on Larry King now the brilliant Neil degrass Tyson we with Neil degrass Tyson one of my all-time favorite guests wait you’ve had 60,000 guests this is yeah but you’re one of my favorite because you’re so bright and you’re fun well thank you I’m honored you’re in the I say in the world but you’re in the universe we are all in the universe those who deny climate change what do you say to them I don’t I don’t care what you believe you believe whatever you want the problem comes about is if you are in denial of an emerging scientific truth and you wield power over legislation that’s a recipe for disaster plus where’s the wire you don’t know the answer to that hey you’re an Asal this is the biochemical dur vision of the electrophysical magnitude why do we keep booking guests like this all next on Larry King [Music] now [Music] welcome to Larry King now we’re in a beautiful hotel the Trump International we’re in New York City on a spring day I grew up here there’s nothing like spring in New York overlooking the park and our special guest is Neil degrass Tyson he is one of my all-time favorite guests he is a renaissance man as astrophysicist cosmologist science commentator TV host head of the Hayden planetarium here in New York where we went as kids they used to tie us with ropes and we walk along and the person perhaps most responsible for invigorating public interest in science Neil’s longtime radio program Star Talk is now also a TV series it airs Mondays on National Geographic which is very appropriate we’ll talk more about that later it’s good to see you Neil thanks for having me back Twitter count is now 3.5 million you have jumped 2 million since last we met yeah it’s out it’s I don’t know who’s I don’t know I don’t understand it really I want to remind people I’m an astrophysicist they can still pull out uh but it’s I when I wake up and see those numbers it’s for me it’s evidence that there is an underserved appetite that people have for thinking about the universe and I’m happy and privileged to be in that role but I’m I’m delightfully surprised every time I see those rise I grew up with a bunch of guys in Brooklyn not one to my memory said you know what I want to be an astrophysicist and we just said what are you nuts SP me well you know it was my first visit to the Hayden planetarium where I now serve as director oh I was nine 9 years old a family visit as a family we you know we went to all the all the places in the city we went to the zoo you know the art museum and and I think my parents were just it it was a matter of exposure for my brother my sister and me and you don’t want your options to be limited when you’re asked what do want what do you want to be when you grow up and the more things you see as a child the more options you have to reach for if something pequs your interest and for me a first visit to the Planetarium I’ve I’m convinced in fact that it was the universe that chose me then you have to be good at something in school which I gather was math well so Ma I liked math but I I think it it’s wrong to say you have to be good at it I’d rather say you have to want to be good at it and then ambition kicks in and ambition can override whether or not your first foray was unpleasant or you didn’t do well or maybe you flunked an exam but if you really like it you will spend time learning it that’s that’s what liking something means maybe too many of us believe that we like something because you’re good at it and sure there are plenty of cases where that’s so but why deny yourself the pleasure of a life of pursuit of something that brings I love the microphone I love the radio it’s all I ever wanted to do is this even a real microphone yeah it is it’s not hooked up but it’s a real mic where’s the wire you don’t know the answer to that and you’re an Asal this is the biochemical der vision of the electrophysical magnitude why do we keep booking guests like this you you you’ve been doing this so long they’ve like neurochem neurochemically attached it to your brain right is that how they got you go here well did you ever get discouraged along the way did you ever fail a test and say uh yeah I mean I remember uh discourage I don’t know if discourage is the right word I remember opening a calculus book for the first time good luck in high school and calculus is not some natural next step after algebra right it’s a completely different new way of thinking about the relationships of things that change in the world and you open up the book and there all these squiggly lines and all these alphabet drawn from Greek letters and it’s like I will never understand this ever should I bail now while I have the chance and I said let me let me just try this and a month later after I said hey kind of UND I think I know what that is oh two mon mon later hey three months later I got this and and that was that that that moment for the rest of my life was it was it became proxy for me saying if at first encounter I have no clue what’s going on just spend time learning it I mean it sounds simple but but you could it I would realize how profound that fact how profoundly that would affect the rest of my life anytime I saw some I didn’t understand work at it do you use calculus all the time there is no understanding of the physical Universe without calculus were you a nerd I was yeah I was yes card carrying I attended the Bronx High School of Science oh my God okay and this is PR take a test to get into that pre yeah you did no you not only take the test you have to like get above a score to get in right not just taking the anybody take the test got to get above the score but I I was that’s how old I am they they make fun of you for being old I tell you how old I am I was there and we formally learned calculations on a slide rule and my slide rule had a Leather Pouch and you go walking down you know the the best Nerds had like the biggest slide rule pouch and you know it’s almost like what did your friends in walk down the hallway your friends in the hood make fun of you a little bit a little bit the because the hood that I was in was not sort of the stereotyped hood that people imagined uh my earliest memories are the East Bronx and the housing projects there the Castle Hill Middle inome housing projects but then my father’s income went above that level and then they they kick you out when that happens and so we moved and we moved to Riverdale oh that’s what I’m saying that’s what I’m saying Riverdale that’s Uptown Bronx yeah yeah that’s that’s Uptown so in the Bronx there wasn’t so much of the force of the hood that you might think but nonetheless there were pre pressures for me to be athletic for and no one really cared about what I was doing but I cared about what I was doing coming up we’ll talk about the mission to Mars privatization of space we’ll talk about climate change we’ll be right back we with Neil degrass Tyson one of my all-time favorite guests okay let’s get to some things current wait a minut you’ve had 60,000 guests this is yeah but you’re one of my favorite because you’re so bright and you’re fun well thank you I’m honored you’re in the say in the world but you’re in the universe we are all in the universe there’s 80 billion stars more but we’ll start with that how how could anybody anybody know that there’s a heaven that they’re gone somewhere that there’s an after how could anyone know that no they can boggles my mind they can believe they know no but belief is I could believe that it’s raining but it well this is the difference between believing something and using the methods and tools of science to establish what is objectively true and what is objectively true is something that is true outside of your belief system that’s what science is that’s how we can make stuff do you wonder how it all began oh of course of course what do you think well so depends on what you mean by it all there was a day it all this well no I’m saying there was a it all could be how did life get here how did the Earth get here how did the Sun Moon solar system get here how’ the Galaxy gets here How the Universe get here and so all of our evidence points to to a a pretty fun beginning of the universe the Big Bang we got a term for it the Big Bang what was there before it it’s a frontier of our investigation and we I got top people working on to find out what was there before yeah yeah we don’t know we don’t know was there before the before yeah I’m not ready to put our top people on that one yet uh so the problem of Origins is a very different kind of Investigation from just describing just the existence of a thing and there many cups here and so we can say this came out of a factory but the what made the factory well people made the factory then what made the people you keep going back and then you have the sort of the origins question because the typically there’s only one origin of anything so you can’t compare it to other things and so it’s it it poses special challenges to scient that why many of you guys go nuts no just the ones you’ve interviewed you’ve selected them you got to go crazy we all right why isn’t it raining in California yeah you know uh the climate is I mean drought it’s not like it’s not as though droughts have no precedent in the history of the world uh but what’s more important than that it’s not raining is there you know there’s a consumption of Clean Water portable water from the water table that’s not being replenished and it’s being pulled out at a faster rate than it’s returning and that’s a recipe for disaster and so so we need to think more sort of thereare I use the word holistically about systems that that that manifest on this Earth and and and that’s a relatively new way to think about the world but what do we do about it stumped huh yeah I don’t I don’t have easy answers I think we need to be better Shepherds of our activities and our behaviors if you’re watering lawn your lawn do you need clean portable water to water your lawn no you could use the water that came out of your dishwasher your grass is not going to care but we’ve set up a system that does not intelligently use even The Limited water that’s available bigger question why isn’t it raining all I can tell you is that in the world what we’re going to find is more extremes of weather okay when it rains it’s going to rain heavier when it’s not going to rain it’s going to rain less than it ever didn’t rain before and as these extreme we have that’s kind of The New Normal we’re going to have to grow accustomed to and all evidence points to the fact that it is human caused influence on the ecosystem on the on the climactic system so cold weather will get colder warm weather will get warmer wet weather will get wetter yeah yeah so the extremes you’ll start visiting the extremes and what happens is as as the CL as the temperature rises you more moisture from the ocean gets lifted into the atmosphere and generally when we think of weather we think of Storms and things and so now that when you have a storm there’s more moisture to feed that storm there’s more heating to drive the convective cells and so the storm gets more ferocious and you know we had flooding down here in New York by the way this change that people are talking about it’s not one day the ocean will just sort of come in and stay there on your doorstep no that’s not how it happens first it happens first where there would be a storm where there’ be a tide Surge and previously the tide surge never really you know maybe came over the sidewalk or the boardwalk but that’s about it it went away now the tide surge makes it into the streets and that’s your first indication these extremes are are your first encounter with what will soon be become The New Normal those who deny climate change what do you say to them uh the in a free country which at least we believe we tell ourselves we live in a free country I I don’t I don’t care what you believe you believe whatever you want the problem comes about is if you in denial of an emergent scientific truth and you wield power over legislation that’s a recipe for disaster the person on the street doesn’t care about climate change or doesn’t you know I maybe I we’ll have a conversation but I’m not going to lose sleep over that it’s when someone an elected official stands in denial of climate change something that scientists have been been telling them now for decades and they going to create legislation in response to that what that is the end of an informed democracy the end I love when they say I don’t know anything about it but but it’s not true I don’t know but and so by the way I don’t beat politicians over the head you’ll never see me arguing with a politician you know why because politicians Representatives Senators they are duly elected by a community of people the electorate so if they want to say the Earth is 6,000 years old it’s probably because their electorate thinks so and so as an educator my task is to educate the electorate so that they could then vote people into office who can make sensible legislative decisions that can affect us all and not derive from their personal private belief system the man who brought us Cosmos has another show on the air it’s called start talk and we’ll talk about that and the rumored second season of Cosmos after the break we’re back with Mr Tyson what is Star Talk uh start thank thanks for asking it’s a it was an experiment radio show five years ago on a grant from the National Science Foundation and I looked around and I saw well how does someone receive science through media and there’s some fine science programming on NPR especially where where there’s a you know Science Friday for example where and I’ve been on Science Friday love it to death there’s a journalist interviewing a scientist but if you tune into that chances are you know you already like science that’s why you’d listen to it but how about the people who don’t know they like science or how about the people who know they don’t like science how do you get science to them so I thought why don’t we invert the model and I’ll be the interviewer I’m the scientist and my guests will will hardly ever be scientist I would draw them I would they would be heun from pop culture and and my conversation with them would be about all the ways science has influenced their life or their livelihood are you teaching or asking um so no so there’s some teaching in there but it’s really if these are people you would have heard of these people we’ve interviewed one of them is like President Carter all right I didn’t ask him about the Middle East that’s what other people do I asked him about his engineering background and how that might have influenced his his uh you know his diplomacy is he thinking differently from others who had a different background that’s kind of interesting to me it might be interesting to others um interview George te from uh the original Star he’s a fun guy on every level and we talked about the the the the science fiction projections for the future and what came true what didn’t but he’s from pop culture he’s not a scientist he may have played one on TV but he’s not not a scientist so you do this on television now too so now it jumps species and uh the National Geographic Channel by the way Cosmos while it aired on Fox domestically and National Geographic delayed National Geographic took it around the world in 180 countries and so I had a relationship with National Geographic and they said at the end of Cosmos we got to do more TV together and I said no that’s not kind of what I’m about but I am doing this radio show maybe we could film that they agreed and now it’s on late night like 11.
M the great man who started Cosmos with Carl San my man I interviewed him maybe a hundred times yeah oh Carl’s a billion so you can say you’ve interviewed him maybe a billion times I loved him yeah get the billion going there he was free you yeah he uh I my first encounter with him was was memorable for me probably not for him but for me I had applied to college and I’ve told this story before in fact we we I retell in Cosmos I’d applied to college and I’d known I was interested in the universe I had been accepted at Cornell and the unknown to me the admissions office forwarded my application to him for his comment and reaction he then sent me a personal letter hand signed saying I hear you’re considering Cornell I’ll be happy to give you a tour of the campus if you want to come up and visit to help you decide and he was already famous he had been on Carson and scientist on Johnny Carson oh my gosh that was that that was nobody had done that before so he had he had cleared the field for anyone who would come after him to do much of what he uh had pioneered and so I did go up he met me outside the building gave me a tour reached behind him didn’t even look reach behind and pulled out one of his own books I just never forget that you have written so many books you just reach behind and grab the book that happens to be there signed it to me I still have that book so I said to myself at the time if I am ever in a position to bring the universe down to earth in the ways he has then I will for sure be looking to students and others coming up with the dignity and respect that he Cornell is not a famous School of Science no they they do they man it was an a school and uh there’s a huge a agricultural Dimension to it uh when I visit I love the the the barn the barn they take the the methane flatulence that cows SE freely put into the air from their own digestive track and then they use that to keep the Barnes warm by burning the methane over the winter so it’s it’s it’s great did you enjoy Cornell no I didn’t actually attend Cornell you yeah yeah no I actually didn’t attend I wait did you go I attended Harvard oh wow yeah no no because it was I figured if I I didn’t want to go to Cornell just for one person because suppose he went to another place or whereas Harvard was very deep in asop call disappointed he wrote me a letter he said said I was uh uh he said I did not make a mistake by choosing Harvard that was the what do you make of Mr musk and the others who are they’re going to oh Elon they’re going to send their own planes up uh yeah Rockets yeah um I’m skeptical on a couple of Levels by the way we need people thinking that way he wants to send a mission to Mars we need those people in society otherwise the rest of us think that every other day should be like the previous one one so let me just lead with that uh but I can tell you that the first people to do really expensive things where there’s the dangerous and people could die and there’s no known return on investment those are not business people those are governments the first Europeans to the new world were not the Dutch East India Trading Company it was Columbus funded by Spain then he draws the maps and here’s the trade wins and here’s where the hostiles are and the friendlies are here’s where you find the fruit that you can eat then you can make a business case for it otherwise it’s a really short meeting if I say hey I’m going to go to Mars bring in all your venture capitalist and they start asking questions how much does it cost I don’t know but a lot and is it dangerous yeah people probably die what’s my return on investment I have no idea probably zero that’s a five minute meeting and it doesn’t happen so you have to some somebody’s got to go out there with the Long View the longer than the quarterly report View and once the patents are awarded and you’ve established what’s dangerous and what’s safe then you make the business case I guess is the fabulous Neil Tyson when we come back I’m going to talk about life and death and what he thinks what he believes what he has faith in after this we’re back with degrass Tyson he is one of the fabulous people in this country one of my favorite guests I’d like to do I’d like to tour with you just we do universities and I ask questions and we explore things okay you’re the scien bring bring it on you’ve accept facts facts and belief I know the religious people believe the scientists has prove what do you believe what do you think happens when we die well so I I I can make some unable statements about what happens when you die so you spend your life eating food food has a calorie content and calorie is a source of energy calorie is a unit of energy you bring it in and then the energy is available for you to maintain your body temperature at nearly 100 degrees is 98.6 how do you keep something at 100° when nothing else around you is you’re burning energy to sustain that because biologically we need to be at that temperature to function okay you also need energy to walk and to move that’s why you eat food the moment you die what happens you don’t maintain the energy your temperature drops how far does it drop to room temperature at a funeral in the casket if you touch the hand of the person in the casket your first thought is the body’s cold no it’s not it’s room temperature but it’s cold compared to 100° they’re no longer burning this energy okay so now every one of your molecules has energy within it if you get cremated that energy gets released in the form of heat and you heat the air and that air radiates to space you get buried which is how I want to my body to be dispos of bury me bury me cuz you know I don’t want the energy content of my body to just get radiated out into space of no use to anybody put me in the ground let the worms microbes come in and out of my body and the energy content of my body that I had assembled over my lifetime consuming the Flora and Fauna of this Earth my body then returns to them and thus is the cycle of life I know that’s going to happen because you can measure where the energy goes and that’s how I want to go out but you’re not conscious and that’s for eternity right uh yeah that there’s no evidence that I have any consciousness of anything and by the way is that so weird did you have Consciousness before you were born were you saying how come I’m not on Earth my gosh I need to be on earth or how where am I no you there just the state of non-existence and so I’m not given any reason now I am born and I can’t stand the thought of non-existence see I already have existence I don’t I okay it is true we fear death because we born knowing only life right I get that however I I I take another view because I’ve been asked if you could live forever would you yes okay we’re done the interview yes no okay sure that’s an attractive idea but the way I look at it is it is the knowledge that I’m going to die that creates the focus that I bring to being alive the urgency of accomplishment the need to express love now not later if we live forever why ever even get out of bed in the morning because you always have tomorrow that’s not the kind of life I want to lead but why don’t you fear not being around I fear living a life where I could have accomplished something and didn’t that’s what I fear I I don’t fear death you don’t fear the unknown I love the unknown I I I love the you know what I want on my tombstone my sister has this in her in her notes because in case I can’t tell anyone after I die on my Tombstone a quote from horrus man great educator be ashamed to die until you have scored some victory for Humanity that’s what I want on my Tombstone but you don’t fear or or think about not being around my great regret for not being around would be it would be kind of cool to see my kids continue to gr don’t you want to know that yeah be I would that’d be fun I want to see what inventions would make life easier what clever discoveries or Innovations would arise out of the collective brainwork species what do you think when you see religious people when you see popes or rabbis or people who fervently believe the Billy grahams in the world who are sincere and wonderful people yeah of course who actually maybe delusional that they’re gone somewhere no they’re they’re they are embedded in belief systems and what I look at is I see all the belief systems and when you line them up they’re not really compatible with one another so whatever they’re believing it can’t be a truth that applies to everybody because other people believe what they do with no less fervor and so I sit back as a person who’s interested in in objective truth and I say well it doesn’t look like that’s a path towards an objective truth so let people continue to think and say what they want but as a citizen of a country that is not founded on a on a on a on a religion it’s founded with with sort of a secular construct in a way that protects whatever religion you want to express this is protected in the Constitution the Constitution doesn’t actually mention God right rather controversial in its day and that it doesn’t mention God because they don’t want legislation to tell you what God to worship they knew this they knew how governments can persecute people who had belief systems that didn’t agree with the state they knew this so they created those freedoms and so we have these freedoms go ahead but if you’re going to create legislation that has to apply to everybody and you’re now going to put your belief system into legislation that is not a free and open democracy and you are an amazing man no the universe is amazing I’m just revealing that fact thanks to my guest Neil degrass Tyson start talk airs Mondays at 11:00 p.m.
10 Central on National Geographic is also available on Sirius XM and iTunes and remember you can find me on Twitter at Kings things and I’ll see you next time I hope.
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