Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) is the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium, host of StarTalk Radio, and author. He rejoins us to discuss his latest book, Cosmic Queries: StarTalk's Guide to Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going.
What We Discuss with Neil deGrasse Tyson:- How Neil learned to explain scientific complexities in layman's terms.
- Why you should always take advantage of an opportunity to engage with an expert.
- How opportunity comes from embracing the unknown rather than shying away from it.
- Why, when it comes to learning something new, understanding is far more important than memorizing facts.
- How Neil has mastered the art of ending any Q&A with the perfect answer -- no matter the question.
- And much more...
Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/521
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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Jordan Harbinger show first when full grown adult says earth is flat and their don't wanna have a vaccine and they don't trust science,
Am I tell them your probably alive today, because of discoveries of science take a walk through stroll through any cemetery that goes back at least a hundred years, and just look at how old people were when they died, which particularly tragic as you will have to walk far
find this. You find a double grave where there is any do the math on the birth and death and
a thirty year old woman and a three day old child very together. They both died in childbirth. This doesn't happen anywhere, not we're. Both you can have complications
an occasional das, but not one where every thirtys tombstone is a record of the trauma that we went through as a civilization. Just try to stay alive in this world.
Welcome to the show, I'm Jordan Harbinger on the George
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here on the show, not today
on the show one of everyone's favorite scientists, Neil digress Thyssen, we discuss how he deconstruction
plex scientific concepts for the layman and makes it easy for us to wrap our heads around some of the more abstract astrophysics counts
such as black holes in multiple dimensions will also
insight into how he constructive soundbites for the media
goes about educating others, which is very useful if you ever want to teach anyone anything for that matter. Of course,
to ask Nielsen questions about space travel, aliens, quantum physics and it seems like I managed to keep him from rolling his eyes at me, like maybe we caught on camera last time, you guys know, I love smart folks and that's why they show is always packed full them. Scientific literacy, superpower right now that helps you know when people are full of crap and that's it
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the elder Grass Thyssen.
Certainly later came off, I was talking to a high school class I mean
can't really I get it it's funny.
I'll, be late for like time.
Gesine, but if I'm talking like a high school class, I'm not going to say hey, I gotta go I've sent more important issue here is the other way around the other way round? Exactly exactly otherwise. Would you about? What are you trying to do here
it would say something about somebody if they said I'm leaving for a taped appearance
so I have to go now, but thanks for showing up, like my life
about educating people, our sorry chumps, I got something more important to do. That makes me look cool to adults. Nothin
an educator, you got your priorities in the right place and in that's good, you consider yourself primarily education at the top of the pyramid. I dont consider myself anything really about the actual have to be yes, but let me just offer a different perspective on that. I'm only an educator because people have reach for me to educate them. Let me put it that way. I write my books. Those are my own initiative, but the fact that people come to my tweets, for example, or they come to my public talks, I'm not twisting their arm. This is not some. You have to be in the class and you'll get a test on this. No it's more of a shared celebration in learning and if I can play some role in your life to take you to a new place, I'm delighted to do so honoured to do so privilege to do so and if I ever stopped
exceeding about I'm. Take on something off. Some market is still stay on an educated damage, and you know it's so so. For me, it's a fact of circumstances rather than effective ambition. I can appreciate that I think there's probably a lot
back there as well, but maybe on the different show. I'm excited
Have you back on the show? You were here a pre pandemic
here, you are in your own pry housewives. Every year exist that does not even right. Yes was ten years ago there was confusion where we used to be able to leave. The house is called the BBC before corrosive. I see see exactly
we have this huge gone in the studio that recorded in you walked any said. I just got off a New York ready and I was like our greatest like once coffee and not this, and neither can I hate this.
You work the gong and then started telling us about, and I'm gonna
wrong, unfortunately, which is embarrassing, but the sound waves from the gong technically having kind of like infinite range out into the universe, or something like that and my closer no, but I didn't drinks it out. I know there are some member exactly what I might have said. Sound waves would move when it has a medium through which to propagate. In their case,
it has been air, ok but tat, which can also enter walls and things in, but there is an energy loss for the propagation of all such signals and disappoint where you can't distinguish it from the background noise. So basically, that pointed
appears but notes not forever thing. Tat makes more sense, because I wondered how possibly sound waves could go through space, and I think I just sort of assumed at some quantum thing going on here, which is why I now know- and you might see an article- a journalist article saying we heard sounds from Saturn. No, we didn't know, there's a lecture magnetic signals. Did you put into a box that converted into a sound, but those are sounds from Saturn? That's electromagnetic, usually radio, waves from Saturn and happens his
likely that in the whole electromagnetic spectrum, we use the very long wavelength light waves. You can't see these, but we happen to call them radio waves. That happened to be the part of discretion that we use for communication, so we created a device that can receive a radio waves converted into sound so that you can hear it because you can't see radio, Wainwright and
his boxes. We call those radios because we're using radio waves and tea
uses railways and so do microwaves with your cellphone uses. Microwave micro means
more those small radio waves, microwaves, a bigger
all the other wavelengths then are the other side of it, which includes infrared, visible, gamma rays x, rays ultraviolet. So I'm just saying peoples want there to be sounds in Spain,
but no yes, if you're in the star, you gonna hear the girdle rank but go into the vacuum. Aspasia here Jack TAT makes a lot.
To me, it be like sitting outside and hearing CNN in one year and Fox NEWS and the other air and ninety eight point seven fm coming in front of me. I don't hear those things even though the radio waves are going through my skull rights, that's kind of assent that if you could hear them, but what we do is we put it through a device, can devise converted into an audio signal that one of your five senses than to tax. Yet
I wondered if people come up to you in public and ask you random questions leader like when you find out someone's a doctor earlier and knowing person and you find out someone's into a doctor and you go,
thing on. My like does not look infected. Do you people do that? No, like hey look of a black hole is infinite gravity. Can I transport to another dimension to people gonna? Do that dear? Yes, of course, the most hazardous occasion for that is in the airplane, because there
talk for you the whole idea. He can't escape that there was a day
had the energy to sustain that, but less so today, United
do that the Hollywood saying what they had in the dark classes? And but people still
recognize you were so there's a subset of people who now recognize my voice. Suddenly MC here, my voice, so I dont, even I dont- think about it.
So much is swings around and say I recognize it was like gave it
they had a glass. As you know him, I guess the full disguise would be a hat glasses and a mustache, but I already, where must attach so that I can step out of that, but the kind questions people ass. I can tell you when the ranking of what the first questions are so right up there in the top two or three are: is their life out there in the universe? That's up there. Another one to black hole, show up what was around before the big bang. What's outside of the universe, and if not the top five than the sixth question I get asked is: is their God, you know studying the universe. Do you see the face? Oh God, in printed in there
so got typically shows up if the person has any historical religious affiliation at all. But generally is not the first question that comes in a little later. Can you sort of tell where somebody's level love, maybe not intelligence,
least. Understanding of things are just based. On that first question: I can tell it based on how they asked the question really here. What do you look
Four are what do you see? That's not what I'm looking for it's what I notice you nobody noticing. So I just have what facility to they have with them,
we'll capillary hurry, so they might confuse the solar system with the galaxy in a sentence that tells me ok, maybe they never had Astro one or one where that's like the first day of class. Yet you learn the relative size of things and was in bed and in what semi they didn't have that if they say something about that's mystical, like oh there's, no such thing as coincidence is everything happens for a reason, start saying things. These are thoughts and sentences that come from an entire of their place in the world that is very untouched by the methods and tools of science. So what that does is I have gears going on my head all the time when I'm interacting with people and they rotate into place such that by the time I hear the question. My answers shaped to best intersect, their receptors for the information of sharing with him, and it was decades in the holding of this. But it's what has?
to the following thing. I have a conversation with someone wow, that's great. I understood that completely. Could you tell that exact same thing to my kids? It's like no, I'm not because they are not? U their kids and they have other things going on in their head, so different gears road.
In my head. I will do they are the eight or they twelve or they sixteen or are they five right? They rotate into place and eye tap on my exposure to popcorn
which is it am Barras singly large fraction of how I finally ideally time, but I think it makes me a more potent educator because it allows me to take things that matter to you been shaped them into the information that I'm delivering so that it can maximally impact your capacity to think about it and
member it and so yeah does not have one cut fits all I'm just kind of imagining you using Miley Cyrus Aunt Hannah Montana, to explain why PLUTO is no longer a planet are certainly after your
Just like I hate myself a little, but I think they understood me.
We had a montana all along and we have a really he asked his action is never a pop star yeah rows of false identity for PLUTO. Yes, oh, but I think it's that's the difference, I think between being an educator and be a communicator right. I think if you know something you can be an educator by teaching it but how're you teaching you facing the chalkboard or whatever they use today and just riding on the board, never looking back, never thinking about, are they paying attention or they falling asleep or they reading in newspaper, or are you facing them by they? So in that for scenario you require that they meet you. Ninety percent of the way
They're gonna do all the work to get to where you are, but suppose you put a little bit effort from your own energies into reaching them where they are, then you bound to be much more effective, Natalie communicating, but in impacting leaving having some influence on people's capacity to think, which is what has to happen in science. Class is not just a satchel. A fax is a way of carrying nature and is a new way of understanding and thinking about
this world works and why the world works the way it s? Last time we talks, we tunnel
a bit about Flattereth, which still makes me a kind of like role, my eyes to a point where I'm not sure. If they're going to come back, it must be applied
That's looking at flatters and
of acts and I don't just mean people going on a new vaccines. I'm a little scared. I mean like Anti vocs, it's all a microchip conspiracy. Looking at big foot, you must be at some point. Things like DR really have to explain the shit. Do you guys cause it seems like were advancing in so many areas, but were also just the Ets?
was like we're regressing like the internet, is bringing some elements of the population somewhat willingly into just another dark ages there. So I know I'm less perturbed by this. Then others are first when full grown adult says earth is flat than there don't wanna have a vaccine and they don't trust science. I might tell them your probably alive today, because of discoveries of science. Take a walk for stroll through any,
cemetery that goes back at least a hundred years, and just look at how old people were when they died, which particularly tragic as you will have to walk far to find this, you find a double
where there is no do the math on the birth and death and
a thirty year old woman and a three day old child very together. They both died in childbirth. This doesn't happen anywhere, not we're. Both you can have complications
an occasional das, but not one where every thirtys tombstone is a record of the trauma that we went through as a civilization just try to stay alive in this world, so I can say that, but they probably won't stick. What I rather do is look at the roots source of how and why people think that way, and it happens in the classroom,
it's, because people think science is just a body of knowledge. I can take it or leave it. I don't even have to agree with it. Just like any other body of knowledge. No science is a fundamentally different activity undertaken by this human species. It is different from everything else that is
perhaps in before, and it is a way of decoding what is objective. We true in this world and when we find what is objective, we true it is not susceptible to your opinion, to your politics, to your religion, to your culture, to your economics. It exists as a truth. Outside of anything. You then think that is not taught in school, and so people come out thinking. Oh, I can just be sceptic,
living skeptical means doubting everything, not skeptical is asking more questions and knowing, when the answers are sufficient, so that you really wasting your time continuing with that line of inquiry time to question something
I know you ve got a couple kids and I assume that scientific literacy was probably
on your list of things to teach them and for me, with a two year old boy, I'm thinking of ways
to make sure that he's always curious, but also knows how to investigate the claims that he hears from people and you
talk about this a little bit and their work is a two year old in euros. Knocker investigate,
No, no, no! No. I just mean in the future, not right now right now, I'm just trying to get him d like stop crying when he has a diaper change,
I appeal to you and I want to make sure they investigate people like now. You are, I find yeah so request
was the question was essentially while one to people.
Gilbert Horoscopes and confused that stuff with actual science, and I'm wondering what the best way is to handle that. For me, I find it really difficult commute
with people who are averse to logic so
science. Evidence based things.
but I also know I'm in the past been
Are you doing the wrong thing like I'm almost like come on I've gotta, it's like us.
muggy led ism that I really have realities not dealing because he does it. As you know, it doesn't help in all its irresistible to the educated, to just be smug in the presence of those who don't know as much as you do so it's irresistible and its created. I think an unfortunate rifts in society between people who are sort of you know, as they say, Joe six back and the academic elite who, where the academically are summarily rejected for anything they might contribute to societies, have. Unfortunately, I put some of that burden, if not most at Edward and on the academic elite, for not having an awareness and sensitivity to how people think in this world. So you know I don't be people over the head about this. I might give him an experiment to do so, for example,
We find some widely read source of horoscopes and pick one now, if you happen to be in a room of let's say, a hundred people are more Jesse, Augener, Rita Horoscope, and you tell me if it's your horoscope, so this is the inverse of what people normally do you go to the Horoscope that written the using for just you and allow that's really. They got some
side until our life. Today they now that right, so, let's just perform the inverse experiment, pick one at random and read it to a room of a hundred people. I do this and when I do that about sixty between three percent, two thirds of the people say their hearts cup and then I say very fine and then for those who are certain it's not. Can you tell me why and then we find out that the hearth scope is. It applies to some of the people who said they were. It was certainly not theirs and it doesn't ever really do much better than random in each of those cases. So the point as a person has to be
primed to accept evidence that opposes what they want to be true, and if you're not primed, to do that then no amount of conversation you offer is going to change that, and so that's why it's something deeper it something deeper in the educational system. So I can't pull people accountable for that and I don't
now that being said, you're commenting on the absurdity of flattery and all the rest of that, because it just defies logic and common sense in science and all the rest of this by the way, the founding claims of most really
I defy signs in ways that are not fundamentally different in pursuit of exotic. The claims are relative to any this house that people are believing. Aren't you gonna think Mars effect
and then you wanted laugh at them and put someone says: will Jesus is in the sky? Is effect we were Mohammed Earthward Krishna whatever, and I don't see you run.
After all, other religious communities at a world telling them that no you're crazy for thinking this way. So in a free society, I'm not going to stop people from thinking whatever they want. Where I draw the line, not that you asked, but we draw the line. It is if you have a belief system and I count fled authors as embracing a belief system,
a free country, that's protected. I would draw the line suppose you now run for office and you have power over laws or legislation that affect everyone. Will you taking your belief system and now imposing it on other people, that's danger
That is a recipe for the unravelling of an informed democracy, whereas objectively established truths established by the methods and tools assigned
apply to everyone whether or not they believe in it, and that is a wholly different way to construct civilization. You based civilization, on what is objectively true, and they give people the freedom to think what
one, provided they don't make a law requiring that you believe something that conflicts with your own beliefs, that we have words for that, their dictatorships there or talk receives whatever the there's. An old sea already see why Accra see that applies to what that is, and we should be happy. We live in a country that celebrates free speech.
And I am your listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest Neil, the grass Thyssen we'll be right back now back to me,
The grass Thyssen on the Jordan Harbinger show our
love to know how you develop your skills to be able to explain and communicate complex ideas effectively to the ever.
person or any suggestions for people struggling in this area, because you must
really really hard to be able to go. Ok, your level of understanding is right here, cause you're sixteen twelve or forty one, and you just don't have a good science background. I'm gonna now make this digestible for you and you do that, seemingly on the fly on talk shows like on the daily show or on tv, possibly even live, so it's not like
Oh, hey, Neil, we're gonna, ask you all this stuff come up with a clever sounding sound by, like you got really really good at that. Do a lot of hard work. I assume first thank you for not saying oh you're, so good at it. It must be.
Naturally I know its, not not knowing that generate that nationally geologic you for granting me the expectation that is the product of hard work. So this my first thank you yet. Second, I remembered go back, I'm an old man now, so let me go back many decades and I'd start explaining things to people because they ass they all your national visas. I have this question and I would monitor their attention span their eyebrows with aid lean in to the conversation. Where would they are they easily distracted at? What word did I uttered? Did they then lose interest by the way? Any writer thinks this way all the time, because the most
you lose some one in that sentence. They're gone they never coming back to your novel. Hence is the important review of a novel. There was a page turner right where you kept wanting to hear more so it somehow. The author has gotten under your skin and a good way and keeps you coming sentence by sentence idea by ideas. So there I am explaining things
Not everything is working their words amusing. That they're not understanding. So I'm taking mental note of this because I say to myself: if this happens again, I want to avoid those pitfalls. Why not? If it's done incrementally how much effort is that right? But you also have to pay attention to
ADI language. You have to monitor our they interested or not, and if you're not is like the professor facing the chalkboard or the class, if you're not even looking or paying attention, you will fail because you're not gonna, be reading what works with a sigh make note of this works for person of this age group, but not this age group who are this kind of background or if their from this part of the country who came in this part of the world. All of this is an assembled encyclopedia that sound so antiseptic and assembled toolbox for me to reach it utility about their. You may go yeah, I'm Batman, Bembry wants to be Batman, it's my utility bell and I find out what their interests are, and I clad the science that I'm describing on what they came to me with a fluent in pop culture. Are they religious or they ambition?
Are they not ambitious? All of these things shape what words I choose and hardly anything I ever say, do I say without having first written down really like even the sound bite. I'd like a shall you'll have written that in the past and used it on before. Yes, but I've worded differently I'll, say I've written so much about all these topics that when the topic comes up
I just access and carefully worded sentence that I spent time composing. So if science writing were just communicating information, you could a stable together wiki pages on all the signs topics, but well written books. Don't read like Wiki pages as useful as wiki pages. Are you not reading them to be page Turner's right? You read them to get specific information, but if you can write a book or giver lecture, you want the words to matter to flow, to attract someone's interest, and so I'm going home this. I have a better word that shorter and less complex use that yet that works, but now the next
idea that follows it. These become templates within me and I have a good random access memory, because if you spent that was done, composing a sentence, you can remember that sentence. Remember what that machinery was that went through your head and I've written about. Basically, every single science topic that I talk about publicly so that helps a whole senses can
now fully composed, primarily because I already went through that same thought process. Unless you ask me a question that so out of foreign left field, but then I can sort of assemble. I have words with me and I have I can do this on the fly.
don't fear that in fact, I welcome it because we are new pocket in my utility about to field questions of one nature verse
mother on the flip side, if you
counter a topic in your life that you're not familiar with- which I assume happens, you know just from anybody who reads: what's your process too,
I understand that topic. Are you using
something similar that you used to teach other people to. Remember things yourself, a wrap your mind around topics, none! It's not about memory, memories, good to have its good to have a good memory, but you notes even better to have a good understand
standing here, we have an understanding of something. You'll have to remember it because you just understand it. So I give up, I think, is a good example. So if you walk into a bookstore- and you say- ok where you could books and hung out over here and is an entire section- a cup books region,
they need fast cook slowly. By way, there are more cookbooks than there are elements on the periodic table. So, what's going on, there recipes are things you kind of memorize, whereas if I say we're on
the books on all the known physics in the universe, while its one corner of one shelf, there's like electromagnetism gravity. Why and it's that and so on,
aren't you with a deep understanding of all manner of things,
go on in the universe that derive from these four books. That's an understate. The item memorize the books rang about memory Zation, it's about understanding how and why things work so that when you encounter something you ve never seen before, you can invoke the principles of how and why things work to fully understand what's happening, and it empowers you to evaluate situations that you ve never been in before. Let me take a quick side, ramp here imagined to people in the workplace. I saw the boss comes up and hands the worker, some task and the worker says I've. Never
before this does not in my job description, Benda person declines. The task has no the prison, while I've never seen this before this summer. Javascript. Let me go home and learn about in this. This two completely different deploy, ease I'd. One of them embraces the unknown and wants to learn about it by the way. Having done so makes them more valuable to the company are eight and then the other person gets a task as they think- and this surely happens in some cases, but stay with me on this. They think they're doing extra work, that's not in their job description is exploiting them, and yes, that's true, but if you're in the kind of job where they can
about how you contribute to the company, if you show you did something great, that was not in your job description, there's a new job description awaiting it. Ok, if that were places fair in any sense there other jobs for you, they will grow your responsibility and accountability into that position. So to go back to your question when I encountered something.
I don't understand, I will totally dig it up and I'll try to think of interesting things. I want to know about it and start there, because that's gotta eat your curiosity and your interest so pick a topic. I don't know much about about grasshoppers, so hard forsake, but how did they make that noise? I heard it's their legs, but really what's rubbing against what
make the noise and who have these big beady eyes. What are they need antenna for? I would ask questions about it, because what is science, if not a method of query in nature and then I'd use those as ways to pull me out, and while I am on that journey, I might see other things. Oh, here's why the grasshopper wants to jump so far or wise that size or what I want to eat a grasshopper right, whereas all the protein, because a whole cultures that thrive on grasshoppers, and so I would ask things at interest me, and that gets me deep into it in such a way that I cannot celebrate the subject.
be conversant with somebody, not an expert at it, but I be conversant with someone who is an expert and possibly even learn more. Oh and I never lose the occasion to ask questions of an expert in the room, no matter what that person is an expert in.
You have just a little bit and knowledge of a lot of things, just enough crack open a door so that you can engage and expert in a conversation. I'm all, then that is an old saying. If you look around and you're the expert in the room
change rooms? What's the last thing, you did a deep dive on just out of shape,
curiosity. Let me think I do this so often that I don't have one it stands out, so I did a deep dive on Woodrow Wilson, the president and his relationship to the economy of the United States and, more importantly, his racist charge policies regarding the federal government, how he basically segregated the federal guy
And reversed trends that had been rather progressive, leading up to that point, something I'd never known about him. I spend time at Princeton, universally where's, the Woodrow Wilson School of public policy and all the while. I just never knew that about inside. Just dug up more about that chapter in american history, I will add that in the end, this is part of the detail right. You know we can start blaming individuals for things, because we like doing that, we say. Is your fault? Let's punish you, let's cancel you, so I get that, but sometimes it's a little more complex than that. So over that time, especially in the United States, the eugenics movement was rising high in priorities and actions and politics and policy
so there's? The statue of liberty sang bring me here week in your help. Whenever this the poem there and people started saying no, these immigrants her diluting the stock of the White European Stock, and we must protect it and is an entire eugenics movement feeding that and it is her vase if, in the culture,
among those in power, and so there's Woodrow Wilson, a man of his time whose sure that eugenics onto the right thing and then there's someone with power who makes very unfortunate, non progressive, regressive decisions,
this world. So for me to even have any fluency there at all. I had to have some open door to say. Oh that's an interesting thing. Let me ask, then let me find this out now what else was going on? So I have, in my books, have a shelf, probably four feet across that has books, unjust eugenics, and then he learned that the
Can eugenics movement fed the auditors thinking about how he was gonna? Take a business in Germany. We quote whitewash
yeah from our role in his thinking he's not a scientist he's getting his ideas from anthropologists who are totally bought into this eugenics movement. So that's been so ongoing with me for many months now after years, but since George Floyd and this past summer, I've been doing deeper dives into race relations in the history of the country,
we further back than just the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixty? Is it frustrating for you to look at how science was used as a cudgel with eugenics and all the other bullshit, and then having people go see, sir,
it is political. So how do I know that? What you're telling me right now isn't just eugenics to point out that its real science and its not just politically motivated gobbledygook yeah, there's an honestly posts question, and I think I have a good reply to that and I wrote this: you can google it. I wrote a perspective peace richly posted to Facebook as a note
but Facebook got rid of their notes. For some reason I was my main means of communicating with people is long form entries rather than punchy things at each put in several times a day is not there. So it's on my own website, if you just the title of it, is what science
and how and why works well linked to that nationals yeah. So here's the point: the Physical Sciences are less susceptible Van sciences that involve human beings as subject, but one of the most important things you have to carry with. You is the capacity to judge whether what you end up thinking is true. What do you think it's true, but it's actually not something you think is not true. That actually is, and when human beings are the subjects it is some of the most susceptible science to the influence of bias that some of the most it is the most susceptible science with regard to bias, and so, if you have a seat
he that is going there. You need extra attention given to it and almost always, when you have those kinds of studies, the people doing the study, whoever they are end up at the top of the list, if their men than men are better than women, if their white than white is better than other colors, if their European than the european cultures are better. The and the answer apologist are ground zero for that level of bias in their scientific thinking. Man do they are carrying the titles of scientists. So I am happy to report that my fields collectively, the physical scientists who is susceptible to other kinds of viruses like.
You really want this to be true cause. You invested ten years of your life, and so you don't even see that is false, and so you came cherry picking the data to support your own.
But I'm not you and I'll, have your vices and look it's not holding up so many
scientific career have ended or faded, because people wooden relinquish some long earlier held thought that was not yet verified, so yeah, it's unfortunate that science has been used in that way and I suspect, will continue to be used in the
feels that involve human beings as subjects makes sense, and I think it's hard for us to shake our concept of semi takes generations, if not longer, for people do
Even when you look at things, there are physical science is, I mean, didn't we stress that we do
a string of Galileo, like you
you see these scientists getting killed or was it?
satellite forget now like hey, you can't say that this is wrong as Galileo right who got executed for saying, hey, maybe the earth is in the centre of our he was imprisoned in prison,
Yeah you don't Bruno, got executed, burned upside down at the stake and ITALY for suggesting many things, but suggesting that there might be other worlds out there. Not just earth and earth might not be the only object of God's creation, one of his face,
quotas, your God is too small. That might have been what got him hung upside down and this yeah yeah. So if you look at that article by way takes us we're minutes to read too fast reed, but you will see that the methods and tools of science, as we now practice them only been in widespread use since about the year, sixteen hundred so since Galileo onward, so it's about only four hundred years,
nothing in the history of civilization, yeah. So to go back before Galileo, you have the whole world thinking or many people thinking earth is flat, horror that those all manner of thinking and by the way on the frontier of research, most results,
be wrong. What matters is not what any scientist tells you or anyone research project suggests what matters is has hasnt been verified? Has it been duplicated
not by just your friends in your own land, has a duplicated by one of your competitors. I only then, if you have some interesting result, will we then say
You have arrived at a new objective truth about this world. Then you put it in the books. Those objectives are not later shown to be false. Hence my comment scientist true whether or not you believe in it. People want it so to caricature it and say: listen, any scientist, no matter what none of its the methods and tools of science when invoked to their fullest will establish what is objectively, true and that is not later shown to be fought. So when people say website, just one start refers flat was before sixteen hundred ok we'll have at this scientists used to have leeches and and bleed you go back to that time and look at the research literature. It was not yet settled. That was
contested idea? Will this work? Will we not do we need the blood blood is in essence. We got this so in that case you're taking something that is on the no pun intended bleeding Eddie of Medical Research and something so catch on two peoples fancies that doesn't make it the objective truth, so it's only one is established, and how do we know what a subject with when multiple studies demonstrate it? That's all it's that simple at on the bleeding edge most
turn out to be wrong interesting. I can now see people twisting that going. Well, then, don't use anything new vaccines.
don't use eminent or not, so they can be new, but if it's tested go for it yet
I'm just saying: I want people to twist it well enough worthwhile. They will no matter what we say: trailer twister's out there. What do it? No matter what we say, what I'm saying has just gone to the for someone to say: I'm not gonna take the vaccine because it's not tested the yes, it has been tested. Yes, you can read the test results. These are people who have already made up their minds and nor
venting reasons to justify the mind that they ve already made up and the recent their invoking are false, because there are the studies, you can read them and you can find out what the side effects are, if any, how severe they are. Who was most susceptible to those side effects? You can then ask yourself: do I have those
decisions that would make me susceptible. You can do this rather than say, I'm gonna wait until its tested. That's just huge. You been missed.
foreign by whatever your sources. Your news sources have sometimes don't have your own enlightenment in their interest.
This. Is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest Neil digress? Thyssen we'll be right back thanks.
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the conclusion of my conversation with Neil digress Thyssen. If
I take so long to travel from one solar system to another. What is it
a hundred and eighty six thousand miles per se,
am I even close? Yes, yes, very close now I'll. Take it
light take so long to travel from one solar system to another. Is it possible, with a high enough resolution, telescope that we could look at another planet,
see an extinct civilization just going about their daily lives and suddenly, or maybe not so suddenly, just ending and where it, but that's like a million years ago. Europe, of course, that this happen service,
It's a number million years was having a really good telescope and we find a planet and its a millionaire.
here's away those below more realistic at ten thousand light years away. There would be
in our own galaxy, a million you're out in intergalactic space. Okay, so ten thousand years ago, and was now there's a civilization, oh my gosh, look, they invented nuclear power. Oh look! They just manner themselves extinct, everything you just witnessed happened ten thousand years ago, and it's that wave of light emanating from the planet moving through space at the speed of light informing every next civilization that it washes over. What has happened to that civilization in your past and to get DC comics on you. I got a call from DC comics once they were.
to know. If I win my meeting Superman and I said sure so and the table horses, which one was yet was rave was: is this not an up? It's actually meeting Superman. So this is how work they were riding a story for their comics, where Superman wanted to come to the Hayden Planetarium my day job and looked through whatever telescopes. They believed we had, but we don't keep telescopes there, but that's why it's too comics into Canada looks you there and look back at his home.
And observe at getting destroyed depressing, and you just have to be there for that and give him a hug okay, and so I say what we ought to give this some ground truth right. If he is on earth and sees the plan
getting to strike. The light is only now just reaching us. How old is Superman? Oh he's, eternally in his late twenties
So I said, ok, so Krypton or the krypton system will have to be
in the late twenties light years away, cause that's how warrants taken to get here. Ok, size it off
you a star that has the right criteria for that. Ok, that's great, and it has three Red STAR, because it's a red star that his home planet orbit it. So then I said well: how did he really get here? If you travel at the speed of light, he won't age
early since he was launched, Moses style, the baby, and you know from month to month, if a baby has matured right months matter, you can see this baby basically didn't age at all. Going from krypton to earth so had to travel at the speed of light,
not of age according to relativity, but then it would have arrived when the light from the exploding planet would have arrived. So he wouldn't be able to see it twenty seven years later, so I set Superman. We have had to travel through wormhole that way he beats the light gets here. Instantly aid grows up to be in his late twenties and then you can see the light, so they all agree to do this. So in action, comics fourteen you can look this up, Superman's visits the hidden planetarium, and I greet him. My comic form this. Why can say I actually met Superman? I greet him and he asked about it. I tell him how we got the equipment to work to do this. Then he sees the destruction as a sad Molly ass. She looked sad and that illustration cause he watches the destruction of his home. He knew intellectually
what had happened but to feel it and to see it. So that was a twenty seven year delay on an event that happened twenty seven years ago. They must have been pretty thankful that you already they just like me, and now we gotta rewrite staff we get. Can we close the other installations wants is been part of the cannon I mean it's. I think the good comic Strip that have superheroes that, where there's some kind of science involved they ve been very responsive, have been quite impressed by that, because their fan base cares yeah, they do the geek sphere other primary fan base as they
ground zero. Other fan base and you're gonna hold you to it. So if I'm sitting and funny you let's say I'm across a we're at a large conference,
table talking about action,
comics number fourteen in your licensing deal I'm
really not seeing you as you currently are. I'm seeing you, as you were a few. I don't like nanoseconds price
because the lightest Georgie me in some with some delay? The answer is yes, but let me give you some tools can work with you.
So now is a metric prefix for one billion,
saw a nanometer is one billionth of a meter, and nanosecond is one billionth of a second, the robotic
unity, barter, and they call him now box, but you're, not a billionth of anything. They just little robots. Ok, so I'm a little upset about it. I can't rivers that ok, digits many botz do not now, but it turns out at a hundred eighty six thousand miles per second light, takes one nanosecond,
to travel one foot. Ok! So if your three feet away from me at a conference table, I see you not as you are, but as you once were three billionth of a second ago right, we don't make a big deal of it, because you
for much longer than a billionth of a second. So you haven't changed much over that time. If I start putting you
are there and farther away for I put you on the moon. I see you, as you were one and a half seconds ago, put you on the sun eight minutes ago, the nearest star to the sun. Four years ago,
and I can keep putting you farther further way and eventually you will be very different from the light. The in any gifts
moment them. The light that I received from you, because the time it takes like the travelers large compared with your life span
so they're stars after that have long die, but we don't know it yet. The average dunna we don't know every night, their stars observe to explode and they exploded hundreds, thousands and in some cases, millions of years ago,
had so that suffer so interesting and it makes its good for making your sort of bad day go away when you go off. First of all, I'm really small, but also their haven't abed
if there was any body, knew that it's cosmic perspective works every time
when we hear about major
Ex discoveries. I guess these are major physics. Discoveries. I really don't know the scale, but they tell us more about space and physics and matter, and we hear about power.
GO accelerators. What are we
actually accelerating particles. Fine, I get it, but why accelerate them or we smashing them into each other? Are we measuring them at high speeds? That's a great question. I'd like that question, especially just for how born Lee SIMPLE
honest it is, what's all white and accelerate simply do nothing, and so, if you go back hundreds of years and you gonna with a tabletop, you could do things on the table top that we wouldn't understand
She will find out. You can build a machine that creates energy that passes through your skin and leaves the shadow of your bones on a thing. What is that? How does that work? To do that? I'm a tabletop I can take a wire and pass it through a magnetic field and then in electrical current meter tips. So I do this over here and something happens over their hotter than happen. What is that? Ok? I can have a bar magnet and sprinkle iron filings on it.
Takes the shape outside of them had what's there there's just air can do it in a vacuum in the same thing would happen, so they were mysteries on the table top that
remained on discovered could not well understood right now, there's nothing on a tabletop there. We don't understand cool. So where do we have to go what you gonna do as you want to push the limits of energy on your tabletop right? Why was x ray so interesting therein, extreme form of electromagnetic energy that we hadn't reached yet, and it was doing interesting things that we'd never seen before, and so we later discover galleries which are even more energetic, then X rays. So what we have found
in physics and astronomy as well, is that if you want to make the next discovery, you gotta hang out in an energy regime that no one has reached before. But will you generate these energies if you take two particles, accelerate them and then slammed them into a target? The energy of that impact is huge. If something interesting happens in the universe, only under those conditions of energy, it will manifest there and then that's what we ve done. That's how you discover corks and all these exotic subatomic particles and how new elements were created. The element plutonium named after PLUTO falsely
by the way, because they thought was a planet who was discovered in nineteen forty, so recent within five years we have developed it and weapon eyes did and turn into the bomb we dropped over Nagasaki. These are discoveries made at the energetic limits of our understanding of the universe, and if you create a particle accelerator that
live in an energy regime that no other accelerator can touch. Then whole new frontiers of discovery awaits you. The equivalent in my field, to that of the particle physicist is how big is your telescope? A big telescopes seized farther and dimmer than any previous telescope has. So if this something close, this really dim it'll catch it. It is something far in its dim because it's far even if its inherently bright intrinsically but it'll catch it, so we always expect any new telescope when it comes on line to be on the frontier of Cosmic
discovery simply because it is gone where it needs to away from the desktop the laboratory, the slab in the lab, where previous discoveries could be made, you not making those discoveries anymore.
Thank you brilliant explanation. I know you gotta go it's kind of a bummer that it's already over. But what have you back when you write the next book, which seems to be like every other year? I don't know how you do it, I'm not going to ask for all your secrets is ever more efficient use of one's own turn. That's really were there comes down to it makes you wanna be to efficient, because then your life becomes regimented in its efficiency, and I think creativity comes from a different place. It comes from when everything is a mess, and then you have to make sense of the mess metaphorically physically literally artistically, and then you innovate
with a solution to that, I think a balanced life is overrated. Every hissing. Thank you so much for coming on the shell and thank you for endeavouring to make us more enlightened country and world. I get so important and by the way and with these questions in the latest book cosmic queries is all about a celebration of questions, and it's not these questions. We have answers to its. These are questions that have pre occupied us in civilization for millennia, and so we address those questions in the book whether or not we have an answer for them so because, in the end, you need to learn to love the questions themselves,
because therein are the doorways to learning and understanding and enlightenment. I know you're gonna leave us with an awesome sort of end, sound bite,
do you plan those Oreo you just like I'm on a d. This one now is a commodity. You gotta be second nature at this point. You know here: you'd want to saint ending thing at the beginning, a quick anecdote I gave a public talk forgot where was somewhere in Indiana and there's a q and a session that was being managed by someone else and so much as we only a time for one more questions than a question
guess asked of me, and so I answer it in a way. Knowing it's the last question right afterwards, someone came up to me and said you locked out on that last question. Rather what do you mean? Is it always was such a perfect question to end on? I said you
no fucking idea what I just didn't happen, it was. I took the quest
and made it an ending, and you do so again they would
Assuming it was his luck in the chair and his natural, so relative did meal none at all. It was, I think there are some attractive reflections. One can offer on practically any question that gets asked so that, if it happens to be the last question, he has to exit the building a pensive reflective
note and on that note radio happy to be back on the shopkeeper going, you're good voice out there,
Thank you very much. I appreciated good luck with the but Gillian other interviews that you may have to do. Today. We ve got
trailer of our interview with Jack Bosky, former KGB spy who post
as an American in a truer than life version of a Hollywood movie. This is one of our most popular episodes of the show Jack not only dodge the FBI for decades, but also defected from
Soviet Union secretly becoming a real American will learn,
spies were recruited in train during the Cold war and what skills Jackie
used to assimilate seamlessly into american culture coming right up. I was
touchable I was above the law. I was always bypassing customs and passport control, so the unprecedented really feel good, because I never liked rules. How did you
Flip you eventually becoming full American. I know they tried to call you home. Can you take us through that? They called me backers
Jesse departure. They have done this in the past
bacchanalian Arizona states that one of its oil they are jailed or even executed. I was stalling the sober
and then one day they send one of their residents agents release.
To me you gotta come home or else you dead. There was a threat I decided. I would defy
Tell that I'm not returning. I will not betray any secrets and please give the money
I go to my german family wind Tunnel
how you got card, because the stories is not complete until you, like you, said, had to face your past. I was gone for the other side of
State trooper, just like that.
check your license and registration, and could you step out of the car, I still require still not having a clue what was going on out of the car,
my eye. Somebody approaching you from the back fellow introduced themselves just go value
FBI and he showed me this bad. We would like,
talk with you, the first question I asked my under resolutely ass. It was known, then, I said
what took you so long for more from Jack BAR
the including how Jack was finally caught by the FBI. And what
but after that check out episode
Eighty five of the Jordan Harbinger Show
always love near the grass Thyssen Fun fact. He met his wife in relativity class,
and they later became relatives. I guess that's how that works in one
earlier books. He was answering a lot of questions from fans and also from haters, and I thought that was hilarious concept for a book,
to do that alone. Here on the show, as well as you know, and he's
the good about giving people full attention and respect which I can appreciate. I think it would be very
tempting. If I were a scientist to look at and regard Antis, science, people or people who believe
absolutely ridiculous things as morons or people who should know better but
he doesn't seem to do that. Now. I take a page that book from us
a little bit of intellectual humility, but also humility in the face of things that you
are incorrect, like when people right in
tell me that big foot exists in bill
micro chipping us with vaccines, I just want to scream and their face if they're not worth micro chipping in the first place, and that there already essentially
microchip, because they carry a freaking phone everywhere and post photos, while their meals on
the grim and Facebook, but it's
you mean like now look there could be an alien civilization right, we're obsessed with this lately because of the Euro for staff in the new cycle that we can't seem to escape from their obviously other plausible explanation for all of those things
is fascinating, though, that even if there are
in the end. They don't have to be visiting us here on earth, but if they are looking at us, their actual
looking at us through the genesis of humanity or even the genesis of our entire planet, because they are so far away. So there
could be aliens looking at what's going on in the roman empire right now with their super crazy optical technology and that's a fascinating thought and when I think of
we're thinking about, even if we don't believe in all of the U stuff that we
have seen lately in the news and elsewhere now Neil his major goal along with mine frankly. But his major goal is a more enlightened country
we do share this, especially
for telling people what to think, but instead training them how to think he does. It was science I like to do it by Prs,
ending? Brilliant people like him to the audience you listening, and I appreciate you doing that so thanks
for listening and for being self motivated come in here
empowering yourselves of scientific knowledge and better thinking, we had a bridge
yesterday, I think he's made us all smarter, but don't get too cocky because, as Neil says as our now
it grows. So too does the perimeter of our ignorance, of course, when he says it's all basin, you no kind of mysterious. I can't really follow that big
and the other grass Thyssen the book, the newest one anyway, is called cosmic queries. Star talks guide to whom we are, how we got here and where
we're going always fascinating with him links to him
including the book will be in the shone out. Please use our website links if you buy the book because it does help support the show. Yes, the audible links work. Yes, they work in other countries worksheets
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Transcript generated on 2022-02-23.