the suckers, right? So there's the cynics at the top.

• 3:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm saying, if a good story gets people to vote for you, then why aren't we all telling good stories?

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Uh, well, because sometimes a good story doesn't make it a true story. You know, and it can be detrimental.

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so the truth matters, is what you're saying.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, so when the Republicans pander to their base-

• 3:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Which basically is a Republican party at this point, the Tea Party, which is merely a subset of the Republican Party, they are not an, they are not a grassroots deficit hawk organization, they are a subset of the Republican Party, they are fully financed, and, and a lot of them primarily motivated by racial intolerance and anti-immigrant sentiment. So, we can, we can call them the Tea Party if you want, that's fine, but, you know, they're merely part of the Republican base. But the stories that appeal to them, as that base gets catered to, the rest of society suffers, and as the Democratic base gets ignored, society suffers.

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so, you, so, all right, well, let's get, let's get to my first clip of my interview with Bob Walker. He's a Republican, he represented Pennsylvania in the US House of Representatives, and was there for twenty years, from nineteen seventy-seven through nineteen ninety-seven. So that's, that's the entire tenure of the Reagan administration, for example, is right smack dab in the middle-

• 4:30Speaker 01

  And Clinton.

• 4:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of his, so, yeah, Clinton as well, that's right. And he was an outspoken conservative, as so many leading Republicans had been. And a strong ally of Newt Gingrich, they're like golf buddies.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  But this is when Republicans and conservatives were slightly different than they are now.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so there's a changeover.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  I mean, there's been a change happening over 30 years, but it still wasn't quite where it is now, back when he was serving.

• 4:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so he was like a good Republican.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  No, I have no idea, I haven't heard the clip. I'm just saying that there wasn't the absurdity that goes on today.

• 4:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My interest in him is that he served as the Chair of the Science Committee, the House Science Committee. And in fact, I've worked with him many times in my tours of duty in Washington. Let's find out what his opening remarks here.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  The process that our forefathers established is an adversarial process. It was purposely adversarial. Our forefathers did not want power to be exercised easily. And so you created three branches of government, all of which have tensions among them, and you have two Houses of Congress that institutionally hate each other. And so the fact that you get something through the House doesn't mean that it'll even ever come up in the Senate. The fact that Senate is able to achieve some sort of compromise in order to get it through its very, very stringent processes, doesn't mean that once it gets over to the House that it will achieve a majority vote there. The forefathers wanted it to be that difficult.

• 5:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So no one can run away with power?

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Right, precisely. And so people who are used to decision-making that's either based upon a known stream of knowledge, or are used to, as many businessmen are, used to the fact that, okay, we've accumulated the data, here's the decision.

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's the decision. Buy here, sell there, import from there.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  But that doesn't work in the Congress. I've known some CEOs that have come to Congress, gotten themselves elected to Congress and so on, who ended up spending the first three or four years they were there, just frustrated as all get out, because the way in which they were used to making decisions simply didn't happen in the Congress.

• 6:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's institutionally resistant. It's not just the resistance of an individual.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we can't implicate any individual, any one party.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  Or a party.

• 6:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is designed to prevent you from making swift, powerful decisions.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Look, I often tell people that the difference between being in the majority and being in the minority is, in the minority, you can fight wonderful ideological battles every day. You can take a look at a piece of legislation and say, here are the weaknesses in it. You charge up the hill with your flag flying and so on. You come down at the end of the day, you're all bloody, you really feel good about the battle. You lose, but you feel good about it. The majority, you actually have to work because at the end of the day, you have to win. There's no sense being in the majority if you don't win. How does that happen? Well, the chairman, for example, goes around and talks to members of the committee. He starts with a bill that then gets compromised out over a period of time as each member says, "I can live with this section, but this section here, I can't live with," and so on.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Well, you say, "Well, you know, Congressman so-and-so from Tennessee, he had to have that section of the bill. Well, can we modify it this way? And will he take it that way?" And so you go through writing bills to a series of compromises. So at the end of the day, you win, but sometimes you don't feel all that good about it. But that's the essence of the process. That's what has to take place, and it's very, very different in that sense.

• 7:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how we became a country in the first place. It's a tapestry of compromise.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  It's the essence of our constitutional convention. That's right.

• 7:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, man. I didn't want to hear that. I can't even disagree with that because I know it's true, but I was hoping it wasn't. Janine?

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Well, you know, you can bring up the forefathers, and that's all well and good. Now, the difference there would be the forefathers were all intellectuals who were not under the impression that epileptics were possessed by the devil, which was a common theme at that time, right?

• 8:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah, yeah.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  They didn't have that in mind that they would be arguing. What they were trying to do is make sure there was no monarchy, and they were developing their system upon the Enlightenment, a lot of it, the French Enlightenment. So they had a very different idea. They did not foresee K Street and lobbyists and Lee Atwater and Karl Rove and all manner of...

• 8:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the forces at play.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  And Citizens United and Supreme Court.

• 8:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the forces at play.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  All the things that are at play now could not have been foreseen then. So, yes, the idea of you don't want somebody to consolidate power, there should be rigorous debate. What they meant was rigorous intellectual debate from honest brokers. And you know what? It isn't both sides' fault. There is an intractability that is been stated very clearly by Jim DeMint and Mitch McConnell at this point. It is a zero-sum game right now. The Republicans refuse to allow Barack Obama any victories. Unfortunately, Barack Obama hasn't shown the greatest leadership skills either, but they are intractable.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, you've appeared on Fox News, haven't you?

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, yes.

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. But so how do ideological issues get hashed out there?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Well, there's two things I would say. Ideology is another word that I don't think adheres to fact. We're forgetting about facts here. And I want to be annoying and read the dictionary definition of fact.

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  For just one second.

• 9:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just in case any of us forgot.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  And no, no, not that you didn't, but I just want anything that actually happens in time or space, a strictly true statement, a certain truth or reality. Now ideology is defined as a set of ideas, prejudices, beliefs and doctrines of a group or movement. So I am not an ideologue, right? I am a fact-based person and I try and do my due diligence and I try and understand what's going on because I don't want life to just happen to me, right?

• 10:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So ideology-

• 10:02Speaker 01

  So when I go on Fox, that's a propaganda network set up entirely to corson and dumb down-

• 10:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I hadn't appreciated this. Ideologies don't have to be fact-based.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  No, right. So I'm not, you know, and also saying partisan is not accurate either. A partisan is defined as-

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You looked that one up too?

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I did. I'm not that I didn't know what it meant, but I just want to read these. Adherent or follower to a person, cause, or party. That still doesn't address facts. So we got to use the right words here. They're very important. There's a difference between believing in facts and then arguing partisan stuff or arguing ideology or arguing propaganda.

• 10:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are the comments of Janine Garofalo, my guest co-host for StarTalk.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  They're very strident and annoying. Even my own voice irritates me to a degree. I cannot even tell you.

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Irritates yourself.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  It irritates me, but believe me, I'm the strident over ordering a cup of coffee. Like I, just the way I sound unfortunately.

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me go to my next clip where we talk about science as a partisan topic in Congress.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Which it is not.

• 11:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which shouldn't be, but it, in practice it is. So let's find, let's get some insight into that from my pre-recorded interview with Representative Bob Walker, 20-year representative in Congress.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Let me give you an example of the kind of thing where you end up with some divides. I'm the co-author of the first climate change bill that ever came in the Congress. George Brown of California and I sponsored the first climate change bill. It's a bill that said what we need is additional research data on what impacts the climate. And so over a period now, we did this back in the-

• 11:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just as a reminder, so George Brown is a Democrat.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  Was a Democrat.

• 11:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have a bipartisan bill.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  Bipartisan effort, yeah.

• 11:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's always safer.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  Right, yeah, yeah, precisely. And this was a time when they were in control of the Congress.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when was this, approximately when?

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Uh, end of the seventies.

• 11:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, Democrats ran everything, right?

• 11:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, precisely.

• 11:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  And so at that point, we co-authored this bill. And it has produced a lot of the satellites and science instruments that are now used to measure climate activity across the world. I think that that kind of data is what gives us a basis then on which to make good judgments. It doesn't necessarily mean that I'm, as a Republican and as a conservative, necessarily enthusiastic about changing the entire economy of the country and the world in order to accommodate what people now theorize as climate change. And I actually end up being somewhat suspicious of some of the research models that are out there that predict the climate change, only because I got involved early in the research on it and know that there's data out there that we have yet to collect.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  I mean, we only have a few years of data of the ocean atmospheric interface, for example. And without that kind of data, it's real hard to say that you know with great certainty what's going to happen going forward in climate.

• 12:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's imagine.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  And so you can get a partisan divide then over what the policy should be that follow on from some of the research.

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, I see. So what you're saying is because there are policy implications, that changes how people react to information?

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. And in particularly in something that big, I happen to think you ought to have pretty firm data and you ought to have a lot of it before you begin to make fundamental policy changes about changes in the entire economy and culture.

• 13:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're going to pick up on that interview when we get back from our first break. This is StarTalk Radio.

• 13:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Joining me this week is guest host, Janine Garofalo. Just, we had to cut Bob Walker short, but I want to get the full answer to my question of him. He was describing some of the sort of Republican resistance to the emergent science on global climate change. And I told him that there's a point where I couldn't agree with where they were taking those scientific issues. Let's see how he replied to me.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  Well, those are really very much individual judgments. I mean, each individual has to decide for himself whether or not he thinks this is fundamentally important enough to take an adversary position on it.

• 14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Within your party?

• 14:21Speaker 02

  Within the party, or sometimes within the Congress. I mean, there were times when I decided, as a member of Congress, that this just wasn't right. And I had a few bills where passed and the only vote against them on the House floor was mine.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, because I just, you know, I came to the conclusion, this isn't right.

• 14:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is it fair to say that if there's a science topic that does not have policy implications, there's no obvious reason for anybody to split along party lines?

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Right, and generally don't.

• 14:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Janine, what he's saying is that when a science, when a factual issue has policy implications, people split along party lines. But if there are no policy implications, then everyone agrees. That's what it comes down to, it seems.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  I'm not sure if that's accurate, if everyone agrees at this point. But the thing is, is it isn't up to the individual. There are certain things. Just say, say we're talking about gravity, electricity, desegregation, women's suffrage. This is not up to the individual. There are some things that are true and that are, that are, it's being a good citizen. You know what I mean? Human rights are not up for debate. And science is not up for debate when we can clearly see the effects of global warming all around us. And Frank Luntz can call it anything he wants and rename it. But the fact is that the Republicans are resistant to it because they're pandering to their corporate backers and because it's not good for business. And also then there's of course a few very anti-intellectual Republicans who believe that God, you know, has a plan.

• 15:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but for those who are not that anti-intellectual, the fact is, he's saying that it has policy implications and so, and they're politicians, so this is why it becomes a debate. He's being very honest about that.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Okay, but the debate has implications to the air that we breathe, the water that we drink. They have kids, don't they? Do they not have children? Do they not have grandchildren? Is it not that important to them? That they, do you know what I'm saying? It's, it, they're, sometimes the Supreme Court has to step in, right? Over the years.

• 16:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Occasionally.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Now, they've screwed things up a number of times too, but they have, over the years, historically, led people to better themselves by doing things.

• 16:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the making of science policy is a complicated business. And in Congress, there's an authorization process, an appropriation process, and I got Bob Walker to explain some of that to me. So let's check him out.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  There are two different processes in Congress. There's an authorization process, which sets the policy and says, okay, to implement this policy, we think this kind of money needs to be spent on it. Then there's the appropriations process that actually spends the money. And sometimes authorizers and appropriators are not on the same page. It works best if we actually follow the rules of Congress that say that you cannot appropriate the money unless you have an authorization. The problem with appropriations process is, it only has a one-year horizon. They appropriate money every year. In the science area, it's really important to be setting policies that are three, four, or five years out.

• 17:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, the timescale of the research, the development, the end product, forget it. You can't do it in a year.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  You can't do it in a year. And so if you're dealing strictly with people whose horizon is a one-year horizon, the chances are that you'll end up really undermining the science mission rather than enhancing it.

• 17:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you need people with that kind of foresight, obviously.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  You need to have a process where committees are looking at what's in the best long-term interests of the program, and then setting priorities. Because there are thousands, maybe million, of good things that you can be doing in the arena of science. And you have to do is say, okay, what is the most important thing we can be doing at the present time? And there's always a tendency to say, well, we've started this program and, you know, it's been going for a long, long time and, once a program's in place, it's very hard to get rid of it. But sometimes you really have to say, no, that was a priority of a few years ago. If we're going to have the resources spent wisely, we need to move on to some of the new things that are now-

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Policy has shifted.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Policy needs to shift to reflect the realities-

• 18:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I've watched the budget within NASA redistribute according to just such policy recommendations.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, and one of the problems becomes, for instance, when you have jurisdiction over NASA, then people want to load all kinds of things into it that some of us think gets superfluous. I mean, there are all kinds of things that NASA is then told to do. The question is whether or not if you have limited dollars in NASA, whether that's where the money needs to be spent.

• 18:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's why we elect you guys to hash this out.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. One of the problems often is, though, that you have people on the committee that have a NASA facility in their district. So they want to make certain that they carve out a unique stream of money to go into that special project that particular center is interested in.

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see many people criticize that, but that's how it works. That is what a representative does. They're not going to represent anybody else. They're representing the people who voted for him and put him into office, right?

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true.

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if they behaved any differently from that, you'd be surprised.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Well, except that you've got to be real careful on that. Let's say it's a university research project and some member of Congress wants to get something for his favorite university and put it in-

• 19:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They all have a favorite university.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  They all have a favorite university in their district. Well, this ends up being then money that's allocated for something and hasn't been appropriately peer reviewed. It goes against the grain of science also making a determination about what is the most useful source of distribution of limited science dollars.

• 19:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it's a complicated process in Washington, Janine.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Yes, it is. Of course it is. It's geared toward failure, but the thing is, it doesn't seem to be any, any, um, thing stopping science when they want to weaponize, or militarize, or weaponize space, or get things from MIT that make us have full-spectrum dominance. That is all fine. Or if big pharmaceutical-

• 19:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Full-spectrum dominance?

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Full-spectrum dominance. That's what it's called. That's what it's called.

• 19:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Listen to you.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  And it's something, you know, that Reagan was into, and, uh, Bush, and Bush were into. They want to make sure that science can be utilized in violation of multiple treaties-

• 20:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so both-

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Uh, to weaponize and dominate the rest of the world.

• 20:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Both of the, the executive branch has the Office of Science and Technology Policy, OSTP, and there's a head of that, right now it's Dr. John Holdren. The previous head, by the way, uh, under Bush, he was a Democrat, by the way. He was a former head of the, uh, Brookhaven National Labs. And so, there's some mixture in there. They happen to all be physicists-

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Right. But if you're, if you're working under Bush, you're, you're what they call a blue-dog Democrat, or you, you play ball-

• 20:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Blue dog. What does that mean?

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Blue dog, conservative Reagan Democrat. There's, you know, the, the Bush administration-

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got a label for everything!

• 20:40Speaker 01

  It's not a label, it's just what it is. Uh, that, that's what they call themselves. So, I'm just gonna use that. But the Bush administration doesn't have anybody working under them that isn't gonna play ball with them.

• 20:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now also, Congress used to have something called the Office of Technology Assessment-

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where they would use them to advise them on, on science policy, and science issues, but that was disbanded. And, so now, they're, I guess they're making their own phone calls, you know?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Well, they wanted it disbanded so they could just deal directly with the lobbying groups, and deal directly with the corporate entities. You know, why, why have a middleman when you can just go right to the money source-

• 21:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, at the end of the day-

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Who are writing policy papers.

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the end of the day, what matters is not what people think or feel, but where money goes. And so, it's interesting, you, you touched on it, and I want to get back to it after this next clip, about how, the difference between how Democrats and Republicans fund policy. Because at the end, money talks. Let's find out.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  There is a fundamental difference between where many liberal democrats are on the issue of technology development and where many republicans are, in that there are many liberal democrats who have believed that the government ought to set up technology administrations that kind of pick and choose among emerging technologies and then fund those ones that they think are the best technologies out there. Whereas, many on my side of the equation, many of the conservative republicans say "no", when the government starts picking winners and losers, we are in deep trouble, because it could well be that the government picks badly. And the one thing that we do know is, government takes a long time to pick, and so it may

• 22:16Speaker 02

  be months, it may go through a couple of appropriation cycles before they can actually get the money out to one of these companies. And in the meantime, the technology has moved forward, and if what we're doing is waiting for the government to act, it simply doesn't get done in the right way.

• 22:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that disagreement is a tactical disagreement. It's not a disagreement on whether the technology is good or useful, it's how you implement it.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Well, you're easy on this guy. You might as well work at Fox News, man. Can you lob any more softball? Or, actually, no, no. When he speaks, did you not, let's unpack what he just said.

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, unpack.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  First of all, he said, "Well, what the democrats want to do is wait and see and pick and choose".

• 22:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, I have a whole other show with Rush Holt, a leading liberal democrat, who's a PhD physicist. We have a whole other show.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  And?

• 23:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That we're gonna, no, just what I'm saying, it's not, that's to come, just so you know.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  But, but what I'm saying now is, you just let him kind of walk, just give you such a line of bull. It is unbelievable to me. First of all, if the government picks winners and losers, first of all, the government, especially under conservative hands, republicans, that's all they do, is pick cronies and give contracts to special people that they have relationships with. And also, he's-

• 23:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You tell me democrats don't do that at all?

• 23:32Speaker 01

  I'm sure they do, but you know, repub, they are not absolutely the same. And you know, this, this kind of type of devil's advocate you're doing to me is no different than being on a mainstream news show. I mean, let's get serious here. This guy is-

• 23:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what it is? It's not devil's advocate, it's centrist advocate.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  This guy is also-

• 23:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I stand in the middle and look at the hot air on both sides.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, yeah, I gotcha.

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  What it means is, you don't want to take a stand because you're frightened.

• 23:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I do take stands, I think there's, science is a stand that can be taken strongly in the middle.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  You know what? It can't be in the middle. Right now, the stakes are too high. The stakes are too high. You've got to go to the mat for something.

• 24:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I will put it in the middle because that's where it belongs. And have everyone come to science in the middle. That's right.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  So you're saying that as the environment is degrading, and as we are not investigating renewable and sustainable energy, and as there's more mercury and lead and more autism and more children suffering and all of these things, you're going to stay in the center on this one?

• 24:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  And you're going to talk to guys like him and who's going to tell you, "Governor, we can't wait for government."

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I claim there's a place to stand in the center where everyone then comes to you because you end up speaking the truth.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, because that works. That works. Oh, sure. Yeah, the truth works like a real beacon, real clarinet.

• 24:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I will tell you all the things that belong in the center. We've got to take a quick break, but more StarTalk when we return.

• 25:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk, and today's subject, Politics and Science, featuring my interview with Bob Walker. And I have in studio with me, Janine Garofalo.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Hello, Governor. That's my different voice now.

• 25:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Janine, I think you blew a gasket before the break.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  I did blow a gasket.

• 25:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many gaskets do you have?

• 25:29Speaker 01

  I've got a lot of gaskets.

• 25:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apparently.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  So get ready.

• 25:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, I'm ready for you. So, um, politics, I mean, it's fascinating because, yes, there's a lot of, I think there's a lot of hot air at both extremes, and I've found it and I've identified it. But at the center, where I like to stand and give me the vista on both sides, I find that the liberal left and the conservative right will fund science. They do get together. When they want to up the budget for the National Science Foundation, they all get together and they up the budget. And for the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy, Science, Physics, basically the particle accelerators, there are places where they agree that they should up the budget.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  But let me just stop you for one second. The liberal left, there are so very few representatives of the liberal left in the Congress, the Senate, the House, and the mainstream media. So let's just get that straight. The liberal left operates mostly outside of the narrow frame of Washington.

• 26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To their detriment, apparently.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Well, it's very hard to get into these positions of power because as about as liberal as you get, with a few exceptions, is centrists or center-right. And the Republican Party has moved so far to the right that even those in the center have to move to the right to even get any negotiations.

• 26:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To be in the newly-defined center.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  To be in the newly-defined center. So in our mainstream media and in our positions of power in corporations and in government, for the most part, it is quote-unquote "conservative" with a few centrists in there. The liberal left does not have access to power.

• 26:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, how about this? Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. The fake news talk shows, those are all essentially liberal-based, right? I mean, the shows on Comedy Central and the like.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, liberal. What I would say is, they're telling the truth. You keep using, if, yes, if the truth and social critique is, you're gonna call it liberal, then good, I'll take it. But when John Stewart and Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert, among others, and you know, it's George Carlin and a great tradition of this inherent in comedy, when it's good, is a great tradition of social critique.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What role do you think it plays? Is social critique, you're saying?

• 27:31Speaker 01

  It plays a very great role because it picks up the slack where people in power are not doing their job.

• 27:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you think comedians have special insight that others wouldn't in this regard?

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Well, this depends. I mean, there's some comedians who are hacked, terrible hacked, who don't have any insight whatsoever, and you know, it's case by case, just like anybody. There's some comedians that, you know, I'll just use George Carlin or Nichols and May or, you know, back in the day, or the Lampoon, National Lampoon.

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  The Onion. Yeah, they're above-average intelligent and they have, I guess, an insight into pointing out the absurdity of certain things.

• 28:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Should comedians run for office?

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Well, Al Franken did a great job.

• 28:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  But, uh, should a comedian, I don't know, it's, uh, just because you're a comedian doesn't make you fit for office.

• 28:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it doesn't mean it, but, but, uh, you, if, if a comedian of great mainstay of comedic material is criticizing politicians, become a politician.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  But the thing is, is you can get a lot more done outside of the system. You know, that comedian's gonna be heard by a lot more people outside of, uh, having a senate seat.

• 28:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let me tell you, so, so Republicans are on and off being accused of being anti-science. But I think the first measure in Washington of whether you're anti-something or pro-something is whether you vote to fund it. And-

• 28:36Speaker 01

  They're pro-business more than anti-science. I mean, they're pro-business. What is good for the corporation is good for their, whatever their scientific policy is.

• 28:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and so in there, some of the science policy that is voted for and funded does promote the science that would go on in business, so the R and D and business circles.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not directly other pure science necessarily. I'm just, I'm just saying-

• 28:55Speaker 01

  But they're willing to throw stem cell research out the window, they're willing to throw, uh, you know, uh, at certain points, uh, help for third world countries, you know, they'll, they'll allow Monsanto to patent seeds, you know, they, they, the big pharmaceutical giveaways, you know, so there is science and there is science. There's science that's good for the corporation, that the Republicans and some Democrats are fully behind, and then there's science that would be good for humanity that there's no profit in.

• 29:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except that-

• 29:17Speaker 01

  That is harder to get.

• 29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except that Bono recently noted on the Daily Show regarding his AIDS charity work that he gave, he, he gave a shout out to George W. for the amount of money his administration gave AIDS programs.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Right, but let's not forget that there was a contingent-

• 29:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying-

• 29:32Speaker 01

  That when they gave that money, they could give no more sex education and no more condoms. Okay? So to get that money, the, the, the institutions that were helping the AIDS victims in those countries could no longer have sex education or birth condoms.

• 29:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, now, some of that is, is derived from people's religious principles.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Again, this is, I can't have it. I can't have it with this devil, this religious principles, like I said-

• 29:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, just answer, I'm just, I'm coming.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  You know, and, and there was one, people used to think women couldn't ride bikes because of this hysteria of the womb. Do you wanna go down that road too?

• 30:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find, let's-

• 30:06Speaker 01

  It's-

• 30:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out with Bob Walker. Let's find out with Bob Walker.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 30:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, if I've got time, I'm gonna, you're gonna hear these clips. I, I asked him, he's, he was in Congress and you were not, so, so this matters.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Hey, wow!

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's find out-

• 30:17Speaker 01

  But you asked me to be here.

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want you here. Uh, so, he, he had a comment about faith-based versus information-based decision-making in politics. I just wanna find out what he had to say about that.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Can't wait.

• 30:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a scientist, I like being evidence-based in my decision-making, alright? There's a lot of non-evidence-based politics going on today. Specifically, faith-based posturing.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, one of the questions that's out there, for instance, that falls into the area you're talking about is the whole question of evolution. I think for most people in the political realm, that these are not the same kinds of questions that they are for some of the people who advocate on one side or the... of the other of those issues. For example, I see nothing in the theories of evolution that violates the principles of the Bible whatsoever. Now, if you believe that God works on the same 24-hour days that we have on Earth, I suppose that you've got a problem there, understanding this, but I'm prepared to believe that, you know, one of God's days may be billions of years. And, you know, inside of that framework, evolution then is simply that which God has ordained over a period of time.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  And what interests me is how close those ancient writers in the Bible came to the sequencing that we have found is true in evolutionary theory.

• 31:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It missed a couple of things, but yeah.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Considering that the knowledge base that they have, you have to believe that they had some sort of inspiration to that. But I'm saying that I don't find fundamental differences in all of that.

• 31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I don't remember that, you know, from my read of history, I just don't remember seeing any of that get into policy. Did I miss some things back there?

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Sure. Go back to the Great Awakening of the 1840s. It was a religious revival period during the mid-part of the 19th century.

• 31:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know what you're talking about now.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Massive political implication.

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like Mormonism came out of that.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  Well, it was the origins of prohibition, for example.

• 32:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  You know, I mean...

• 32:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The temperance movement started as a religious movement.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, in the 40s. The whole issue of slavery, the abolitionists grew out of religious antecedents and so on. So, I mean, the idea that this hasn't played a role is, I think, wrong. The question is whether or not you elect people who sort through that and understand that the constitutional principle is to permit the free exercise of religion, but not use that free exercise in a way that ends up being the establishment of a state religion in any way.

• 32:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's being honest.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Maybe, or he's pandering. You know, if he's gonna cite the founders, let's be consistent. The founders were quite secular.

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's completely, that's right.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  And they wanted freedom from religion, but he was quite willing to cite them earlier when it came to government confusion and things taking too long to go down the pipeline. And secondly, I can't, again, this is an adult, right? This is an adult. I cannot have these conversa- hear these conversations or have them with other adults about these gods that did or didn't exist. You know, if we lived in Egypt in another era, we'd be talking about the sun god, or maybe we'd be talking, yes, Ra, who made it happen. First of all, evolution is real. You can- intelligence design is not, creation is not, this should not be part of school board policy. This is not up for debate. In the same way, gay rights are not up for debate. And human, they are human rights, women's rights, reproductive justice is not up for

• 33:27Speaker 01

  debate. There is not two sides to every story.

• 33:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  People are people. They deserve to be respected. I'm not, and you're gonna say, "And why couldn't this guy be respected?" Because inherently, what, he's lying to me, he's pandering to me.

• 33:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Janine, do you think that it's, religion's become more of an issue in emergent politics than in the past? I mean, we're not old enough to have been around during the temperance movement.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Well, there was the Scopes Trial, the temperance movement, but now, what we're talking about now is what happened in 1979 when Bush I was advised by Jerry Falwell, among other people, that it would be wise to go after evangelicals because the Republican Party's base has been shrinking and shrinking over the years. Because as society progresses forward, the message the Republican Party has is less and less vital.

• 34:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but there are science issues that both Republicans and Democrats come together and fund. And that includes NASA, even though NASA's funding is not what I'd like it to be, there should be way more than it is.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  And they cut way more corners than they should.

• 34:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  There's been plenty of problems, and the Republicans want to fund it for weaponization purposes. And again, full spectrum dominance, but they cut corners like crazy at NASA. There's been NASA scientists who've been complaining about this for years.

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, okay, but did you know that NASA real spending dropped by 25% under President Clinton? But that doesn't get talked about much.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you have no idea what contracts were dropped, or for what, for what reason.

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the portfolio of the spending and the money was...

• 34:40Speaker 01

  You don't know where, what was going where. Like I said... What the Republicans tend to fund science for is very different than what hopefully Democrats

• 34:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so the motivations are different.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  The motivations are very different. And they, and, and one of the Republican motivations tend to be for dominionism. You know, to make sure that we are armed to the teeth and so that we will unfortunately go the way of the former Soviet Union. We will bankrupt ourselves, just like they have been bankrupted during the Cold War. And which is happening right now.

• 35:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, just so you know, the different agencies that is considered that are part of the science portfolio of the government, NASA is one of them, the National Institutes for Health, NIH, National Science Foundation, NIST, no one's ever heard of NIST, National Institutes for Science and for Standards and Technology, and also the Department of Energy, as I said earlier, they fund the particle accelerators. And so those, those have been, you know, money comes and goes, but you're right, the motivation for why those budgets are increased or decreased are different between the two parties. But basically, there's some agreement that science matters at some level.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Right, and you can't have faith-based policy affecting things like it does for our Israel policy. There are some evangelical right-wing nuts who believe Jesus can't come back unless the Palestinians are completely gone from Israel. So it affects the policy decisions that they make regarding Israel.

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe that'll

• 35:53Speaker 01

  This is very important stuff.

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And people vote for those who then represent them with those views. So your argument is really not with the politicians, but with your fellow countrymen?

• 36:00Speaker 01

  It's with both. It's, it's completely with both, and it's on behalf of my fellow countrymen.

• 36:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got to take a quick break, but more StarTalk when we return.

• 36:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk, and today's subject, Politics and Science, featuring my interview with Bob Walker. And in studio with me is Janine Garofalo. Cutting nobody any slack.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  It's not that I'm not cutting you slack. What I, what I'm just saying is, is it's, it's sort of, I, I don't sort of understand where you're coming from. The way that you're, you're, you're, you're not really, you are the scientist. You're the astrophysicist.

• 36:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm astrophysicist.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  And you're talking to a gentleman, a grown adult, who's telling you that the Bible, it has the underpinnings of evolutionary process in it.

• 37:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, he said, he just said, you know, he's a good, he can disagree with the Bible.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, and stop it.

• 37:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was not taking the Bible literally.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  It sounded like he was taking it pretty literally to me. And you were allowing him to do that.

• 37:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so let's find out. So there's a lot of issues that show up and become, that are, that have science, technology involved in them. Stem cell research, assisted suicide, government-sponsored vaccinations, vaccine against HPV, which some people say, well, that means people just have more sex.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Which is absurd, absurd, absurd, again, and I think, you know, sex education, people have more sex, and here's the fundamental problem with, again, the mainstream media. They indulge this nonsense. They allow somebody who says if they have the HPV, that people will have more sex. Or intelligent design is a theory that, you know, could be viable. As if there are two sides to this. It is not. Or the bullying, the anti-bullying law, that just, uh...

• 38:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, go, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  The anti-bullying law that they tried to pass recently in Michigan, that the Republicans gutted, because they said, you can bully if you really believe there's a religious basis behind it. And the fertilized personhood, fertilized egg person law that did not pass, luckily in Mississippi, saying that a person is a person.

• 38:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just recently.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Just recently, as soon as the egg is fertilized, it is a person and has the full rights of said person, just like a corporation. They have all the rights and freedoms of a corporation, a person. But these things are utterly absurd. Now, they won't allow in vitro, they don't want birth control. These so-called religious convictions, as they enter into politics, which they are not supposed to, because there's supposed to be a separation of church and state by law. They muddle the process and they dumb down a segment of the society.

• 38:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what's most interesting to me about whether the freshly fertilized embryo is a person is that most abortions are spontaneous and they happen naturally within the human body and most women who have such an abortion never even know it because it happens in the first month.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  It's very, very common.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's very, very common. So in fact, the biggest abortionist, if in fact, God is responsible for what goes on in your body, is then God. It's an interesting fact that isn't talked about.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  The words again, it's anti-choice. It's not pro-life, it's anti-choice because a lot of these pro-life people, they love guns and death penalty and war and torture and no social services. They love an electrocuted fence for immigrants to hang off of. So there's nothing pro-life.

• 39:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Guns and death penalty.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  They love the guns and the death penalty and more war. Attack Iran if they could.

• 39:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out about the future of America. I think science is a fundamental dimension of what America needs to embrace and to appreciate and to be fact-based as we go forward. In my last clip with Bob Walker, I asked him just what he thought challenged America in the future and what role the prevailing geopolitical landscape played in that. Let's find out.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  I think our challenge right now is competing with countries on the Pacific Rim, in particular China. I think the whole issue of asymmetrical warfare is something that is certainly a challenge to our preeminence.

• 40:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Asymmetric warfare, just remind me, that's...

• 40:14Speaker 02

  Asymmetric warfare means that you're not faced off against a particular country, you're faced off against movements that have the power and the ability these days to attack you in a variety of different ways. It's primarily the whole advent of terrorism.

• 40:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got you.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Some of it state-sponsored, some of it not.

• 40:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  So understanding those kinds of challenges that we face, if in fact, what we can do is strengthen the economy to reflect 21st century concerns.

• 40:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. I don't think we're in the 21st century yet.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  Well, precisely. One of the problems that we've got is that many of the decisions that we make in government today and the way in which we organize government still reflects an economy that existed in the 1950s and we have not yet... Adopted the tools of information that businesses, for instance, have that would allow us to govern and respond to economic challenges better if we adopted 21st century techniques. So we are undergoing a fundamental change that America needs to get ahead of, and we're not doing it.

• 41:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And is that change brought about because we have sunk so low? Because my sense of this is, when I reviewed the space race, and I realized, we didn't lead anything. Every decision we made in space was reactive to something that we knew was going on in Russia. And so I can't then claim that we were leaders. Even if we ended up ahead, we ended up ahead only because we didn't want to fall behind. And so is there ever a time where we could just say, "Let's lead the world just because that's a good thing to do," rather than, "Let's lead the world because we're scared witless, because the Pacific Rim is gonna be eating our lunch?"

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think there are four revolutions taking place simultaneously. I think there's a political revolution, there's an economic revolution, there's a technological revolution, and there's a cultural revolution.

• 41:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All of the above, I agree.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  We need to figure out how to understand that it is a revolutionary period, and how to adapt ourselves to the new circumstances.

• 42:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Revolutionary in a good way, right. Not in a destabilizing way, you know?

• 42:08Speaker 02

  No, no, no, this is revolutionary in a good way. But in parts, it means developing an energy policy that allows you to sustain the future with clean energy. It means that you cannot do, as some people out there want to do, shut down your ability to utilize energy. What you've got to do is figure out where new resources of energy is. One of the reasons why I've been for 30 years now a proponent of moving to a hydrogen economy is because it allows us to utilize a resource that is, at least in theory, unlimited.

• 42:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No shortage of hydrogen in the universe.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, precisely.

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No shortage of hydrogen in the universe. Junine, where do you want to take the future? Do you want everybody to be, have exactly your political view going forward?

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Uh, that'd be great. That would be wonderful. But, uh, no, but I'm certainly not, not the type of person who thinks, "You gotta be like me," but what I'm saying-

• 42:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you sound like that, right?

• 43:00Speaker 01

  Well, because I'm trying to tell you, and it gets me very upset and very strident, is that some of these issues are not debatable, and we don't have the time to keep going through this nonsense arguments. And to stay in the center, or to pretend you're being journalistically objective, is just as much of a time waster, and just as dire to me. And, you know, the threats from outside of us are not our biggest threat. What's going on inside this country is our biggest threat. We do need sustainable energy, we do need better public education, we do need infrastructure, we need tax reform, we need more revenue streams. You know what I mean? We need Occupy's message to resonate with people.

• 43:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are out of time, but I want to thank my guests, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.