Neil deGrasse Tyson: The Brutal Truth About Astrology! Our Breath Contains Molecules Jesus Inhaled!
Guests: Neil
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
§01Transcript — part 1
Service find that roughly 80% of Gen Z believe in astrology and need to allow to influence major life decisions But what would be sad is if that number got to 100% then this civilization just goes back to the cave where everything that happened in the natural world was created by forces beyond our knowledge and understanding So if you want to think you're not in control of your fate because the Sunland and planets are it's a free country But I'm creating meaning in my life because I can control that But is that anything that the universe does to influence us?
Yes, really? Yeah, and I'll tell you how. Ready? Neil DeGrasse Tyson is one of the most recognizable voices in modern science who turns the mysteries of the universe into simple truths and simple truths into life lessons As a scientist it's disturbing how easily people divide each other based on skin color religion with food you eat What language they speak and then they find some other philosophy that differs and then they go to war But when I step back with a cosmic perspective you realize how ridiculous it is Give me the cosmic perspective Well, there's nothing that we can put on the table that can rival the measurements of the universe and we are literally composed of stardust So when people think they're different they have DNA in common with all of the life forms on earth Like you have 20% identical genes who are banana Excuse me Okay, we all do not just you And that's not all There are molecules that went in and out of your lungs that are in China being breathed by people And go further back, Jesus in hell So how's that the oneness with others?
That can't be true And that's the next problem People value what they think is true More than what is true That's a recipe for the unraveling of civilization No, but as a scientist, show me the DNA And someone that knows so much about the universe and objective truth I've got a lot of questions So what do you think is the probability of me getting to another planet in my lifetime And then could you make the case now that the universe is simulated by some sort of advanced life form And also did humans evolve at some point to believe And do you think you would be happier if you believed in God?
Oh, so you're going to spice this up a bit Okay, so Just give me 30 seconds of your time Two things I wanted to say The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show Week after week means the world to all of us And this really is a dream that we absolutely never had And couldn't have imagined getting to this place But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started And if you enjoy what we do here Please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly And follow us on this app Here's a promise I'm going to make to you I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can Now and into the future We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to And we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show Thank you I've been watching a lot of videos of yours, I think Because I've reached the stage in my life where I've become really existentially curious I think we all do at some point And especially the more you've lived The more it all sort of You ask, was it all mean as well come together What will it mean to me in five years, ten years I don't know if you're old enough to think about your mortality
But that's a thing When you have fewer years left than the years you've lived And and you can I think the way they say it is there's You can have a good expectation to live as long as your parents did I lost both of them in the last five years So so that's my horizon And the fact that we die has a capacity to bring focus into the remaining time you're alive Because think about it, if knowing you're going to die brings focus and purpose and resolve and action Then if you live forever, what's your hurry For me knowing I'm going to die And I Gives meaning To my remaining life Whereas if I'm never going to die Then mathematically that would mean I'd lead a life of no meaning at all Because there's no way to focus An infinity amount of time into anything And have it be meaningful So I'm taking mortality as a very serious force Operating on happiness, productivity Can you do something for the world And on my tombstone What I want to say What I want it to say is a quote from Horace Mann Be ashamed to die Until you have won some victory for humanity I want to have made a difference in the world I want the world to have been better off because I lived in it Is that too much to ask of any of us?
Really? We're all capable of good deeds So If the world is better off I played my part As a citizen of planet earth And this sort of dovetails into this new book that you've written I call it a new book but it's really a revision of a Very successful book that I think the first copy was published in 1998 Called just visiting the planet further scientific adventures of Merlin From Amnesia Amnesia Yeah When I think about these bigger questions about the universe Meaning purpose death why am I here Religion all these things So often I think about them through the context and information that I find in your work Because when I think of like the world being so big As you talk about in this book and so infinite and all these stars I feel meaningless And a nice way sometimes I feel like the shit that I Worry about no longer matters But then when you talk about You feel meaningless in a happy way Yeah I feel like the things that cause me Suffering don't matter as much as I thought they did And then you talked about shortening time by realizing that you're going to live for 90 years or 80 years Creating great amounts of meaning And it feels somewhat like I don't know Yes the universe is huge
In size Age In Contents There's nothing we can put on the table that can rival Those measurements that we make of the universe However How big How well There's the light from the most distant galaxies has been traveling for nearly 14 billion years 10 billion years more than earth has even existed If you want to get a sense of that And so But think about it a whole other way That If you look at the ingredients of life Not just human life but life on earth and you can rank the elements What's the number one element in life We could mention the human body Number one element is hydrogen That's contained in the H2O Of the water content of your body Which depending on how chubby you are Anywhere from a half to three quarters of your body weight is water And All right What's the next most abundant element in your body?
It's oxygen Attached to the water Okay H2O and both the H and the O appear in many many other molecules in our body In the DNA and in your muscle tissue all of this And in the blood Okay, what's third Carbon Which you would have thought had to be somewhere in the list because you know where carbon-based life Fourth is nitrogen Okay Fifth I'll put them all together and just say other okay So that's the sequence of elements And now you say What are the sequence of elements in the universe?
The number one is hydrogen The number two is helium But that's chemically inert you might remember from high school chemistry You can't do anything with it anyway helium Next in the universe oxygen Next carbon Next nitrogen Next Other okay, so we are one for one Matched to the ingredients of the universe and One of the gifts of 20th century astrophysics is Gifts to civilization is where those ingredients came from We trace those ingredients The hydrogen to the big bang itself And all these heavier elements to stars that manufacture those elements In their core and the crucible that is their core They lived out their lives They exploded scattered that enrichment into gas clouds So that the next generation of stars Would have planets And on at least one of them Have life as we know it Life on earth So that We you can think of us not just figuratively But literally composed of stardust And so so that it's not that we are alive in the universe. Yes, that's true But the universe is alive within us So we're special Because we're the same as the universe Often when people think they're special I want to be different from it. No We're same because we have human DNA on an earth Where we have DNA in common with all other animals
All other life forms on earth Do you realize we we And mushrooms have more in common with each other Then either we or mushrooms have with green plants The common ancestor between fungus and animals split later in the tree of life Then it's common ancestor split with green plants You you have 20% identical genes to a banana Excuse me We all do not just you So when you consider all of this It's it's not just that we're alive in the universe The universe is alive within us And that that discovery Borders on the spiritual yeah, and it's a scientific result So when I look up at night I never feel small I feel large I feel as large as the universe itself because that's where we came from We're participant in a great unfolding story of cosmic evolution The minute you said that I thought of all these Eastern traditions and religions that say we are one And from a scientific perspective As you say we very much are one Yeah, it's what's interesting is One of my deep concerns about the world is many Philosophies or religions that say we are one They find some other philosophy that differs and then they go to war Yeah, I mean to laugh at that, but it's we're not good at Feeling oneness with everyone
It's easy to feel oneness with our tribe Our tribe could be skin color religion who you sleep with who you don't sleep with what food you eat What rituals you perform and so those People choose sides based on so many factors that It's actually to me just as a scientist it's disturbing How easily and quickly we will divide each other Without and make that the reason for how you interact Rather than see what we have in common and make that the reason for why we would come together This has been really front of mind for me for the last 24 hours There's been a lot of things that have happened in the news that have thrown the conversation around division to the very front of my mind and that you know in the UK We've got all these people that are marching next week. I believe Through London because of you know various political things and I was saying to my friends last night I said I think actually that the root cause isn't this or that it's the division itself And it's yeah, you can over analyze I mean if you look deeper than whatever people are saying is the reason they Are marching or arguing If you just you know park the curtains and unpack it all at the bottom of that is There's a tribe here and a tribe here and they think this way and they think that way and
Never the twang meet Unless we rethink how we interact with one another it's it's I mean think about it You know with the race The race friction that existed Around the world, but especially in colonial Europe and the slave trade and all of this and And okay, that's not good it's bad And All right, but then you look at world war one and world war two That's white people fighting white people slaughtering them in great numbers So you can divide by skin color But apparently people find plenty of reasons to divide in conquer to divide and kill to divide in a press and And skin colors one in a long list of all the reasons people have given To religious wars to worshiping the different god where you're working the god differently These are human beings and you know, I wrote a whole book one. I think one of those books and you're stash there that one Yet cosmic perspectives on civilization one in your left hand there That one is Is what conflict in the world looks like When you are scientifically literate And you have a dose of cosmic perspective on top of it. Give me the cosmic perspective please It's You're fighting over that line in the sand When I'm out here at the moon looking at earth
This fragile ecosystem Do you realize earth's atmosphere is to earth What the skin of an apple is to an apple in terms of thickness So I see people trashing the planet fighting one another Again, just based on who's on what side of the line in the sand or who they worship who they don't worship or what their skin color is or where they were born What language they speak what accent they have And I step back and from orbit It's Ocean land clouds From the moon there's earth suspended there in space I almost don't want to zoom in on it Because people value what they think is true more than what Is true their objective truth out there But it's almost as though people Fight and argue more vehemently the less evidence there is to support what it is they think is true There's an old saying if an argument lasts more than five minutes then both sides are wrong This it's true by 80 90% of the time, but it's something definitely something to think about How have your spiritual and religious beliefs evolved throughout the course of your career based on all that you've come to know about the Objective nature of the universe has there been an evolution It depends when you mean by evolution as raised Catholic yeah, but we were raised basically in a secular household
Even though we would go to church every weekend What I mean by that is we come home at no time do either of my parents say don't do that Jesus is watching You keep that up you'll go to hell do this because it'll please God Ever was there such a conversation as that in the household So the household was driven by Objective truths or or life experience as would be brought from elders to a next generation Something that was more common in that generation than in the current generation because now elders don't know anything about anything You know your kid comes up to you say mommy daddy. I want to be a YouTube influencer and you're saying what?
Go back to school. No, and then they become a YouTube influence and they out earn you So this the the divide is greater than ever before between one generation of the next for sure but by the time I turned eight I found the religious teachings less and less convincing And so by the time I was nine when I discovered the universe Or really the universe discovered me a first visit to my local planetarium So yeah, I wouldn't call it an evolution, but I will say this you didn't ask this but it relates Before I was more recognized, you know, you'd be on an airplane. What do you do? What do you do? Okay?
They find out I'd do astrophysics then outcome the questions Okay, well tell me about black holes relativity the big bang Aliens, okay, and would always land on God and I used to give pretty straight Unforgiving answers to that question to that inquiry But then I thought that's not fair They're people whose lives pivot I'm around their religious beliefs and their spirituality And just because I've been discounting it since I was eight I shouldn't use that as a force Against them. I should at least Understand where they're coming from so I systematically acquired religious books Of all kinds so I have the Torah I have multiple copies of the Quran Joseph Smith's account that led to the Mormons. I have multiple Bits of literature from Jehovah's Witnesses because they'll come to your door when they want to hand you So I acquired all these books and I mostly read them I've skimmed all of them and read some of them with a little more intensity than others. All right I'm doing so that Enable me empowered me to have more meaningful conversations with people who were religious Much more meaningful and more informed That's the key I don't want to speak about a religion of unless I know as much as I can about it
As an academic that should be what Would be true of any subject Your an academic you care what's true Not what you think is true what is true or what people think all right and There's no doubt that religion has been one of the greatest forces operating on civilization Ever since civilization When you look at as a source of people's behavior what they eat like I said who they sleep with where they sleep Where they worship who they worship all around the world from animistic native peoples where there's a spirit energy and viewed in the in the mountain and the Brook and the wind to The monotheistic religions to the polytheistic religions That we don't call them that to put distance between us, but the Greek gods were it was their religion We call it mythology It was their religion the Greek gods the Roman gods. So I'm I'm conversational in all of this so that when someone says how do I feel? What do I think I can do that without just Being obnoxious And so and it's some have a meaningful conversation. I haven't done that you haven't no I haven't I haven't I've been it's such a good idea to do that But she's someone in my position that does a lot of talking with people and asking questions
But my the first thing that sprung to mind was there's actually two questions. It's one point the first was How did that change you Reading all those books outside of you being able to relate with those well being able to talk to them in a different way And the second question because I've watched cosmos I've watched it several times I it's one of my me and my partners favorite things to watch is you you Going from the very beginnings of times through the universe and to where we are Got to love that calendar too. Oh my god. My favorite thing. I tried and persuade everybody to watch that My question was about because I watched that and I watched um how the universe has evolved over time Or at least they're understanding of it and how it came to be is did humans Evolve at some point to believe are we meant to believe? Well So the best way to ask that is let's go back to the earliest humans we have fossil records of and we can go back to Neanderthal for example Neanderthal is is a branch Uh, hominids that went extinct basically. There's some crossbreeding and there's Neanderthal DNA in Many humans today, but as a as a branch of the hominids they they went extinct. So the Neanderthal then there's chromagnon
we're you know, homosapiens coming after chromagnan and So when you look at burial grounds The Neanderthal bury their dead with things With parts of their life of the person who died Now, why would you do that unless you had some belief That there was something more to come for that person I mean that probably the people who took it to the limit were the Egyptians All right for the Egyptian royalty I mean they bury you with all kinds of stuff And in fact in Greece I read this it's not that I researched it and I'm not a scholar in this but that When they buried you they put a coin In your mouth or in your hand somewhere on your body So that when you got into Hades You can tip the ferry boat driver To cross the river sticks to get into Hades You might even say that's the beginning of what it was to be human when people started thinking that way about dying I mean might even invert the question and say It's not When did we start it's we existed In all the ways we know our self know what ourselves to be when that ritual came upon Our ancestors and the survival benefit in believing I don't know really yeah, I don't know We're pretty sure there's a survival benefit of groupthink and Religion is groupthink if there ever was it was we all believe this
In this way and we will behave in that way on those occasions And you will not deviate from it and part of that Package of beliefs includes statements about the afterlife and how you should behave in this life Otherwise, you don't go to heaven you go to hell And I don't think Judaism has a hell but you you you're not as rewarded as you'd otherwise be Now that forms a a corpus of beliefs that can be highly binding of the peoples and And Especially if some other peoples come up and they do other things and you don't understand it You don't know what it is and they're they're a threat And so you keep them out You you do whatever you can to preserve your traditions relative to theirs ultimately the worst That in its worst manifestation is all our war We just kill people you don't believe the way you do so so maybe Religion is kind of what defined humans in the fossil record I mean, I like I said that's an interesting inversion of that question Not when the humans begin being religious You define Who we are as humans as when religion showed up in the in the burial grounds of Cave men you just talked about as being bound there by certain shared beliefs and ideas And I think it I think ritual is one of the strongest binding forces of society
There we have And I think that people are maybe unbinding you can if you look at the narrative in science It's about be your own boss standing your into feet more people are lonely living alone Having less kids are working freelance and remotely so it feels like in a weird way we're becoming more independent and there's Somewhat of a cost to that and actually my friends that are struggling the most in their lives are those that have the least dependence On a village is it so I always wonder if people we need to ladder up to the universe. I Me my family maybe my village maybe my country the planet the universe Metaverse yeah, and like good the multiverse yeah, so let me just react to that They have been studies about the psychological effects of this kind of life basically the the social media Too early in one's life Forced that operates, but I And so I don't know I don't want to be the person who says in my day We did it right and you you youngins don't know what you're doing and you're all good. I mean I've seen the films of people of officials smashing pinball machines with sludge hammers saying it will be the death of the next generation Because it's they're not studying there to they're it's gambling day
I've seen you see people burning rock and roll records You know you've seen we've seen this and I'm I don't want to be that guy. I'd rather be the person that says They're going to create a whole other reality That was not my reality growing up and I don't know that I can or should value judge that When they come up in the ranks, they'll be mature adults. They'll figure out What the rhythms are of that world and I will say however that if you go far enough back no one ever traveled anywhere You you spend your whole life not going more than 30 miles from your hometown like two a couple hundred years back So now people do actually communicate With countless thousands of people around the world So that's it's different. I'm again, I'm not value judging it, but it's different and You're exposed to different ideas. It may be it tribalizes you more or maybe it softens you it has the power to do both What concerns me It's because when I post to social media. I've learned the art of not expressing an opinion Because I don't care what your opinion is I don't care that you have my opinion What I care about as an educator and as especially as a scientist is that your opinion is based Unobjective reality objective truth
If you have an opinion where the foundation of it is what do you what what then you're just floating there's no And then if you rise to power of Laws and legislation and then you shape a society based on what you think is true or want to be true rather than what is objectively true That's a recipe for the unraveling of civilization as we know it so I this loneliness bit. I don't know how to comment on that. I don't have the expertise But I do know that I don't want to be the person on the rocking chair Get off my lawn And I guess I've been trying to figure out if we if I need to make try and make sure my life ladders upwards Oh, let me get back to that. So it may be that the most important role of church Wasn't to give a specific recipe for how You prayer again who you pray to or when you maybe that's maybe that wasn't as great as value Maybe it's greatest value was the community that it created Everyone comes together and roll in one room at the same time That's not happening today like you said, but there's a people are less religious today than ever before There are many people who were once religious would today statistically, but today say they're spiritual Which means they're separated from the rules and regulations that
that typically Dictate how you behave within a religion, but the fact is you're talking about going upwards So you have your your city your community your neighbors and your church your synagogue your mosque your your your temple whatever is the the place Where you gather with some frequency that surely has value Because we need each other I'm jealous when I you know you drive down the country road and it's a deer just walking around and I'm thinking You know society collapse that deer is just fine the deer was born in the woods is finding food is grown up Whereas I need other people to survive in this world I don't have a hunt. I don't have a skin game. I don't know You know, I'd like knowing that there's a quart of milk waiting for me on the grocery store and and you know ready to eat cereals that's We have an interdependence as never before And how do we maintain that without scattering to the winds You said you lost both your parents in the last five years. Yeah As someone that knows so much about the universe and objective truth and reality How do you how do you contend with grief in that scenario, but also how does that does that change you in any way It did a little bit not as much as I thought it might have
Uh, my father is 89 when he died those five years ago. My mother was Two days shy of her 95th birthday So that's why so I'm putting myself like right between them in my life expectancy. I think I'll get to 92 It's the average of those two, you know, so When you die at that age It's sad, but it's not tragic So I that's an important distinction for me tragic life is a life that could have been lived but through act of war or negligence or or negligence of the personal or of others the life is cut short Then that's tragic It's a life not fully lived, but if you live the full life They were married 50 something years Uh It's sad but it's not tragic. In fact, it's not even sad. It's something to celebrate And So I miss them I miss them more than I thought I would Because they carried quite a bit of wisdom with them. My father was active in the civil rights movement my mother Was a gerontologist so they both cared very deeply about the plight of others And I'm their son the astrophysicist, but so I go off with my head in the sky But I was anchored Into the human condition and anchored to think about it to care about it and When I Encounter Things in modern life Is I wonder what my mother would say about that. I wonder what insights my father and they're not there
I don't have them for that. So the way it's changed me is it is put a greater expectation of me on myself To make sure I have wisdom that I can share with my kids my two kids The kind of wisdom that I glean from my parents So that again, this is not wisdom of what Car to buy or what job to have because they have other values But they have other expectations of society, but in terms of Human to human interaction in terms of love terms of Challenges in life and overcoming them Some of those are timeless Some of those are you know how to how to navigate difficult people how to appreciate Nature So you don't take it for granted One of the things I liked about Joyce Kilmer's poem On the tree It's about a tree and we've all seen trees So why is this matter because it takes an artist A poet a writer a sculptor a painter For me the artist job Is to encourage us stimulate us To pay attention to things we might otherwise take for granted Because so much of life Is what you might just walk by And not even give it any thought And so I don't walk by trees without thinking something about that poem. What is the poem?
I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed against the earth's sweet flowering breast A tree that looks at God whole day And lifts her leafy arms to pray A tree that may in summer wear a nest of robin's in her hair Upon whose bosom snow has lain Who ultimately lives with rain poems are made by fools like me But only God can make a tree I spend so long these days thinking and talking to people about what all of this means And I've got more and more, I saw you talking about the simulation theory once or twice And I started to fall into that whole of thinking Oh yes, it's, no, you got to, you know, step outside every now and then and, you know, smell the roses I've got more and more, I saw you talking about the simulation theory once or twice Every now and then and, you know, smell the roses But you said you wouldn't be surprised if people found out the universe is simulated by some sort of advanced life form Yeah, given what we can now compute, throw in content computing on top of that We don't have this power yet, but to make a world in our computer where the characters that in that world believe they have free will And then they conduct themselves and then they invent computers and then they make a world inside of their computer
And where their characters think they have free will and then they so that then it's that simulated universes all the way down and Close your eyes and throw a dart Which are these you're gonna get the first universe that invented the Simulating universe or the zillion ones that followed the darts likely to hit one of the others But my my escape hatch from that is Since we do not yet know or have the power to make a perfectly simulated world It means we are either the first universe that's real that hasn't created one yet Or with a last universe That hasn't evolved yet to have created one of its own because all the middles have the power to create one So that takes it, you know A zillion to one against us to maybe 50-50. Oh interesting. Yeah, so I'm a little I'm a little more comfortable that way Comfortable yeah, I sleep a little better at night But I guess it wouldn't matter anyway if it actually it wouldn't matter if we're completely simulated What do you care you living your life? You know, we don't want to believe that there are puppet strings on us I'm part of me thinks that though You know just when earth is kind of everything on earth is kind of stable Oh, COVID shows up. Oh, so this this is the programmer saying you know the earth is too boring now
We got to spice it up a bit. They throw in a pandemic Okay, once in a century pandemic Now that now we're entertaining for them. What do we do who gets vaccinated who doesn't who's gonna fight who dies who lives Okay, so then we kind of get through that we get the vaccine Okay, we're just coming down off of that and they said oh Let's make a billionaire real estate developer from New York City the most powerful person in the world That's stir the pot again and so now the whole other set of pot stirring that's going on so that's kind of consistent with a Snot knows alien Kid and the parents basement programming our existence That's what I would do. I would throw in There's a game sim sim city. Yeah, I played that. That's all damn sim city. So you are mayor of this city and people can vote you out of office So you have to do things that make them happy and there's an opinion poll that's there and if you spend too much money here You're not spending money on the schools that's bad, but then this crime goes up and you're realizing oh my gosh And even this simple simulation so many interdependent phenomenon are taking place then Then you things that happen then Godzilla steps through and plows through the city
Okay, now Godzilla is not real But It kind of is because that would be a disaster that is in a flood as it fires It's a thing that nobody saw coming Okay, we are recording this interview On September 11th. I live four blocks from ground zero That's Godzilla walking through the city Well, how do you respond to that? What's you know, you didn't know that was gonna happen the day before so Realizing that in this game it's only interesting to play When disastrous things happen not too many in a row because you have to be able to recover So when I look at our world I'm thinking the best argument I have for being in a simulation is how often some big disaster takes place When it was the first World War and then after that the peace on pandemic Okay, the 1918 flu pandemic and then we get out of that oh No second world war Okay, we get out of that it's a cold war nuclear holocaust okay, so that's my That's me looking over the shoulder of the programmer Oh god, I think I prefer the world where I feel like I have free will and there's not Doesn't make a difference if you believe you have free will even if you don't know because I'll never know and you know The fun the fun answer to that Ask me say
Do you have free will ask me that do you have do we have free will do you have free will What choice do I have Well if you don't have free will then you don't even have an option to say you don't so I so you just live life just live your life So that the world is better off for you having lived in it And what does that mean for you like it means people are better off the institutions are better off people are happier healthier wealthier safer better fed That rationality matters in politics and lawmaking and That helps to will help to ensure Stability of anything you build going forward But yeah, that's all I mean it's not I's not complicated and you were talking about meaning before I stopped looking for meaning decades ago Because I realized I we any of us has the power to make meaning in life If you're gonna look for meaning are you looking under a rock behind a tree What it It says though meaning is sitting there waiting for you to find it. Oh, I found meaning there. It is now my life is complete That feels so So powerless on your own destiny whereas I make meaning I want to learn something today that I didn't know yesterday. I want to lessen the suffering of someone today Compared with however that person was living yesterday. I want to
I want to use what I learn to Well up within me and manifest as wisdom Because information is not really useful until it becomes knowledge And the knowledge is good you can show off if you have a lot of knowledge. That's what these games shows do but in the end The best use of knowledge is when it becomes wisdom And wisdom People say I don't like getting older. I want to be younger. I don't want to be young again Most 30 I was an idiot even when I was 30. I thought I was brilliant right so Don't get older Unless you have wisdom to show for it It's when you don't have something to show for your age you want to be younger You're just getting old with nothing to show for it But I continue to learn things every day Passively and actively Passively as you just notice You know open your eyes sometimes and see what's happening Where things are headed what they're doing You learn not all things you learn are good and if they're bad or need adjustment or need help Do something about it if you can So that's how I derive meaning Hence my tombstone be ashamed to die unless you've scored some victory for humanity. There's the meaning for you There's a whole class of billionaires that are trying to live forever now
And I think we are on the verge of being able to extend life Potentially indefinitely. Yeah, we're looking for the date It's called the escape velocity. You know about that phrase it exists in astrophysics of course But Escape velocity for earth for example is seven miles per second so Escape velocity in astrophysics is the speed That you launch something so that it never comes back no matter how hard the gravity tries Okay, so every object has an escape velocity. The escape velocity in aging is The idea is There is a generation yet to be born but in the very near future Who Will not not only live longer than the previous generation So so here's a cleaner way to say this every year You can expect to live one month longer Because knowledge about human physiology has gotten better. Okay. Okay. Just think about it that way And so we know what to eat but not to eat how to exercise and not over exercise how to maintain your health Well your health and physiology all right There will come a day where Every year that you're alive Medicine has figured out a way for you to live an extra year That's the escape velocity So every year you live another year And after that it could be every year you live two years
So that's the escape velocity So it's not just everybody lives forever today. It sort of works its way into the population and Yeah, I don't I don't want to live forever. I don't Take me off this earth Provided I mean I want I still have more to give more books to write that in my judgment would make the world better Than it currently is So I don't want to die before I Get as much of that done as I can but you scared of death No Although that's easy to say because I'm not at death's door and I had someone Rationalized with me which is they made a potent argument. It's I can say now with another 20 years life expectancy 15 20 years That I don't fear death but if I'm on my deathbed and someone says If I can wave my hand and you can live another year would you The answer is probably going to be yes and at the end of that year if they so I don't know if my Sentiments about life and death will change On my deathbed I know my mother that there's a point where she couldn't swallow and she didn't want to feed tube And she said my time has come Like that put me in in palliative care and then hospice and she was dead 10 days later So she was Was in charge over she they could have fed her With a tube
And she would have been completely healthy for another you know five years perhaps but no She raised two kids three kids You know 50 year marriage happy life stable life and Yeah, I'm good with that. So the billionaires, you know that that's ego for sure If you live forever there are other people Who you're taking resources from who would come behind you that's one but two Uh are you still contributing to the world Should you give another person a chance who's in school now who might be the next genius That'll figure out the energy problem the poverty problem the the pollution problem the the are you figuring that out?
No, you're in the last you're you're you're 90 years old and you're just living on your yacht So there's the problem there's the problem that The last years of your life Are not the most creative the most ambitious the most irreverent That's irreverence that where new ideas come You know you perhaps seems episodes of shark shark tank, you know half or more of those people is 30 and under They got ideas fresh ideas. Everyone else is entrenched. So if people Start living forever They're living forever in the part of their life that is least useful To the progress in advance of culture and civilization And so all of civilization will stagnate Did you think come it but in your lifetime you said you've got a 20 year life expectancy well 15 to 20 15 to 20 year life expectancy based on my age now and the age when they my parents died. Yeah But I mean you've done a lot of Neurological work and lay down a lot of good foundations with all these books you've written so maybe it'll be the upper end of that It's food for AI it was food for chat GP2 What you make of AI? What's your what do you I love it? Yeah, I love it, but I I'm It's it's by the way it's been here for a while It really spooked people when it started writing your term paper and composing your
Your painting and your set design all right that the whole other category of people got spooked by that Meanwhile AI has been harnessed and being fully used in my field and in most of the physical sciences It's doing work if you can do the work on and I can go to the Bahamas Let it do the work We have telescopes coming online that could not exist without the intervention of AI to access the data reduce the data Analyze the data make a decision about whether she go back to the thing that it just observed because that was weird Compare the last compared to the last time it was observed. This is the very Rubin telescope that I'm Literally describing now and so We're we're living with it. What it means is it up It'll have to up the game of people who say they are creative and what I mean by that is I can say chat GPT Take this picture of us and say chappy GPT A paint this scene in the style of Van Gogh It'll come back the colors will be just right. We'll have this swirling lines It'll be perfect if Van Gogh was standing. That's what Van Gogh would have painted If I say chat GPT paint us in the style of no artist who has ever lived I don't know what it's going to give us but it'll probably suck, okay? And so true creativity
is Is not Aping what has happened before and making adjustments Chook creativity. Yes, you always build on others. I'm not in denial of that, but chook creativity takes leaps That most people don't even know can be taking And so the artist so that gap I think is what check what what AI in the arts world is gonna force Created people to reach more otherwise you replaced by You replaced by a simple request In the in the input line of a large language model or an urban art. I was just wondering then if I watch Cosmos in 30 40 years time let's say a hundred years time I was wondering if this is the moment where humans and computers in the story of humanity Become one and intertwine if you think about things like neural ink which Elon's working on to me When he first made that company all of the narrative that he put out there was about us being able to interface with AI So we'd need like a brain chip computer interface More recently it's been about people that are paraplegic and disabled and helping blind people see But I think that's a socially acceptable way to advance the technology But in his early work he said Superintelligence is gonna arrive and we're gonna need a way to basically keep up where we have better sort of latency with
With the technology and I'm wondering if that's like what we're seeing now. Yeah super intelligence You know if that happens Then it becomes our overlord and we become its pet Now that sounds pretty scary But don't we treat our pets better than we treat Other humans in the world Think about it The pet is kept warm and fed and happy and And would you do that for a homeless person in the street a person of your own species? probably not So if we're the pet for the superintelligence What about the chicken how bad could it be or you stuff chickens on me or younger and I watch my Nigerian mother chase that chicken around the garden Grab it pull its head off Wow, okay. Yeah. Oh, you worried that it's gonna do that for us We're gonna run around no my pets made it and snap not all the pets survive Uh, yeah, it depends on whether it needs us To be alive or dead. We have to be relevant to it in some way Maybe we'll be court gestures with the entertainment until then I don't know that this is some special moment Uh, I do a lot of reading of history and throughout history Most occasions, especially in the era of the industrial evolution People think they're living in a special moment So I'm not gonna be that guy who says today is special
Because everyone has thought they were in a special moment and what do you think is the probability of me getting to another planet in my lifetime zero Zero Really yeah You want to why Yes, please. Yeah, it's just zero. I thought SpaceX gonna go to Mars. I have an unorthodox view on this So you don't have to you don't have to believe me You know, but My read of history tells me that we only do big expensive things If there's a geopolitical reason for it either an economic Reason or a defense reason Not just because it's the next thing to do And when we went to the moon Realize in 1961 May 25th President Kennedy was the six weeks after Yuri Gagarin Fool around the earth in orbit and we didn't have a ship that wouldn't blow up on the launch pad that could carry humans yet He calls a joint session of Congress And says if the events of recent weeks couldn't even utter the man's name the events of recent weeks And I paraphrase are any indication of the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere Then we need to show the world the path of freedom over the path of tyranny So battle cry against communism the godless Russians Like everyone in the whole Soviet Union we were losing a
technological race And that was the battle cry that prompted Congress to write the check. Oh later on he says Oh, it'll be put a man on the moon and before return him to safely earth and oh, that's so beautiful. Let's hold hand. That's so beautiful No one ever spent scads of money Just because it was a cool thing to do that has never happened ever so We go to the moon People forgetting why we went to the moon Say while we're on the moon at this rate will be on Mars it by 1985 That'll be the next ambitious goal we'll take on No Because we didn't just go to the moon because that was the next thing to do We went to the moon to beat the Russians and when we got to the moon and we looked over our shoulder and the Russians weren't there We canceled the Apollo program 19 said we haven't been back to the moon in 53 years We canceled it a Apollo 18 was ready to fly. It's now in captivity in Huntsville, Alabama in a museum On its side is fascinating to walk the full length of it all rocket-ret flight ready parts it never flew we ended at Apollo 17 No, we didn't go to Mars because we didn't have geopolitical reasons to do so neither economic nor For defense reasons historically people explored did expensive things for the glory of God and royalty
Very expensive the pyramids the honor of royalty okay the church building cathedral building all of these activities were in the glory of power deity and royalty There's none of that happens today we're past that the power of kings and gods that doesn't happen nobody dislodges major resources capital resources of a nation In the interest of a god or a king anymore Okay, it's secular and to secular means it's money or it's war because you feel threatened Okay, so You know we're going back to the moon now Project Artemis Did you ever think to stop and ask why Why did we stay on the moon in 1972 when we go back in 1980 or 1990 2000 2010 oh all of a sudden let's go back to the moon wouldn't that be cool?
Do you know when Artemis began in the late teens Right about when China says we're gonna put pecanauts on the moon You know Technos not yet Chinese astronaut Let's pack him up all right That's when we saw let's go back to the moon what a good idea let's do that Really because we because it's just a good idea because we're a little bit spooked by a friendly foe across the around the world might get The glory of that exercise and once again, it's a godless country Okay Communism is godless by design by construct so Here we are going back to the moon all right What motivation do we have to go to Mars other oil wells there is there you know diamond mines We're not going to Mars We're just not Unless China says they want to put military bases on Mars We're going to be in Mars in 10 months One month to design build and find the thing and nine months to get to Mars A geopolitical force operating Well, by the way, NASA doesn't have a rocket that'll get us to Mars They think they do but I don't really have one yet Time to do that and say well, did anybody have a rocket Elon says I have a rocket So if Elon rocket goes to Mars It's not because he sends it there. It's because taxpayers sent it there
By the way, he could go there on a vanity project, but there's no business case He can fly to Mars team up with Jeff Bezos. They can send people to Mars It's not a business case and if you are an investor in his company You would not agree to do that You wouldn't but he doesn't need investors because he's very wealthy You could do it on his own Are you going to Mars as a tourist? Is that is that a business case? It's a trillion dollars to get to Mars first second will be a little less I don't see that happening a trillion dollars about that. Yeah If earth were a schoolroom globe With your fists show me where you think the moon is this is earth Take your fist and put it at the distance the moon is your fist is about the right size compared. Okay, I mean Right there. Yeah, okay, not too bad. It's 30 feet away. It's in the next room Okay, okay, 30 feet away. Okay, that's the moon Let's keep going How far away from earth did the Bezos Branson Uh Rockets go. Oh, no father the thickness of two dimes above the surface of the earth How far away is Mars It's a mile away from here. Yes from this earth. It's a mile away It's the central point the moon 30 feet away Mars a mile away. Yeah, it's a trillion dollars to Mars. Yes. How long?
Nine months And you have to wait till the planets are configured so that When you travel you arrive where Mars will be when you get there And that's a minimum energy orbit if you have filling stations along the way you can just fill up with fuel and get there as fast as you want But minimum energy orbit takes about nine months and then to come back you have to wait till it It's configured again a few years later. So a round trip to Mars is three to five years Easily so there's not an economic case I'm not saying we don't know how to get to Mars. We have an SUV-sized rover there now All right, discovering potential life from a billion years ago. It's not like we don't know how to get to Mars This is not a technological statement I'm making. I'm talking about a practical statement So no My read of history tells me no I thought you were gonna also add to that that even if Elon wanted to do it as a vanity project because he makes all this money and manages to use Starling because the way to fund it whatever that the problem is Elon's gonna die He's gonna die and then you know the next couple of decades, which means the vanity element that comes from his childhood Situation where he wanted to get out there and explore the stars because he read that book
Has got 30 years 40 50 years left on it. Well, that would make him want to hurry wouldn't it? Yeah Yeah, and plus he said I don't want to die on earth. I want to die on Mars Hmm I'm paraphrasing, but that's the idea So that's a goal Sure, but don't tell me it's a it's a it's a It's a business case. I can see a tourist case going into orbit and even possibly visiting the moon It's three days there three days back. That's a week's vacation that you would take and I would save up five years ten years of vacation money If that was the amount that it would take to go to the moon and for one week that would be really fun bucket list item for me If you're starting a business that means you're one person doing the workload of probably about 50 people When I first founded this podcast I had no idea that I was about to step into a hundred different roles That I'd never trained for things like researching and production and scheduling and branding all of it all at once And this experience isn't unique to me But for millions of founders around the world the tool that changes all of that is our sponsor Shopify Shopify now powers 10% of all us e-commerce from names like Gymshark and Mattel to first-time founders just getting started
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What is a black hole and how do we even know if they're real if no one's ever been to one Well, you can know things without visiting them I mean that's the methods and tools and machines of science are remarkable in their ability to learn something without actually having to see it with your eyes or hear it with your ears or to touch it with your fingers we have In fact science didn't take off until These machines became a fundamental part of how we investigated the world replacing our five senses Because there's nothing more feeble in this world than you thinking you understand reality through your five senses That that don't want to call it feeble. I would call it error prone error prone Remember I told you about escape velocity of earth. Yeah, do you remember what I the value I said it was Seven miles paid attention a minute per second that's very fast seven miles, so the adage what goes up must come down It's not true. It's true for almost anything you experience But you can launch something seven miles per second. It'll never ever come back. That's the escape velocity for earth Okay If earth had more mass and the gravity were stronger The escape velocity is higher That would make sense because there's more gravity that you have to escape
Let's keep up that exercise Kram and more and more mass just keep doing that Escape velocity keeps going up eventually escape velocity hits the speed of light At that point light can't even escape Light is the fastest thing in the universe if light can't escape if you fall in you don't escape either There's no better description of a hole than that And worse yet, it's a hole in any direction you approach it Not just a hole in the street or in the floor It's a three-dimensional hole And how do we know it's there because it distorts the fabric of space and time around it We see galaxies behind concentrations of matter Black holes and the shape of the galaxy is distorted because Einstein tells us that gravity distorts the fabric of space and time That's one way we discover black holes another way is most stars in the night sky or binary and multiple star systems most of them You can't see it because you just have human vision You without a telescope you see oh my gosh there are two stars not just one If there's a pair of stars and one of them becomes a black hole And this one ages it expands and some of its material spills onto and orbits around the event horizon of the black hole This swirling material gets hotter and hotter and hotter
And it radiates x-rays and ultraviolet We have x-ray and ultraviolet telescopes that see every one of these in the night sky The all black holes and it's created from an explosion There's a star that wants to explode but it has so much mass The explosion doesn't Overcome the gravity and the star collapses down on itself to make a black hole There's one way to make a black hole So our Sun when that runs it's not gonna become blue it's pretty wimpy in that department It'll still kill us but for different reasons So the mass of the object is so big that it can't actually explode because the gravitational Inwards is so strong correct that's above a certain threshold within there There's the stars that the explosion is greater than what the gravity can contain and it makes a supernova and those are the stars that spread Heavy elements across the galaxy enabling us to even exist So I'm gonna read this again a golf ball sized black hole would weigh more than earth and swallow it whole leaving behind something The size of a line. Yeah, so when black holes eat they get bigger. So a line is bigger than a golf ball But not by very much We can calculate what the size is Where would everything go? It's in there. It's compressed down inside the hole
And if I was and everything near it's gonna get pulled in there as well If it comes too close right if it comes too close. Yeah, you can stay you can keep your distance black holes They're not giant sucking devices. I mean if you keep your distance You're if the sun became a black hole right now. We would still orbit it the gravity we feel at our distance is no different You say that if the sun suddenly shut off with freeze at minus 462 Fahrenheit Which is the background temperature of the universe? Yes once the stored energy ran out. Yeah, once the stored energy were around Well in this in the well, so there's the sun's energy if the sun Blotted out, but earth has energy Inside of itself as well. This is what gives us volcanoes and continental drift and all the rest of this So if you don't have a sun you want to live near a volcano Or something that is a source of energy for you and then you'll live on earth until the earth's energy Died out ideally by then you just go to another planet I mean why not how long this house our sun got left another five billion years. How would we know?
It's a good question. That's a product of 20th century modern astrophysics That was then it was modern. I think of it as modern where you say what kind of star is this You look around the universe for other stars that are just like it And then you see those stars in their stages of evolution Stars being born Leaving out their lives and dying and the star changes its properties from birth to death And so you can line up what where the sun is in that chart and then plus we know how old earth is So we can directly measure the age of the earth and so There's no reason to think that earth Did not form at the same time the sun did Another really um Fascinating one was every breath you take contains molecules once inhaled by every human in history Yep That can't be true Chatchy PT it No, so here it is you ready yeah There are more molecules of air In a single breath of air Then there are breaths of air in earth's entire atmosphere So if you breathe in and then breathe out There's enough molecules that you breathe out To populate every breath that anyone will ever again take on this earth And air mixes rather quickly Okay So you have to mix it's not immediately give it some time, but you give it some time
There are molecules that went in and out of your lungs that are in China being breathed by people there When enough time is elapsed I mean calculate that like it's years 10 years something like that There's tremendous mixing of air. So how's that for feeling kinship with others Same with water you drink a water there more molecules of water in a glass of water This is a mug of water then there are Mugs of water in all the world's oceans So you drink a mug of water And then it comes out of you in any one of a half dozen different ways There's enough molecules to scatter into every other mug of water in the world So someone gets a mug of water your molecules and be a plenty more plenty of molecules To go So if I do a big inhale I'm also I'm inhaling air that contains molecules that all of my living relatives Once inhale yes, and go further back Jesus inhale them Mohammed With every breath yes every breath This is the the the the oneness of it all That's why it's a beautiful thing astrophysics I wouldn't live without it Do you think it's makes us kind of Learning about the universe. Would you think it makes us more nihilistic and narcissistic?
No, if you learn about it as you should you shouldn't be nihilistic. There's no force of nihilism In the knowledge wisdom and insight you get by studying the universe You you will never find marching armies led by astrophysicist to go slaughter one another We the cosmic perspective prevents that The cosmic perspective yeah By the way if you look at the chapter titles in there they're each pairs of words That we've all used and but we've argued over many of them Over our thanksgiving dinner. I don't know if there's a version of thanksgiving in the UK It's maybe just Christmas everybody gathers and the crazy uncles and aunts come in and you got to argue with them about You know and you then you you reminded why you only see them once a year Because No, there are topics in there color and race is in there law and order body and mind Meet Terrians and vegetarians life and death A lot of reflective moments in there. So this book though. It's all these topics that people fight about It's goal is to say you think that and you think that you got to look at it this way It's not Meet in the middle No, it's meet on a plane of existence above what you're arguing and you'll look down on what you're arguing and realize how ridiculous it is
That's the goal of that book chapter 10 of the book says human physiology may be overrated Yeah What do you mean by that? Well You know, we'd like to think of ourselves at the top of evolutionary Properties, but it's really your mind surely but not much else You know, we It's odd because we always imagine aliens having humanoid bodies Yeah, and there's no reason for that If they come from another planet most life on earth doesn't have a humanoid body The banana doesn't have a humanoid body and you have DNA in common with it You don't have any DNA in common with an alien from another planet Yeah, it's walking around with a neck eyes nose mouth head ears shoulders arms fingers kneecaps feet Really That is that is that your best imagination that you can come up with Alien from another planet Is that is the universe Infinite I've often wondered that does it just go on forever or is there a We're not given reason to think it doesn't But our horizon has an edge what we can see yeah But there's no reason to think So you're your ship at sea and you have a horizon Are you saying let's the extent of the ocean no Because if you sail towards the horizon more horizon shows up And you keep that up until you hit land
So in the universe we have our horizon And if we went to that horizon we'd have a whole other horizon beyond that If we travel to that horizon you'll hold other horizon there The question is how how far does that go We don't know We have no idea It's simpler mathematically to think it goes forever It's curious how there's some equations where infinities Work just fine in the equation Uh, so we don't know We can talk about to our own horizon. That's it There's so many people saying that they've seen aliens We had someone on this podcast actually that said they'd seen aliens not they'd seen aliens But they had evidence that aliens existed And they worked in the military and said that they'd uh You know some of these spacecraft footage that you see from the day Show you the alien No, but you see the videos of the things bouncing around in the sky Oh fuzzy videos Fuzzy videos So those are UFOs they're not aliens UFOs yeah It's a difference Oh yeah Many people equate the two But if you see something in the sky and you don't know what it is It's a UFO and was the you stand for Unidentified Until you can identify it It's a UFO And because it does things that you don't understand You cannot equate that with it being
An alien You just said you don't know what it is Wow, that's amazing. I don't know what it is Therefore it must be an alien If once you just said you don't know what it is that's the end of the sentence You can't go on and say therefore it must be anything You can be impressed with videos that have no explanation I'll have a problem with that But you want to turn around and say aliens You want to take it's a government cover up Do you really think the government is that competent?
Often the same people who say there's a mastermind a governor The same people who complain that the government is a bloated bureaucracy Inefficient bureaucracy that should be replaced by private enterprise There's the same people making those same statements So I love the aliens. I want to meet him too My my people the astrophysics community has been searching for aliens for decades And you've never found evidence of any? not So The community of amateur astronomers in the world Okay, amateur astronomy is that's a badge of honor because you meet you know the night sky and you own a telescope and it's not Like amateur neurosurgeon. Okay You don't want to go to an amateur neurosurgeon But you want to know the night sky go to an amateur astronomer Amateur astronomers know the night sky they know what the sun moon and stars are doing every night They know they're very good at Climate and weather because that affects weather things are visible So they know when weather systems come in and go out and what things look like You would think if aliens were About Up and about that amateur astronomers would have seen more of them than anyone else But they've seen less Because we know what we're looking at
It's kind of that simple The moment you know what you're looking at it's an IFO isn't yeah, it's not a UFO And so yeah, I want to meet the aliens, but You're going to show me fuzzy video. We're going to say you have an alien, but it's in a lock box and you're not going to show it If you have an alien in a lock box and you're not going to show it that's the same thing to a scientist As not having an alien at all. Could you make the case for why aliens probably do exist and also the case for why they probably don't exist No, no they surely exist in this universe The universe is 14 billion years old and the ingredients of life on earth are the most common ingredients in the universe And life began on earth almost as quickly as it possibly could have When earth finally cooled down after it being formed it was by 200 million years for signs of single-celled life So even though we can't duplicate that yet. We don't know how that's a frontier of biology Earth didn't seem to have problems Getting the job done within 200 million years. That's earth Now you have exoplanets everywhere across the galaxy to suggest that life on earth is alone in the universe You'd have to have some point of philosophy that requires you believe that because it's not derived from actual
evidence or observations of the universe itself so Aliens usually people mean intelligent aliens, but we're happy to find any kind of life at all bacterial life That would be that would transform biology What about an on galaxy in the Milky Way galaxy? Yeah, the galaxy is the most sensible place to so we've looking we've looked for exoplanets A planet orbiting another star Because we're gonna look for life you want to we presume it's gonna be on a planet So if this table is the galaxy and the solar system would be about right there We've searched a circle about this big For exoplanets and what's the solar system versus it's just the Sun and its planets. Oh, yeah, solar system And then that's our solar system there and we are part of several hundred billion stars in the galaxy And this galaxy is one of perhaps as many as a trillion galaxies in the observable universe So to say we're alone. That's just you being you're being philosophically irresponsible So this table is The galaxy yeah if it were the galaxy and we such the coin coin Yes, that's a good word to use a coin-sized volume of this galaxy. We've searched for exoplanets and by association life So folks at the SETI institute the search for extraterrestrial intelligence
§02Transcript — part 2
Uh, they come up with an analogy So the people said well, we haven't found life yet. So maybe there's no life anywhere And we say no take a cup and scoop it into the ocean That's like saying Hmm The ocean has no whales in it Is that the equivalent? Yeah, it's a quim in terms of the space of Searching because it's not only in physical space But it's in time Suppose the aliens sent radio signals to us and they arrived two thousand years ago Do the Romans have radio telescopes? No But we would all count them as intelligent So communication requires intelligence and technology How long have we had technology to do that?
80 years On the court chance of put probability do you think there are aliens in the Milky Way galaxy? Yeah, oh sure You think they're wrong. I don't see why not That's a calculation you can do. I did it with two colleagues in mind. We have about a hundred civilizations In the galaxy alive now That's not many out of the total number of stars But again a civilization you've has to evolve out of whatever it was and it's a tiny little slice of time Relative to how long the planet has been there 100 different Living yeah, so was it was on the way living because living can mean many things Well, I mean Mars might have had life, but it would be dead today on the surface. So We're looking for living civilizations and does that excite you yes completely but You want to now tell me it has visited you in with fuzzy lights in the sky And no one is like brought forth an alien I need better evidence because you're making an extraordinary claim Humans fascination with meeting these aliens when we've got crazy species. We've never met on our own planet That's a good point and plus what do we need real aliens for when we have Hollywood?
The funny part to me is we have no knowledge That aliens want to harm us But we do have knowledge that humans want to harm humans And any encounter between an advanced civilization and one that was less advanced In the history of exploration has never boated well for the less advanced civilization So for me We are describing aliens Not as we think they would be But as we know we are to one another to mirror And we've only got to play out what we would do as well if we found an alien civilization What would humans do? I mean I think we'd go and try and steal some of them And bring them here. Well, they're probably smarter than us That's like that's like worm saying oh we found some humans. What should we do with them? Should we corral them?
No If aliens came here they clearly are more advanced than we are Because we haven't left low earth orbit In 53 years So if they cross the galaxy to visit us Oh, we're gonna take a shoot of gun at them You know In all the movies that we beat them That's so funny. I've never thought about that before that. Yeah, we just shoot guns at them You shoot guns at them and did it really make a difference, you know We put like Brad Pitt or whoever in like a some cruise you know What's your favorite space movie space movie Well sci-fi is the matrix. Why? I love everything about it. The story is tight There's one physics error in it But without it they don't have a movie so you got to give it I can write him a hall pass Which I feel That I have the power to do what's the the error everyone's gonna be wondering what the error was in the Oh, it's not an error. It's just They got the it's bad physics in it. Okay, so if you if you remember the AI Computer that's running everything Needs an energy source And so they're growing humans in these pods Knowing that each human Radiates it about 80 watts. They didn't give that number but it's a true fact 80 watts like an 80 watt bulb. That's so much energy you are consuming and using
That's an energy rate Okay So they and it's one of the writers must have known that and so that's kind of cool Let's use humans as an energy source for the machines all right So these pods of humans and they grow the humans from childhood to adulthood and they put in their head A world that they're living in which is just in their head and they think it's real But it's not That's the matrix. Okay, but wait a minute How do the humans get their energy They feed the humans food Well, why are you feeding food to humans and then using the energy from the humans for the machine Bypass the middle man and just feed the machine Something called a second law of thermonet first or second law of thermodynamics anytime energy changes from one form to another It's not a hundred percent efficient. You drive a car if you drive a combustion engine car You drive it 50 miles get out the engine's hot Where the heat come from that's Wasted energy converting chemical energy of the gasoline to kinetic energy of your car It is never 100 percent perfect. So they are losing energy in with this middle man And they should just feed themselves whatever the food they're feeding the humans and If they're smart they wouldn't not have humans at all
But then there's no movie. So that's my point. Road him a hall pass. You're okay with that Are you an easy person to watch movies like this? Yeah, I'm not I'm not the I'm not the guy you think I am I will watch it and silently yes. I'll I'll gather a list of but I'm silent about it and if you're interested, I will tell you later Have you ever heard about this before this thing? I'm holding in my hands now This is called ketone IQ the website is ketone.com You've heard me on this podcast talking about the fact that I stay Much of the year in a ketogenic state which is a highly restricted diet And the reason I do that is plenty fold one of them as I spend hours and I was talking to people for a living So I want to make sure my brain is firing in an optimal way And the other reason that I do the ketogenic diet is because I just feel better So when I discovered this which is what they call an exogenous ketone product where you can drink it and it increases your blood's ketone levels I was blown away. I contacted them. I met them. I invested Extremely heavily into their company and I've become a co-owner of the company accordingly and they sponsor this show now So if you want to try this out for yourself
I recommend you try it Just visit ketone.com slash Stephen and you'll get 30% off your first subscription order You'll also get a free gift with your second shipment. That's ketone.com slash Stephen I did something at 24 years old that has had a profound impact on my life I set myself the challenge of posting every single day on my social media channels And at the time I was doing it to grow my following But I had this profound impact on my life and two remarkable things happened when I did that I managed to learn faster because every single day I'm capturing what is happening to me And trying to distill it down into something that I can share with the world But more remarkably it led me to building a following of many millions of people And that's the basis that I used to launch the diorama CEO And that's why I want to tell you about our sponsor today Adobe Express They are the platform that I use to make all the posts across my LinkedIn and across my Instagram It's a couple of clicks and you don't need to be an expert And that is why I love using it because I'm not an expert in graphic design It's accessible to use for all of us Even if we don't have the technical prowess to design great things
So if you want to start compounding both your reach and your knowledge like I did at 24 years old Then head to Adobe.ly-steven And get started with Adobe Express That's Adobe.ly-steven What's the one outstanding question if there is one? That you're desperate to know the answer to I don't live life that way Really? Yeah It's a sensible question that you're asking me I don't want to diminish the sensibility of it But I want to say that It's not how I view the world The world is not There's the one question I need answered The world is What do I need to learn So that I'm standing in a place I can yet imagine Asking a question I have yet to think of In other words as the area of our knowledge grows So too does the perimeter of our ignorance And so you say what one question?
No, there'll be a bunch of questions The area grows some more I'm standing in a new place Now there's a question I didn't even think could be asked Before and that's the question that matters there and then But then there's another question later on As this frontier continues to advance So I don't think about the one question or the two questions that matter I think about questions Yet to be dreamt of That we don't even see Because we haven't taken the frontier to that vista yet And so yeah, it's some of that that's unknowable But I kind of like that There's the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke One of the poems I don't remember all the lines with the one that matters to me Most is learn to love the questions themselves You try to find answers And I'm trying to find the questions Learn to love the questions themselves And this kind of brings me back to the top of the conversation where I was talking about I've got a lot more questions these days That's good, love it Sometimes it's difficult And not all questions Can be answered given the state of knowledge Some questions are illegitimate questions Not all questions are legit questions For example at what temperature does the number seven melt
What kind of cheese is the moon made out of These are just because the nouns and verbs are lined up And there's a question mark doesn't mean the And by the way when you're In the facing the unknown You don't know if you're a question Later on would look that ridiculous What separates the great scientists from the average scientist Is that they're huge into what questions to ask Do you think we hunt ourselves by asking these invalid questions? No No You need You don't know if it's invalid Like to say I know the moon is not made out of cheese Today I know that because we've been there We've brought back moon rocks So today that question is invalid But if you never Imagine ever going to the moon And you know anything about physics or rocks And you look up And it looks like a A pumpkin cheese you're eating It's a completely legit question And there's a bit of a There is a bit of a conversation raging in my friendship cycle at the moment About religion and meaning And what's the point Should we be arguing about these things About meaning, religion Is there any is there any better?
I think meaning is a very personal thing to people So why should you jump in the middle of their attempt To establish meaning in their life We're all very different people And so meaning ought to be different If meaning was the same for everyone You just publish it Everyone reads it And then we all have meaning No You got to Make it yourself Some people want to search for it fine And I have a problem with that I'm not searching for meaning I'm creating meaning in my life Because I can control that Not that it's important to control everything You know I like magic as an adult Because it reminds me I can still be fooled Okay That's So I don't need to know everything I just need to Maintain curiosity And you've got kids So 29 and 25 Is that the most meaningful thing you've done in your life?
Raising kids Yeah It's among the most meaningful things I would say They did a lot of their own raising Because they're highly independent And So There's a limit to how much I should take credit For who and what they have become There are a lot of what they did themselves But My wife who's a scientist She's a mathematical physicist We made sure that both our kids were scientifically literate At an early age By age 13 Certified So at that point I said I don't care what grade you get from now on I don't care I know no one will exploit you For your lack of curiosity and knowledge about the the objective universe And You know we'd be at a dinner party And They're like In middle school right And someone says Oh I had a bad day Because Mercury was in retrograde And And my son would say What actually happened to you today Has that happened on days when I was They know how to ask questions Okay, by the way if you just reject what someone says outright That's as intellectually lazy As it is to accept What they say outright What's harder But I think more fun Is lining up a series of questions To probe the statement To explore What is going on in the thoughts And in the claims Of the person With whom you're conversing
So if someone says I have these crystals They rub them together It'll heal you My kids would say What are the crystals made of And what tests have you made for this And Could be Could the healing have been explained in another way And in what way Are the And they start asking these questions And then the person probably just walk away Because they would not have the answers to all of them And then you know that remember I said Of an argument last more than five minutes Than both sides are wrong The person There's nothing There's no place for that to go To the Truly curious person There's another interesting fact crystals represent the lowest energy state Of the atomic or molecular configuration That is comprised of The lowest energy state So people say I have crystal energy No, you don't You have the lowest energy state Of that Of that silicon dioxide That you're calling quartz There is no there's no energy you're going to take out of it It is in its lowest energy state These are people who have never had chemistry And as an educator I don't want to make fun of this But when people think they know something And are audacious about it When in fact they don't That makes it much harder for an educator to break through
Horoscopes Yeah Well, I've got some stats for you here Neal, surveys find that roughly 80% of Gen Z Believe in astrology to some degree 72% of those Gen Z and millennials allowed astrology To influence major life decisions Like romance, health, work In education And many Gen Zs now are checking their horoscopes weekly Yeah, I We live in a free country So I don't I'm not going to try to stop them What would be sad is if that number got to 100% And then then you wouldn't be generating scientists Or engineers Or people who The objective truths of the world matter And then this civilization just goes back to the cave Where everything that happened in the natural world was mysterious Created by forces beyond our knowledge and understanding And This is the the title of one of Carl Sagan's books The Demon Haunted World Science as a candle in the dark That was the subtitle of that book So if you want to think you're not in control of your fate Because the Sun Moon and planets are It's like I said, it's a free country Is there anything that you've learned That the universe does to influence us Yeah, the Sun rises and I wake up Because I want to be awake during the day Yes That people aren't
Yeah, the tide comes in And I move my my my my beach chair back Because the tide came in Yeah There's our things that influence my behavior Yes But it's not much more than that Earth is tipped on its axis so we have seasons I'd buy coats and wear them in the winter That influences my behavior What's your stop sign? Well, I once had someone take a class of mine At the Hayden Planetarium that I taught On astrophysics And at the end she like the second or last class She came to say, oh, thank you. Thanks for the class. I enjoyed I'm enjoying the class But I want you to know I'm an astrologer And I'm taking the class so I can cast horoscopes better So I said it's really working for you She said yeah, yeah, yeah, she said for example What's your horoscope sign?
And I said Shouldn't you be able to figure that out? Ha If all this works and you cast horoscopes You ought to tell me what my sign is She's okay. Okay, she said are you Gemini? I said no I know cancer that's it. I said no Uh, it must be Leo. I said no eight horoscopes later She gets the correct answer and says I knew it So I'm simply saying that Her ninth guess out of 12 Was correct and she declares I knew it Why do people want to believe in things like this? I I think they want The world to still have mysteries because mysteries are beautiful things however The world still has mysteries. They're just different mysteries from whatever there used to be And so follow the mysteries where they take you And there's another branch of all of us who must have answers to every question Because they're not learning to love the questions. They only want to love with the answer So they say what was around before the big bang? I said, I don't know we got top people were something had to be around I don't know must have been God So there's their answer that then they're happy What happens after death? Well, it looks like you brought in the ground But otherwise and it's what it's got to be something and you're soul
I said, there's got to be the God heaven. Okay, that's their answer We've got their answer and if that's your answer at every turn You make a you're not as good an investigator of the unknown We could you just invent the answer to the unknown your content. What is dark matter dark? I don't know We got top people. We're gonna is that the spirit of God? Okay Then that person won't walk into a lab to continue to study what dark matter and dark energy is I don't mind if you want to say it's God, but don't let that stop your curiosity But if you say it's God and then you're done Then you're not very useful in the lab Those people seem to be happier and healthier though that which is the surprising thing religious people Well again, so it could be because they believe there's a God that tells them who to sleep with and where to eat and how to pray or Because they have a regular dose of community I don't know that those are completely separable variables They're people who they love and care about that they see every week Which is not happening with so many people today. You think you would be happier if you believed in God I'm a pretty happy guy Do you think you'd be happier?
I don't know. I see people I've seen very happy people in Celebrating their version of God But then there are other people who really happy in their version of God and here's the problem Deeply religious people Typically Find other religions Deeply religious people will declare for themselves and others in that religion that all the other religions are false False And if not false just make preposterous claims it is so obvious to them how false all the other religions are now you go to this religion It is obvious how preposterous the rest of the religions are you go around religion to religion and So what's really going on here is devout people in so many of these religions are atheists To every religion but their own Every religion but their own Okay How can a mountain of move to Muhammad that can't be look okay?
Oh, but yes the creator of the universe impregnated a woman in the middle east 2,000 years ago that's more believable than anything in the Quran for this person Okay, and then the Jews he's saying here Jesus is the son of God. What are you crazy? Would you get that for he's a good Jew the nice prophet but son of God you're going too far So everybody's saying what's not true? So The atheist for every other they just don't believe any other religion whereas an actual atheist Just has one more religion to that category It's your religion The atheists agrees with you that all the other religions are preposterous in their claims But they also believe the also think your religion is preposterous and people don't accept that they don't it doesn't land well So I don't have any problems with people being religion. I don't have many issues with that. It's Um, I don't try to impose my I other people try to do it. I've seen them do this. I have a quote Where I misquoted just because they want me on their side Okay, you ready it's a simple quote If every time I tell you Science doesn't understand it and you say well God must be that God made the universe because we don't God made life because we don't know how to make life yet God if that's
If that is your definition and understanding of God Then as science progresses it will solve these questions Pushing the God back outward To places that have yet to be discovered And so the quote is if to you God is where science has yet to tread Then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance That's that that references with philosophers are called God of the gaps It goes way back thousands of years if we don't understand it. There's a guy the storm is Poseidon Okay, lightning bolt struck it's Zeus All right, that's God of the gaps. God of the gaps is a time-honored Exercise in human civilization and what I'm saying is That statement Is objectively true because it's an if statement If to you God is where science has yet to tread Then as science continues to tread you're a pocket a shrinking pocket of scientific that's your God Okay, it's not an opinion. There's a statement of an if statement the consequences of an if statement I've had people take the second half and put it on a t-shirt God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance Neil the grass Tyson is not what I said That's half of what I said and that's only true if to you God Is where science has yet to tread but to pull that out and make that the truth no
I would never make such a statement ever You're 66 right hang on I will be 67 in a month in a month. Okay, so it's a month from this recording. So I'm 33 okay half my eight exactly half I was wondering you're a very wise man What is the advice that you wish someone had said to you at 33 But you could give to me now I have no such advice and I'll tell you why If you're alert and you're smart Alert meaning you notice things and you're you're smart and you you learn Living life itself is the lesson So if so a version of what you just asked is What given what you know today? What would you tell yourself if you met yourself when you were 15 20 25 30 whatever And I said I wouldn't tell him anything Because if I gave a bit of wisdom I say you're about to do that but don't do that Okay There's no better lesson than doing something and learning that you shouldn't do it That's the best lesson We don't live life because there's a list of things that other people said known to you're gonna explore your life That's what you're gonna do And some things are great and some things you don't want to do again some things you're bad That's where the wisdom comes from You earn it It's the most it's the most
It's the strongest kind of wisdom you can have provided you learn from a mistake If you're just an idiot and you just keep making the mistake My advice we use don't make the same mistake twice But that's you'll need me for that So you'll make a decision about this podcast or some business decision and no it didn't turn out right Here's a better example of this you ready This is a very American kind of story. I'm about to tell immigrant comes over Back when that was a thing you could do comes to the United States and they work hard Very hard working They first sweep the the street in front of a store front and then they're in the store and they learn the trade And then the owner dies and they take over the trade and they're working hard and they're scrapping and they kick and then they buys The adjacent store and they build the thing and becomes and then he moves and he lives in a big house and he has kids okay He says to himself When I was Your age I had to like scrounge for food and I had to like sweep thing that and I want to make sure my kids don't have to do that I want to make sure they don't have to do that Okay, so you provide things for them So they don't have to do this and now they grow up and their adults and their deadbeats
They have no motivation. They have no ambition. They have no vision statement Because everything got handed to them and what what is the adult say to the kids Where did I go wrong? I gave you everything I didn't have That's where they went wrong Because they gave the kids everything he did that and what made that person Was what they struggled the the decisions they had to make the decisions they got right the decisions They got wrong who they met how they treated people This is life experience And it doesn't come on a bumper sticker Doesn't come on a what's the secret This like going to someone's home and one of the one of the hosts Is actually a train chef right and maybe worked in a restaurant and they prefer this is squeeze at meal And you said this is delicious What's your secret?
Oh the secret I went to chef school for six years. That's the secret You're thinking this is one sentence. I could tell you and then you that that'll make everything better No No Just stay alert Learn new stuff every day And learn from your mistakes because those lessons are greater Then someone just telling you to not do it Then you have no such life experience to build into the wisdom That you want to acquire in the years to come My last question for you is I hear it the other you'd ever have a last question No, yeah for now I should say my last question for now But um my last question for now and I kind of hear it in between some of the things you say is and I've just moved here So I've just moved to Los Angeles. How do you feel about America right now?
Well You know, it's a free country and we vote in our leaders And right now there's a whole set of people in charge That are doing different things from what had happened in previous Years previous leaderships even previous leaders of that same political party The what's going on is very different from anything that I think people would have predicted a lot of people like Complaining about leadership But we live in a country where we choose our leaders So we're going to complain about the leadership. You should be complaining about the people The about the electorate I'm an educator. I've never I've never The complained about politicians They represent people I was once in the Rayburn office building Washington DC in the science committee's room beautifully decorated with science Art and sculptures and things one of the members of the science committee back then was a young earth creationist Young earth creationist universe created in six days earth created in six thousand years at most ten thousand years And I knew he was going to be there and I thought to myself Do I grab him by the lapels and say what do you think you're on the science committee and then I thought no no If he thinks that
presumably So does his electorate they voted him in And there's electorate of fellow citizens as MI in this country So I can't indict him let me go have a conversation with the folks who voted for him I said why do you think this and we've considered this and that's my duty as an educator not to hit anybody on the head Who's in Washington so do we blame the educators and the media people like you know people like me that No, that's the blame game is I don't feel that way My parents when we showed they showed us the images Of the dogs and the water hoses on the protesters and in the South American South They were never bitter They said these people don't know any better. They don't know any differently We have to talk to them and you know teach them That's very different from saying holding up your fist saying I'm going to fight them because they're my enemy It's I want to teach them because they're my fellow citizens And that's how I feel so My worry is that Their decisions made that are not in the best interest of the people who voted for those decisions the longer term implications are Could be devastating if you cut basic science basic science feeds engineering engineering feeds economies
And so if you don't think basic science matters because you don't either understand the title of the research or the scientist didn't communicate it interestingly enough whatever And you say this is a waste of money. Take it all out. Let's just do the engineering You'll be ossified in place and is that what's happened We are on the brink of that happening right now. That's correct. The average person has no idea about this I've tried to you know illuminate the public about it It's easy to say that basic science doesn't matter or can't matter or will never matter Because we don't know yet Right now is the centennial decade So we'll go back to the 1920s where quantum physics was developed If you were around back then, what would you say? Why are you studying atoms? I can't even see atoms Don't waste your time. You're a brilliant person go work on this other problem that we have in society and It would take decades But the information Technology revolution Has as its core The creation storage and retrieval of digital information that can only happen With the exploitation of the quantum So this decade of science physics that was discovered By the 1950s it was like whoa, this is some important physics here
No one would have known that at the time Why Let me keep going was it 1876 Philadelphia Expo Alexander Graham Bell showcases his new contraption The telephone And people say wow, this is kind of cool. You should read what people wrote about it This is a great invention. I can imagine there might be one in every city in the future In this book That one yeah, there's a whole chapter called science and technology Where I chronicle I chronicle How people think about the technology of their day and how they always get it wrong when they predict the future Because Foundational science comes in at the bottom and you don't see that coming and it girdles its way up clever engineers apply it and then You have an iPad Yeah Neil thank you so much. Well, thanks for having me back. This is our second time together. It is what out the bookstore here What'd you do? Yes, we wanted to to come prepared. I mean you how you write the most incredible books And you talk in the most incredible ways. I said this to you last time But you're one of the most incredible storytellers I've ever heard you make something which is I really didn't have a huge amount of interest in in school Suddenly interesting to us as adults, which is a remarkable thing
So thank you for doing what you do. We do have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest Oh, it's that right yes, okay, and they don't know who they're leaving it for the question left for you is how good are you at knowing What you will regret and is there anything you do regret? Yeah, I think regrets are things that you only realize When it's too late, otherwise you would have preempted it and not have to regret it so I don't know that I'm many better than anyone else at it Because if you're good at it, you'll never be in a position to have to do something that you would regret The fact is you went past something that you did and say damn. I shouldn't know. I got to regret that So I to be good at knowing in advance that you're going to regret something That's almost an impossible scenario If I'm good at seeing it then I would never have to regret anything because I would have preempted it So for all of us the fact that we have regrets is we moved past something that we did I was like damn I got to regret that After the fact do you have any regrets? I was a a In college I majored in physics and I think I was a junior there were students that came in from
Other schools for a summer program Okay, high school seniors I think they were All right, there might have been freshmen in their college, but I think there were high school students and I was A meant not a mentor, but I would guide them in these research projects then at the end we had to write in that evaluation of them And as one student I wrote an evaluation that Was accurate But unnecessary I said he Pretends he knows things that he doesn't and he's You know, he's faking this and he's and I didn't yet know How to Speak encouragingly about someone Separate from just speaking factually about someone So Is that an art is it a science to do that? I don't know But I know I didn't have it at the time. I just simply described what I saw And I said he you know, this is not going to work. He this is it was very deflating To him and Considering that at the time I'm majoring in physics at Harvard. He's coming from some High school somewhere and I'm a Harvard student telling him that You know he ain't shit And I should not have done that. Did he contact you later? No He might have taken up another field. I don't know But so I regret that but it would take me four years to even realize that that was a regrettable thing because I didn't know how to
You know as an educator you want to encourage people you see where the weaknesses are and figure out ways to Have that person eradicate them improve upon them Rather than just say this is not working go home Why why I regret that and that's probably the thing I regret most in life really yeah because it was Who knows what consequences that has on that person's life and you remembered that? Oh, yes. Oh my gosh Yes Well, well, how do you remember that because you write it down in his report kind of whatever assessment Time goes on does something happen for you to think back to what you wrote Well, I've written many letters of reference for people more than I can count So I think every time I write a letter of reference I think about how I could have written that letter back then That's a regret And I live with that I can see you live with it. Yeah So I think I made up for it Just in how many people like and there are other people who needed help And so you find out how they can improve it and advise on that so that everybody lifts up That's how you make a better world And it goes back to what you said at the start you wanted on your tombstone Which is certainly something you've already done in droves more so than I think anybody so you tell me I can die now
Is that is that would you just you just said that you can go holiday It's up to you But thank you so much for being here. You are your huge inspiration to me I know Jack is a mega mega fan of yours as well in his Loves your work and you're the both the reason that I Well, I let go of my religious belief at 18 years old And I blame me for that I didn't because of me but I just said I let go of my religious belief at 18 years old And I became an atheist agnostic then I became really agnostic But then I kind of fell in love with the universe and I fell in love in the universe because of you And because of cosmos, which is one of my favorite things ever to watch And I found all the curiosity and awe and magic That I needed to find by by reading your work and watching the the wonderful movies that you've made so thank you so much for that It's a universe is a rich repository of Spiritual fulfillment yeah, if I may Yes to say the least yeah, wow and your book is exactly that I highly recommend everybody goes and checks it out It's out on I think it's the 21st of October. Oh, yeah, yeah, the the next installment in Maryland Yeah, in October. Yeah, I'll link it on the screen. Oh, thank you. Thank you. It's all just visiting this planet
So so I lied before I can give you some advice please see yeah, this is 67 year old device. Yeah at no time should you Overvalue Your own thoughts You should you should You should allow yourself To be humbled daily with new ideas that challenge any or everything that you currently think That's wisdom I think how do I know who I am if I don't have one maybe you're not maybe you only are who you are on your deathbed Because then you would have completed your life You're still in your work in progress You're 33 so last year when you were 31 you would have lived your 1 billionth second Okay, and if you if you lead a healthy life you should get 3 billion seconds out of it you get to 93 at least that so Time passes If you learn something new every day that forces extra context for extra perspective New perspective on whatever you knew yesterday You have to stay open to death And I read old science books Because I watched people's confidence that they had in what they thought they knew It can be embarrassing in some cases And it's very humbling to look back at people writing about their own world There's a book from 1899 the guy said on the Sun and it says We've learned so much about the Sun in the last three years. I had to up the edition of this book. I wrote three years ago
And I'm saying you don't know shit about the Sun Okay In 1899 but he's feeling it. He's feeling that joy and so I It It keeps me humble on the frontier on this perimeter of ignorance Because it's way more to discover than anything you already learned Maybe that's the antidote medicine that society needs right now too I think so because everybody is running things thinking they know better than everybody else You