#683 - Neil deGrasse Tyson

This episode is brought to you by chat GPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons podcast. Have you guys heard about chat GPT work? It's the new way to use chat GPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give chat GPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans. He's the most famous astrophysicist in the world, and maybe in some other worlds. We don't know. You know him from his show Star Talk. He has a new book, Lost in Space, 5,000 Facts for Navigating the Universe. We caught up in his hometown of New York City. I'm grateful for his return. Today's guest is Neil deGrasse Tyson. We got to ship some of this badass out into space, man. That's what I'm saying, dude. Space, you know, it's expensive, though. That's the problem. Yeah. There's more talk than action. No time like the present, man. Neil deGrasse Tyson, good to see you. Thanks for having me back on. Oh, my gosh. It's been a few years. Yeah, it's a pleasure, man. And you're in my town now. Yes, I was going to say. Yeah, we're here in New York City. We had a chauffeur on, and he talked about, he was from the Bronx, and he talked one time about- The Bronx, say it right. The Bronx. There you go. He was from the Bronx. The Bronx. And I heard there's a lot of Asians over there, too, so from the Bronx. Well, not when I was growing up, but yeah, yeah. Well, he said that there was a time in the 70s when they used to bring swimming pools over there, like a pool, like semi-trucks. Into his neighborhood. I don't remember that, but I do know that occasionally, if you had a charitable fire department, they would open the fire hydrants, and you can, there are these sort of covers with holes in it, and it would put spray onto the street so that you could play in the street. So they'd crack open the fire hydrant? They'd crack that open, but I'm looking at your images now. No, I don't remember those. Oh, my gosh. And I was in town at that time. Is this in the Bronx? Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, this is the Bronx, it says. This is 1970, so that's really— Yeah, I'm around. I'm an old fart, so— But you were barely alive. No. You were barely alive. But yeah, I was just, I didn't know if maybe you'd remember that from growing up, you know? Yeah, I mean, hot times in the city, you know, the street gets hot, and it's just hot in the summer, and no one's in school, and so I think it keeps emotions tamped down so that there's no unrest. Yeah, last thing we want, huh? That's so true. You have a new book, Lost in Space, 5,000 Facts for Navigating the Universe. Yeah, it's co-produced with, between my podcast, StarTalk podcast, and National Geographic Books. It's like our fourth collaboration. It's gorgeous, and it's 5,000 facts in all categories, and it's— but they're not just facts. It's because you can just Google facts. Yeah. They're StarTalkified. Oh, I see. A StarTalkified fact. So I'll give you an example. All right. Okay? Instead, ask me, how big is the sun? How big is the sun? I could say it's 864,000 miles, but you can Google that. Or I can say, take 100 Earths and line them up. That's the width of the sun. Wow, really? Or, if you're hungry, I can say, if the sun— were a sesame seed bagel, Earth would be the size of one of the sesame seeds. That big guy. So I'm just saying, the facts are just a little more pop culture infused. I see. A little more pizzazz. Yeah, yeah, just so that you will never forget it. Yeah. Okay? You're not going to forget the sun and the Earth right now. I know they have bagels in Nashville. Yeah, well, also, my brother is deathly allergic to sesame seeds. Well, then, there you go. So I'm not going to forget that at all. You're not going to forget that. Dude, I actually, I read in your book that, yeah, I was perusing through it, man. It's like, yeah, it's just an engaging book. Yeah, yeah, you just need to pick it up and open it, and there it is. Open it to wherever you're in it. You're in, like, you're out in the universe. Yeah. I mean, literally. And one thing that I read in it was that the human brain has 100 times more synaptic connections than there are stars in the Milky Way. And that, I mean, and that blew my— Yeah, it's impressive. Yeah. So is our brain more complex than, like, a galaxy? I would say so. Why can't I say so? I'm going to say so. All the stars are interacting with each other with the force of gravity. But in your brain, there's, like, chemical reactions. There's electrical reactions. They're being influenced by other reactions that happened before. These are your memories. There's sometimes you get, like, an earworm. A song gets in. In your head, you can't get it out. It's firing all by itself. Yeah. Or you have these emotions that make you tear up or bring joy. Yeah. The universe inside your head is surely more complex than the universe itself, which brings the question, how is it possible that the universe can make something more complex than itself? Wow. Is that possible? It has happened. So unless you want to say God did it, but then that's kind of a little bit of a cop-out because then I'd say, well, who made God? Then you'd have to say, well, God always was or God. You have to, I could ask you questions and put you in a place where you're stuck saying something that you just have to assert to be true. And so. But there had to be a beginning. Well, we have a Big Bang, but that pushes the question earlier. But who lit the mess? Exactly. Who it was before the Big Bang. And only in the last couple of decades. And did we look at our equations that give us the Big Bang and there's data that's supported as well. But you look all the way back and say, wait a minute, these equations are popping out other universes. So maybe there's not just a universe. Maybe there's a multiverse. If there's a multiverse, then our universe is just one of some uncountable number of other universes. So then you have to ask, what was around before the multiverse? And here's another one that's a little bit mind blowing. You go far enough back. There's Earth and then the universe. Well then, no, Earth is just one of eight planets around the sun. Well, the sun, there's something special. No, those dots of light in the night sky are just like the sun. Like, damn, the Milky Way galaxy, there it is. Then Hubble discovers in 1925, 26, there are other galaxies in the universe, just like the Milky Way. so everything we thought there was one of there isn't there's countless others among them but we got one universe maybe not maybe there's a multiverse well if the universe never makes anything in ones could there be only one multiverse okay is there is there a network of multiverse is it a metaverse you know we're running out of adjectives there yeah but uh it's it's it's to think about it is very is humbling and not enough people are humbled in their life some people need need a dose of humbling well as far as i can tell i think you have to think to be humbled and and a lot of us aren't doing that you know you think and half the time myself included or they act before they think and then they regret it or they or they try to justify it after the fact oh yeah look yeah i mean you've been reading my diary but um what makes us able to think well if you talk to evolutionary biologists they will which i haven't and i'll let you know that straight up i have so yeah i've been talking to my buddy rick right and he's neither evolutionary nor biologist right well honestly he's been doing duster oh yeah he'll be fine but back to where we are but yeah i'm just saying i haven't i'm just saying i'm just saying i'm just saying i'm just i value objective reality okay yeah and the brain barely works as it is right so to start stirring in chemicals and say let me do more do something else with my brain i don't want to be that far removed from what is objectively true in this world oh yeah he's been he's been hitting that keyboard cleaner you know the dude's got a space bar in his head now dude wait so the question what was the question it was oh so evolutionary biologists would say our thoughts when they evolved were just sufficient to not die and stay alive long enough to make babies like what do you mean by that so the first thoughts were just like okay i need to stay alive yeah yeah oh and i need and i need to procreate if i do not run away from this lion i will die well okay let's say you have three kids one of them said oh i wonder what that is rustling in the brush let me go find out it's not rustling in the brush it's not rustling in the brush it's a lion, they get eaten, that curiosity removed from the gene pool. Okay. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. And the people say, I don't know what that is, but I'm a little bit afraid. Let me go the opposite direction. They live another day. They have babies. So curiosity is not always a good thing for your survival. If you're curious about things that could kill you. So that's first fact. And plus you want to make more of yourself. So sex matters. Yeah. All right. So these are simple thoughts and you know, that thing where someone throws up and you smell their throat and you want to throw up too. Oh yeah. What game is that called? It's one of those challenges I think on Tik TOK, isn't it? Oh, is it really? Oh, okay. Why wouldn't it be? It's a Tik TOK, right? But there's an evolutionary reason for that. We're tribe. We're here. You ate something before the rest of us did and you just threw up. I'm, I don't, I'm, I don't want to eat what you just ate. What's the, my body's best way to tell me that I want to throw up just the way you did. So that triggers, that's a chain reaction in your tribe. Back in the cave. So we all throw up and we're all better because it happened to you. Okay. And so it's why we react in these ways. So the evolutionary biologists would say we have thoughts that are for this reason. Okay. I'll give one more and I'll bring it into the present. But some of the first thoughts were for, to keep us surviving. Yes. Okay. Got it. Okay. So now, now watch how that unfolds. Okay. Okay. Uh, okay. And we, we care about, we care about our tribe. Okay. We all kind of look the same. We smell the same. Cause we're like eating the same things. We're wearing the same clothing. We're hanging out in the same place on earth. We're buddies. We're buddies. Right. It's all of that. Okay. Here's another one. You go off and you come back with the, you know, the food for tonight, the deer, the deer, whatever that is. Yeah. Okay. And I go out and I don't come back with anything, but you come back with the elk. Okay. Well, you had some abilities that I didn't. The women want to have babies with you. Let me say that more precisely. We'll say it again. Those who it didn't matter who they have babies with. If I really have some inability to bring home the bacon and we start having babies, my offspring doesn't have that ability either. We simply die off. We starve. Whereas your branch of the tribe thrives. If it's not enough food for everyone, your branch will thrive. So there's evolutionary selection to, to favor women who seek out, we can call it the alpha male, but it's the male who brought back the food. But in the end, you're saying that some, whoever could think and, recognize that. So that's why- You wouldn't even have to think. Suppose, I don't care who I'm going to want to have babies with, and then we all have babies and none of us can feed ourselves, we simply die. Right. You die, and your gene pool does not propagate. So this behavior that survives this very, very, you can think of it as an unfair, but it's favoring the fittest. Okay. Okay? That's what it does. Right. Evolution is about not only your survival, but the death of everything else that did not fulfill that moment for its survival. Here's my point. All of these things that mattered to our survival back then, in modern days, you just go to the grocery store to bring home food. Yeah. Nobody's bringing home the elk on their back, the deer, and so- But if a girl sees you with a bag of Takis, she'll pull up. That's what I'm saying is- I mean- Y'all not saying- What I'm saying is these elements in our behavior have been hijacked in modern civilization. Okay? So you care not that the person brought home the deer, but they're bigger than life. They're bigger than the other. So what today is bigger than life? A movie star, someone famous. Famous people have hijacked- I see what you're saying. So it used to be the person who was able to provide and like the way with like actual, with a skill- A skill and a thing. They're bigger than life. And survived. Today, you don't even need that, but the urge is still there. Right. And famous people are doing that, which is why famous people, you know, it's- Yeah. They get Celsius deals. I mean- I see what you did there. But no, Celsius is my word. I just want you to know. Okay. It is a temperature scale. Okay. Whatever else it is on your show, I'm a scientist. It's a temperature scale. So, but you're saying so that like some of the things that were like inaugural in our- Yes. Good word. In like our most primal sort of abilities that helped us to survive and advance- Yes. Some of those, and that also were mechanisms to help us to procreate- Yes. And move forward. Yes. That those have been hijacked by these superficial practices. The urge is still there, even though society has made it irrelevant. It's biologically there. So, when I talk about these tribes back then, and you have a little watering hole, wait a minute, somebody's coming over the horizon. Who's that? Well, they smell different. They look different. What? They want my watering hole? That's not going to happen. And so, we're going to fight. Okay. That's a survival thing. Today, water comes out of the fricking faucet, but we still have tribal urges. And the tribal urge is out of control. It's like, even when people look alike, they'll still tribalize. Well, you pray to this God instead of this God. You look, by the way, the two of you look identical. Okay. Just look at, remember Ireland, we had Catholic Irish and Protestant Irish. They pray to the same God out of the same Bible, but there's two branches and they're fighting each other. The Shiites and the Sunnis, they're both Muslim, fighting each other. So, it is so deeply within us that even if we were the same, we would find ways to tribalize against it. Well, you have long hair instead of short hair. You have red hair instead of blonde hair. You can tall instead of short. And if you are all of that, but you found something else to tribalize behind, like where you're born, your skin color, again, who you worship, what's your sexual preference, that becomes a thing. And then people fight over that. So, I'm surprised we have survived this long. Oh, you think we're about to hit a cul-de-sac? I'm sad. I'm just sad. Oh, you really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. People, it's like they're only happy when they have someone else they can be angry with. How's that so? But do you think it's serving us as humans? No. No. No. Of course, it's serving us. It's serving us. It's more humans now than ever before. So, clearly, it hasn't hurt us that badly. But as our weapons, the power of our weapons grow, and we still have tribal feelings, it's going to, I don't think it'll end well. The toughest part, I think, is that the people, the populace are at a different space than the governments now. But it feels like we're at a place now where it's not even the people that want a lot of that. It's not even the people that want a lot of that. But it's like we're just sitting here almost like heading wherever the government's going to take us. Which is unfortunate because it's supposed to be a government by the people, of the people, for the people. I agree. And if it's not that, then I don't know what we mean when we say 250th anniversary of our democracy. I know. And it's, people say, freedom! It actually was not 250 years of freedom. Because women didn't vote until like 1920 or something. So, they were not, half the population was not voting. So, they were not voting. So, they were not participating in the leadership. So, what it is for 250 years, it's not a democracy. It was only recently a democracy. But what it has been is kingless for 250 years. And I like that. Yeah. I don't want anyone who, by birthright, claims they have power over me just because whose vagina they came out of. Yeah. I don't, I'm sorry. You got to earn this. You got to show me that you're someone worth following. Yeah. That you've earned my respect, and my loyalty, and my devotion. And if you haven't done that, go home. So, I'm proudly saying, as an American, 250 years without a king. Yeah. I don't know how we'll get out of this kind of space that we're in. I don't want to get into like a woe is us kind of space. But it does feel like kind of a scary, it feels like a scary space. Because everyone's fighting all the time. But do you think they're fighting because they want to be? Or do you think a lot of it is that they're being programmed to fight? Yeah. They're only happy if they're fighting. Right. And plus, social media is an outrage engine. Oh, yeah. You go anywhere, and it's, hey, what are they doing? I hate that. Yeah. And it just, it feeds it. And then you come back for more, and advertisers love it. Yeah. They love it. So, it's feeding your tribal urges. We're a little trapped. And think about advertisers. What do they put in an ad? Okay. They put in someone you want to have sex with. Mm-hmm. And then you'll do whatever they say. Because you want to procreate make more babies. Yeah. Okay. And. You do it because it feels good, but evolutionarily it kind of had to feel good to make more of you. I mean, otherwise we'd go extinct pretty quickly. What are you saying? What? What are you talking about? What? What are you saying right now? What am I saying right now? I'm saying that we're being manipulated. Oh, yes. By advertisers. And they know these primal evolutionary urges. And they exploit them. Yes. They've got this spear to a sharp tip, Neil, you know, and that is spooky because it's this new sort of survival in a way where it's like it used to be the lion in the woods that you were. And now it's sort of this like, it's this algorithm. It's this black hole for your attention. And once your attention is gone and it's not on you and your well-being. Someone else is manipulating it. Yeah. Yeah. It's dark. Yeah. So I worry. So. So. So if aliens arrived, I would ask. I wrote a book about aliens, too, a few months ago. Yeah. Like if you first encounter with an alien, it sets you up for that. OK. What is it like a how to do like. Yeah. It's a complete. Like a first date. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, for example, if an alien. Oh, yeah. You know, lands and walks up to you and it happens to be some appendage sticking out. Don't grab it and shake it. Yeah. Because you don't know what part of the alien that is. Oh, yeah. And you probably don't want to find out, I'm guessing. That's a. That's a base branch. If an alien came down and they had technology that got them here. One of my first questions would be, how did you survive yourselves? Like, what do you mean yourselves? Yourselves. How. Oh. Will their own technology. Right. Because we may not. We may not. We may not survive our own technology. And maybe they're all just peace, love and aliens. Peace, love and, you know, make love not war. Well, I mean. You know, the evil alien trope is so common. Evil aliens. Is this one? Well, that's because I think that that's been how they've been. I don't want to say aliens have been pigeonholed, but I do feel like they have been. Yes, they have. But what do you think we get that? I think we get it because they have a more advanced technology, obviously, because they got here and we haven't visited them at any time. Humans with more advanced technology have encountered other humans with less technology. It has never boded well. Yeah. For the. They've been enslaved, killed, tortured. Molested. And so I think the evil alien concept is our own fears placed upon them in our storytelling. It's a mirror to how we know we would behave in that situation. And that's unfair to the aliens because they could just be peace, love and aliens for all we know. Yes. I'll tell you what I think the aliens are. I think we end up in this space. We're in a space where you you don't use your body as much anymore, right? You're you're you're on screen, your digital things get technological. Maybe they put a chip in your whatever and your body after like like eons of non-use and thousands of years of non-use just starts to like turn into this sort of this shape and your eyes, which are the things that like you still are pulling information in from and maybe they put a contact lens in that then. Expands over time and then I believe that we just become the alien. So all we're seeing the aliens are just us in the like coming to visit. Interesting because like an older us because the aliens are hardly ever jacked when they come down. That's usually thin. Yeah, well, they quit lifting weights centuries ago and here's the crazy part. I think aliens that come here like if you see an alien like ship in like in on Earth, I think it's almost like a like an alien family somewhere else like the like the parents took them on like a shitty trip for like summer or whatever and it's like they could go to anywhere else in the galaxy and they're like fucking mom, we got to go to Earth, you know, and so that's why we don't even see a lot of them because it is like some jacked up alien tourist destination. So this is a low attraction point in the book, right? Okay, unfortunately, I think that that's a possibility. Have you guys heard? About chat GPT work. And when you need more than just answers, give chat GPT work access to your apps and files and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides and structured reports. Get started at chat GPT dot com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans. Prize picks is America's number one sports picks app. The app is. It's really easy to use. 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Florida and Vandenberg, California. Well, Louisiana. Is Louisiana making a bid to launch? Yeah, pull that up. We just got a, I think we just got a big deal down there, down in Pekin Island, baby. Is that very, that must be very far south. Yeah, man. It's like, bro, they're going to have dudes down there like, man, they got, man, you never going to believe this, chai. They done launched a ship out there, baby. Pekin Island. 10 rocket launch pads will be built in Vermilion Parish. Monday, those who hunt and fish will be able to get to the moon. in the area shared complicated feelings. - Wow. on what is slated to be the world's largest rocket launch site is expected to begin in rural Vermilion Parish next year. Those who live, visit, and play nearby have mixed feelings about the development. Pecan Island is the closest residential area to the proposed site of Starbase, Louisiana. It is made up of. It's such a crazy dichotomy. It's such a. Well, Texas was in the running for this. But we got that big up. Apparently, it landed there. So, what's important is that east of the island, I don't know the map, but it's important that there's water east of the launch pad. Really? Why is that? Because as it launches, it wants to orbit the Earth. Typically, it goes east. If something bad happens and it blows up, it then falls in the water. Not on residential property. Oh, yeah, bro. They got a lot of boats. They got people sleeping on each other's backs down there, baby. Well, then they got something to look at at night. But launches, there's nothing like a rocket launch. Let me just tell you. They never get old. They ain't gonna have Boosie written on them bitches. It's gonna be. Let's see. Pecan Island is made up of mostly hunting and fishing camps with about a hundred permanent residents. SpaceX plans to use the site to support thousands of Starship flights a year. There will be five launch facilities with two launch pads each. How many shuttles will go up a day? Does it say? Well, I mean, so right now, I mean, Starship carries people. He's got his Falcon launch, you know, hundreds a year. So every few days there's a launch. And it's gonna be people on it? Starship is designed for people. But, um, so that could be where he launches people to go to the moon. Who knows what the future that's gonna look like. Bro. So here's what happened in Huntsville, Alabama. When the government says we gotta compete with the Ruskies because they're gonna. They got German rocket engineers. We got Werner von Braun. Let's build a rocket, dude. They put him in Huntsville, Alabama. Rocket city. Well, not yet. It's some backwoods place in the south. And he says, I need engineers. I need mathematicians. And so people moved there, and they didn't want to send their kids to the local schools. They built new schools. Industries followed it. And that section of Alabama is like it landed from space. It's a high-tech corridor in Alabama, unlike other areas of Alabama. So that would completely change the economy of southern Louisiana. Oh, it's gonna be wild down there, man. Yeah. They'll have definitely unique-style rockets. You probably have a pecan-crusted rocket. You know, a little bit of crawfish Amman rocket. They're gonna have it all down there. I haven't had crawfish in a long time. It's gonna be beautiful. But I'll say this. If they just let strangers jump on them rockets, bro, you're gonna have. There won't be strangers after they pay $10 million. I mean, if it's tourists, it's still really expensive. But they're gonna have like a you know, something for lower-end. They'll probably have like a. Oh, no, no. See, that's how you do a lower-income. They're gonna have an EBT seat on that bitch. You know that. Here's what you do for a lower-income. You just have a lottery. And everyone pays $10 for a ticket. You sell enough tickets. Somebody wins that lottery, and they go up. And they don't have to be rich for that. That'll work. Oh, shit. RoboShow gonna be on that rocket, dude. Sherman gonna be on that rocket. That'll work. That's gonna be amazing, dude. By the way, I don't mind going to a rocket, but it depends on where it's headed. Okay. I don't want to boldly go where hundreds have gone before. Send me somewhere. Moon, Mars, beyond. I'm signed up. Have you ever been offered to go to space? I was. No. Actually, no. But. And space, what people say space is. You know, you got the Bezos, Branson, billionaire boys space race. But they just go up and fall back to Earth. The whole trip is within 30 minutes. They don't go into orbit. But they go above this magical place called the Karman line, where if you go above that level of the atmosphere, then daytime sky turns dark. Because there's not enough air to turn blue. And so they call that the Karman line. So if you go above that, you're classified as an astronaut. And I'm just saying, I'm an astrophysicist. If you're gonna send me into space, send me somewhere. And if. I don't know if you knew this. Take Earth and shrink it down to a schoolroom globe. You can ask, how high up did they go? Down to a schoolroom globe? Yeah. So here's Earth, a schoolroom globe. How high up is the space station? Okay. Space station is less than a half an inch above the surface. Okay. And then the Bezos-Branson trip, they're the thickness of two dimes above Earth's surface. You remember that crazy dude that jumped out of a balloon for Red Bull? Felix Bumgartner? Yes. Okay. A few years back. His balloon, he died recently by the way, doing one of these stunts. Damn, it's tough. R.I.P. Yeah, he jumped the thickness of one dime. above the Earth. So none of this is really going anywhere for me, an astrophysicist. Send me somewhere. Moon, Mars, and beyond, and I'm good. And if Elon says, ride one of my rockets, I'll say, Elon, I want you to fly your mother first and bring her back safely. Yeah. Then I'll go. That's fair. Yeah, that's fair. That's totally fair. I think that's very fair. You got a mom tested. Yeah. But surely someone's reached out and offered you, said. So I was once given a. Opportunity to ride in the Vomit Comet. You know, there's a plane that goes up and falls back down, and you're weightless for a little bit of time. Pepsi was going to offer me a spot. But I had to wear a Pepsi jumpsuit and. Because they were advertising zero-calorie Pepsi, and this was a zero-gravity ride, and I could be photographed and end up in an ad, and I say, it ain't worth that much to me. I ain't giving my. So no. So I haven't. But have Katy Perry and those people, have they actually been to space? They've just been above the Kármán line? Well, well, that's. And so technically they have. Technically they've been in space. Katy's been in space. And I thought they got a bad rap on that. People cacheted on that launch. And, well, Katy, she's got a new album out, and they all want to make sure they're pretty with their makeup and everything. And I'm thinking, chill, first of all. When planes were invented, the first people to go were famous and rich people. Yeah. And the press wrote about it. And I'm like, so this is kind of interesting. Let's keep doing this. And the industry grew till it became its own thing. And so the aviation industry was birthed in exactly the same way. I see. So you got to use celebrities to advertise it. Yes. But I think here's the thing. Like you're saying, it didn't make sense in anybody's mind. Like, I can't even get from here to Hoboken in a half hour, dude. That'd be hard. Right? I'm not gonna think they can get to space and come right back. And then it kind of looked bizarre. And then they were like over there. Like, the door was kind of open. There was a lot of stuff that didn't, they didn't help their own cause. Oh, okay. Well, I'm just saying celebrities in space, that's where I drew the line. And there they are. Yeah. And the fact that we're talking about it now is evidence. That's a good point. Even if you're, you know. Yeah, if it's just an advertising thing, then yes. Yeah. Right. Even if you're gonna be a dick about it, you're still talking about it. But that's brave of those people to just be like, I'm gonna trust this thing is gonna make it into space and come back. And then come back and land safely. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, if I'm gonna put my life at risk in that way, I wanna go farther. Give me something, a place to go. Who would you take into space with you? I'd bring family. If they agree. I don't know if they'd agree. You'd bring family for two days. Oh, oh. Okay. I see what you're pointing. Ain't nobody bringing family to space, bro. Hey, bro. You don't bring sand to the solar system, cub. You feel me? Okay. I get it. Okay. But you want to bring like, you know, your boys you hang out with, you know. Yeah, who would you bring? Like, if you had to bring kind of like a little gang up to space, who do you go with? Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Okay. I hadn't thought about it. Because that would mean I'd be focusing on them when I'm really focusing on the universe. That's fair. Yeah. That's all I'm saying. So maybe bring, yeah, I'm trying to think. Yeah, it's actually a good question because it might take your energy away. You know what I'd want to bring? Hmm. A poet and a comedian. Hmm. I'd bring you. Dude. Because you look around and you say some funny shit. Listen, there's some funny stuff to be experienced. Oh, yeah. Saturn looking big. Yeah, dude. No, I highly value the lens through which comedians observe the world. Oh, yeah. Especially if it's a world you have not seen before. So you know what happens? Everything up there comes through your lens. And you're going to think about it in the context of all of your life and all the crazy people you grew up with and all the stories you tell. That's going to happen through this lens. And that'll keep me entertained the whole way. Oh, thanks, bro. Yeah, that'd be cool to be up there. And then I will bring Duncan Trussell. Do you know him? No. He's an amazing comedian. So I would bring him. And he has a great mind that loves to think about, like, unique stuff. Okay, weird stuff. Yeah, you need. And then you need a mind like that, that thinks outside of any other parameters. He is a poet of sorts as well. And then low key, I bring a couple little space candy, you feel me, bro? Okay. And, you know, that's between us, but. Well, it's something you need to know. Yeah. I'm duty bound to alert you of this. I bring a couple ladies, that's what I'm saying. I get that. I don't know what you think of as drugs. I totally understood. Okay. And which leads me to say. I would bring a little bit of drugs. That. - In space, you might. - You might not need them, 'cause you as high as fuck in space. - You're lying. - No, no, I'm just saying you are in space. - Oh yeah. - Usually on Earth, you say I wanna escape my moment here and float somewhere else. You are literally floating in space. And you're gonna say I need drugs to now transcend that? That's a waste of drugs. Leave the drugs for people still on Earth, A. B, if you bring in some arm candy, I'm duty bound as a physicist to tell you that sex in space is very different to execute. - I'm into some shit. - No, I'm just saying, most things you do on Earth while having sex, you would careen and bounce off the back walls of the spaceship if you're in zero G. - Would even like, what about even oral sex? Is that possible in space? - Yeah. - Okay, good. - But what I'm saying, but you're floating. And so, on Earth, you're in the same place at the same time. In space, you'd have to be strapped down, is my point. - So you have to bring kind of straps with you? - You have to. That's the way you said that. - Or you have to bring something. - Oh, I have to bring straps? Yeah, I would've done that anyway. - Well, you gotta, I mean, I'm just saying like. - Yeah, you have to strap because on Earth, you're assuming the person is there every time you're in body contact. - Oh, I see. - But in space, in zero G, body contact, six. - Oh, I see. - And then you have to send someone careening off the wall. - So say if you were engaging in some type of sexual activity and one person was to kind of like pressure their body or thrust their body against someone else's body. - Yeah, they're gonna bounce off and hit the wall. - Right. - It's just, you have to rethink all the moves and all the motion and all the positions. If you're gonna bring the candy, there it is. - I'm bringing you a piece, cut. - Stop. - But it's good, dog. Dude, yeah, thanks for thinking about this with me, man. - It's just physics at that level. - Yeah. - That's all it is. - But also it takes you, it makes you, I'll just tell you this immediately right now, we just had a lot of people who aren't gonna wanna be astronauts. I'll tell you that, bro. - Also, if you get like, if you're sick to the stomach, okay, you ever either been in a roller coaster or driving on a country road and there's like a, a short hill and you come down off it, you feel, you feel a little thing in there? Well, that's 'cause you're sort of weightless going over the hill. 'Cause you go up and then it falls right back down and your organs are not accustomed to that. - So that happens a lot there? - In space, it's the entire feeling. - Nuh-uh. - Yes. And you have to just get used to that. And until you get used to that, you are throwing up. And so the last thing you wanna do is vomit in zero G. It's bad enough when you see the splatter pattern on the, outside of bars, you know, that bad enough. You say, you know, who would-- - Oh yeah, that little bush like Rorschach? - Right, yeah, it's a Rorschach. The vomit Rorschach outside of bars. So in space, there's no Rorschach 'cause it doesn't fall down. It just goes everywhere and it gets in your hair and in the vents and everything. Unless you, unless you got a bag to barf into. And you have to make sure that it has forward velocity so that it gets into the bag. You can't just come up into your bag. - Right. - And you have to make sure that it has forward velocity. So that it gets into the bag. And you have to make sure that it gets into the bag. 'Cause then it wouldn't know where else to go. - So it could hypothetically be pumped, but like your stomach-- - Oh yeah, your stomach pumps. - Can convulse it enough to get it to your mouth? - Yeah, yeah. - And then you would have to spit it out? - They call it reverse peristalsis, they call it. Where all your digestive organs, it says, "I gotta get this out of here." And by the way, think about it, when you're throwing up, it's going against gravity to begin with. It was in your stomach and now it's here. So you are already working against gravity. So in zero G, you would have no trouble doing that. I'm just saying, you want it to have some projectile velocity to get into the bag. - Oh, for sure. - Otherwise it'll just kind of hang out all over your face. Just things to think about. 'Cause you're thinking about going into space, dude. - Well, you're making me think about it. - That's what I said, I would take you, that's why. - You think I'm not gonna think about it when you walk in the room? - And let me reassert, they're comedians I love, but they come more from my life experience. And it's fun if they say something that I might've thought of, but I'm gonna tell you, you have a completely different life experience than I ever had or dreamt of. And I value that. - Aw, thank you, Neil. Well, I appreciate it. Same about you, dude. I feel lucky to be able to talk with you today. - No, well, you're in my town. I can't let you come through town without me finding you. - And that's the truth. I appreciate it, man. I really do. Yeah, this is fun, dude. I'll say this, you make communicating fun. - Oh, well, thank you. Yeah, you know, I thought about it. If there's a professor at the front of a class, and they're like writing on the chalkboard or whatever the board is made of these days, they're expecting you to meet them at the chalkboard. They don't care how you learn. They're just putting it out there. So they're being a professor, but they're not being an educator. Okay, they're not being a communicator. An educator or communicator turns around, looks at their audience and wonders, how is your brain wired for thought, for learning? And I'm gonna shape my information to reach in there so I can, access everybody in the room. And I'm gonna meet you 90% of the way to where you are. And that's more effort. Otherwise, you're just putting stuff up and leaving. No, it's more effort. So thank you for noticing that. - Yeah, I see the shapes you're making, Daddy. I see it. I love it. I love it, man. I read actually in your book, I read somewhere that you can't even smell in space. Is that true? - Yeah, so space. - Tell me a little bit more about space. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Space, there's no, you know, the molecules are very sparse. - Okay. - It's the world's best vacuum, okay? And so when you smell, you are inhaling molecules that connect to your olfactory glands. And they connect in ways that give you a taste, give you a smell. I mean, they're all related. - So if I smell something, it's actually a molecule that lands inside. - Yes, yes. - And that sets off the senses. - Or if you taste something, it's a molecule that attaches to your taste buds. Same phenomenon. - Got it. - Now here's something interesting. Some molecules twist this way. And other molecules twist the other way. - Yeah, I know which ones twist the other way, Kurt. You know what I'm talking about? - So watch. - I know a couple of them boys. - So, the molecule that gives you the flavor of mint twists, it's exactly the same molecule except in space. It twists the opposite way from the molecule that gives you the flavor of caraway. - What is caraway? - Caraway, that's the seed that's in rye bread. - Okay. - So, caraway and mint, if you write down the chemical equation, it's identical. But if you build them, they turn in opposite directions. And so, that tells you that it's not just the chemical, it's how it's configured so that it attaches to your taste buds. And in one way, you taste mint. The other way, you taste this, it's a caraway seed thing. Yeah, I think it's caraway. - So, it's just because of the way that it moves, that the taste-- - The way that it, it attaches the configuration of the molecule to the configuration of your taste buds. - Wow. - If it can lock in, then you'll taste it. Otherwise, it goes right on by. Do you remember, you're old enough to remember, there was this thing that Lay's potato chip, did they invent it? It's called Olestra. - Oh, I remember that. - Do you remember Olestra? - Bro, remember that? - The booty chip, they called it. - Yeah, exactly. So, it's oil. - The booty chip. - It's oil. They fry the chips in this oil, but that oil-- - Man. - We don't have, we don't have enzymes to digest that molecule. - Manil, man. - And so, it has-- - People couldn't handle it. - The flavor of the oil, but you can't digest it. So, it does not get pulled into your body. It moves through your intestine. - Man, people was doo-dooing everywhere. - So, on the bag of chips, it said, one, don't eat too much. It may cause anal leakage. - Yup. - First time ever, those words were on a bag of potato chips. - And the FDA approved it. - Yeah. Well, I'm sure it's anal leakage. - What? - So, the point is-- - What? - My point is, that is something that did not configure to our ability to digest it. We didn't have the enzymes for it. So, it just went right on through. - I just want to see, yeah. Olestra may cause abdominal cramping, and loose stools. Olestra inhibits the absorption of some vitamins and other nutrients. - Abdominal cramping, yeah. - Yeah, you may remember them as WOW chips. Frito Lay, they used them in there. Lay's used Olestra in versions of Lay's, Ruffles, Doritos, and Tostitos. Pringles also had light fat-free version using the ingredient. A serving of WOW chips was marketed as having about half the calorie of standard chips and no fat, but it didn't have fat because I think it just ran right through your body. So, it didn't even-- - Well, but it's fat that you could not digest. - Right. - So, normally, what happens if you eat fat and you eat it? It becomes fat, your fat, right? Or a source of energy for you. We could not interact with it chemically. - Oh, yeah. - So, we are a sack of chemicals that either do or do not interact with what we put in our mouths, or what we smell, or what we taste. So, I'm just saying, there are people that say, "I don't like food that has chemicals in it." Everything is chemicals. You are chemicals. Have you ever seen like the list of medicines At a pharmacy, there's a book called the PDR, Physician's Desk Reference. It's this thick. Okay. It's four inches thick. It's filled with all the medicines that exist that we take. Yeah. Why do they work at all? Because we are sacks of chemistry, and so are these medicines. There it is. Got it. And we didn't start living longer until we figured that out. Well, we don't know that necessarily. No, I'm going to tell you. I'm going to tell you. We don't know if that's true now. Sorry. No, it's fine, dude. It's fun doing that. No, it's good. We're having a good time. Okay, cavemen. We don't know that because there's stories in the Bible where they say people lived 1,000 years. No, not 1,000. The oldest was, who was it? Lived 969 years. Well, come on, man. You know what I'm saying, bro? Yeah. Methuselah lived 969 years. Methuselah, dang. Yeah. Shorty was trying to meet somebody. Yeah, yeah. Nola was amazing. I think 700-something. Yeah, everybody back then, yeah, look at those ages. So they were living, bro. Well, Nola, 950. Yeah, so they were. But also, they only had a few people, so they had to stay alive. Oh, is that how that works? I would guess, right? So I think people started living normal, quote, normal age, biblical normal ages after Nola. Yeah. That's when the ages came back down. Yeah, once the pets showed up, people were like, we can chill, you know? But if you look at, like, the archaeological records, which are not what's in the Bible, half of everyone born in caveman days were dead before they were 30, okay? Fast forward to 1840, 1850, half of everyone born in the world was dead before they were 35. That's 10,000, 20,000 years. And you know, everyone over that time drank clear water, breathed pure air. They ate organic. Right. Because sometimes we romanticize the idea. They romanticize it. I do not want to go back to that time. Plus, I'd be someone's slave anyway, right? So, no, I don't want to go back to that time. Not at my place, you wouldn't. Oh, thank you, sir. Love you. So, so. Now, you'd have to do something. I'm just saying, we all got to help out. You know what I'm saying? You'll have to do the dishes once in a while, but we all will have our day to do them. Anyway, sorry, I shouldn't have said anything. I'm just saying, I got you, bro. Anywhere we go. Anywhere we go in time, I got you, dog. Thank you. Thank you. So, what happened between 1850 and like 1950? And that's the truth. So, it was 30, maybe 34, you said, until like 1850. Well, for 30,000 years. That's how long. Since cavemen through the middle of the 19th century. That's how long people live. We increased the life expectancy by five years, okay? Half of everyone born in 1840 was dead before they were 35. A lot of that was infant deaths as well. We just got way better at that. But also, there are three things. Vaccines, antibiotics, and sanitation. Those three things doubled our life expectancy within decades. And now, we're damn near triple that when you have other medicines and anti-cancer treatments and this sort of thing. It's not odd to have someone live to be 90-something. Yeah. That's not even weird. But now, we're also, I think it seems like we've gotten to a place where some of these things have become compromised. Like, greed has become such a big thing. Corporate involvement has become-- Well, it's always been, but-- Right, but I think it's big. It seems like across the board-- I mean, greed over your health. Yes. Yeah, yeah, sure. That can-- and whatever that is, it's not as big an impact as the positive impact, realizing that we are sacks of chemistry and we can interact with us chemically to get rid of ailments, to cure disease. Oh, for sure. To, you know-- so, I'm just saying, I'm giving a shout-out to modern medicine and science because that's what-- people take-- science for granted because it's kind of hidden, you know? Well, I think more recently, what has given it a bad rap probably are during COVID, and we don't have to go into any of this, but I'm just saying some of the things that I think have given it a bad rap, even more specifically, probably during COVID, I think, to me anyway, the-- like, the-- whenever they had the opioid epidemic and those people didn't get held liable, that was, like, a big thing, not about science in general, but just about-- That was a medicine that a medical company made. Right. Right. Right, a pharmaceutical company. But, like, that stuff, and then, like, now there's a lot of, like, skepticism because there's a lot of ownership by, like, the-- of news and media, you know, there's just a lot of entanglement, so I think-- Yeah, yeah, it's-- it's a problem, and I think life expectancies have stalled a little bit, and the opioid-- They're pausing. The opioid epidemic actually impacted that, so did COVID, by the way, our life expectancy stalled during COVID, but I'm saying, overall, are you living a life with science or without science? Right. I'm picking science. Yeah. Okay? And we gotta, you know, make sure it's working for us. Yeah. And not against us. I think that's where we are in this space now, hopefully, is that-- Yeah. There's gonna be some purification of a lot of processes that maybe have probably gotten compromised in different places, and some that haven't and have been accused of being compromised. Yeah, all I'm saying is, people say, "I don't trust science. Science this." You realize we can-- we-- we landed a rover, an SUV-sized rover on Mars that carried a helicopter with it that flew around the surface of Mars. But they lost it. No, it died. The helicopter died. But that rover, that thing is missing. Oh, is it? I haven't checked that. I think it is, isn't it? Is that right? Did they ever get that rover back? You can't lose that rover. I'm not calling you out on it, Neil. I'm just saying-- You can call me out. I don't claim full knowledge of everything in the whole universe. But the fact that they got it there, yes. That's what I'm saying. This is what I'm saying. Yeah. So, and-- Yeah, dude, most people can't get their kid to pick up their toys from the living room, and science is putting one onto Mars. No, NASA main rovers have not gone missing. Curiosity and Perseverance, um-- Where they remain operating. Yeah, those are the current rovers. Those are their names? Yes. OK. They get named by middle schools. Uh, NASA holds a contest-- Well, I'm just going to say they were named by urban middle schools, I think. Curiosity and Perseverance remain operating on Mars. Older rovers such as Spirit and-- What, are those two words too big for you? What are you saying? I'm just saying that those names have more ambiance to them. Oh, so they're more abstract. Yes, than like Matthew and Susan. Gotcha. That's what I am saying. Gotcha. And that is the truth. Older rovers such as Spirit and Opportunity ended after NASA lost contact with them. Yeah, because their batteries die. That's fine. So, no, we're still in contact. All I'm saying is, you know, as a matter of fact, it is rocket science. As a matter of fact, yeah, you've got to work hard to get the right answers. Science is done. And, you know, last year, this year, and next year, there's a total solar eclipse. I can tell you the exact second it will begin and where you need to stand to see it. This is an event in the future of the Moon moving through space, coming between Earth and the Sun. We know what's going on. If I didn't tell you how we figured this out, the scientists would be the gods of this Earth. If you don't behave, I'm going to get rid of the Sun tomorrow at 12:35. Yeah. And the Sun starts to disappear. You'll be groveling at my feet trying to get the Sun back. Man. And I'll say, yeah, okay. I'll bring it back just this one time. And it comes back. I bet there was a lot of perverted action going on. But we tell you how we know this. We write books. You can learn to do that, too. The old missing Sun trick, huh? I bet a lot of ladies and some dudes fell for that. I bet they fell for that, but you're right. You know, if you needed another reason to think Columbus was a dick, okay, on his third voyage, or it might have been fourth. How many voyages did he get? Huh? He got more than one? Oh, yeah. Multiple voyages. Oh, I thought he did it on the third. He came back multiple times. No. Oh, I thought he did it on the first try. No, no, no. No, on the third or fourth, is he in Jamaica or Hispaniola, one of the larger Caribbean islands? And he's ready to go back to Spain. And oh, he's got four voyages. Good. So. Between 1492 and 1504, he made four voyages across the Atlantic. Yeah. There you go. So on his fourth voyage. Yeah. It was. He was headed back to Spain and he didn't have enough food for his crew. And so he went to the locals. I need, can you spare me some food for this trip back? He says, no, we only grow exactly what we need for, to get through the winter. So we can't do this. You know, he did. He went, looked up his tables, science tables and said, if you do not give my crew food, my Christian God. Because they're all heathens, right? Because they're running around. They're not Christian. Right. My Christian God will make the moon disappear six days hence, if you do not obey. Wow. And some were rightly skeptical, but others were kind of spooked. And six days come, the moon starts disappearing. Because he knew there was a total lunar eclipse happening. And they just brought on the food. Dang. And I don't know. We didn't check back to see if they survived the winter. But. But they definitely. Yeah. If you needed another reason to think Columbus was a dick, that there goes one. But if you. Using the laws of physics known to the Europeans at the time. Was he a dick or was he a scientist? But I'm just saying, he used trickery. He used knowledge of the rhythms of the heavens as trickery. Yes. And I'm saying, so that's the case. If scientists did that today, we would rule the world. Right. But no, we let politicians rule the world for reasons that remain unknown. For reasons that remain mysterious to scientists. But we tell you how it's all done. to everybody i think oh yeah okay there you go it's a mysterious place that we're in you know that's why i'm here today i'm telling you that comedians make it bearable thank you for existing in this world well that's nice of you to say neil i think you guys carry the soul of a of a society of civilization because you because you you have to be smart enough to know what's there to make fun of make fun of it and hand it back to the people who who would otherwise get angry because you're making fun of them but say hey that's kind of oh you you shed some light on something i didn't even know i was doing or i was thinking or i was saying and so yes you make the world bearable let's take a break right there for a second you got a pee or anything you today's episode is in partnership with manscaped the men's grooming brand you Trusted by over 14 million men worldwide and big news fellows manscaped just dropped the all-new lawnmower ultra gen 6 we got it before gta 6 what's going on they somehow made the goat of body trimmers even better and packed this thing with a bunch of upgrades that actually make a difference that's the truth i've been trimming with that thing if you're all ready to go let's get started if you're already using a lawnmower this feels like a serious upgrade that is the truth and if you've never tried manscaped before the lawnmower ultra gen 6 is easily the most advanced body groomer they've ever made better blades smarter features longer battery life and an overall grooming experience that's faster easier and a whole lot more comfortable head to manscaped.com and use code Theo to get 15% off and free shipping at checkout. 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Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information. We thank Blue Chew for sponsoring the pod and the bedroom. Yeah, dude, you know what I was just thinking the other day was I wish they made pants, right? And they should have these that you can, they have a built-in like liner in between. Oh, to just pee down the leg. That you can pee into the pants. Yeah, they kind of have that. And the pants holds it. Spacesuits can do that. Yeah. Really? If not diapers, they used to have these, these. Well, this is a portable urinal. Stadium pal. There it is. That's a portable urinal though. I'm talking about pants where it just fills up in the legs. And then. You don't want to fill it up, like dump the stuff, dude. I don't want to be caught dumping it or whatever. And what if you get caught by the city or whatever? I want to just fill it up and then drop it. Like, yeah, put it at home or put your leg over the toilet. This is for people who are drinking. Beer at a ball game and are too fricking lazy to get off their ass and go to the bathroom. Yeah, they have. Yeah, this is, yeah, this is. You're looking at it. This is just some dude who's taped a bunch of plastic to his leg and he's literally. We peed in it in this commercial. In that ad, there's pee going in it. No, that ain't right. Yeah, of course it's not. So be discreet. Of course, be discreet. And look at the guy. You know that dude. No, I don't mind getting up, moving my muscles every, you know, however, a couple hours. If I have pee in my body, I want it to get out. You said you were a bed wetter as a kid. Oh, yeah, I was. Yeah? I wet. I was just. When did it go away? Is it still, is it still a thing? No, it's not. I'm non-practicing. Non-practicing bed wetter. Yeah, but I'm not currently active. So, so I was not a bed wetter, but it's not like I never did wet the bed. And the times that I did wet the bed, I can count that. I can count them. I was dreaming that I was in the bathroom peeing. Oh, wow. Yeah. Sometimes that would happen to me. Yeah, yeah. But other times I would just pee all over. Wait, in your dream, you're just peeing everywhere you are? Oh, dude, I would remember. Yeah, a lot of, because I would have dreams. And for some reason I was, sometimes I was like a, like a, it wasn't like a detective or whatever, but it was like somebody who like had to have information or something. And people would ask me the information. And my answer was always just to pee all over in the dream. Like, it would be like. Wow, it was a response. Yes, it was a response. Wow. And so then I would pee in real life. Look up what, what type of child, is there like a, is there a, like a demographic or a gender, like what type of kids wet the bed like the most or for the longest, I wonder? I don't know if they've got that figured out, but they, they later found some medicine that I heard. Oh, I took it. Oh, you did. Okay. Oh, dude, I'll tell you about something else that they got. What? So I finally got a pill and you get a pill and you don't wet the bed, but you got to take the pill. And sometimes you forget or whatever, and you just wet the bed. But the other thing that can happen is my mother. By the way, that pill, somebody invented that pill. Okay. I mean, before that, there was no pill. Oh, I know that. And then there's a pill. So I'm just saying that's a, oh, here's the statistics. Yeah. So the bedwetting drops, you know, as you get into your teens, it's hard to. Yeah. At age five, it's 15 to 20% of kids. And then it drops. So it's a couple of percent here and there until age 10, it's five to 6% and adulthood, about 2% in some estimates. Yeah. Scroll back up a little bit. Mm-hmm. Bedwetting clinically called nocturnal in. Aneurysis. Aneurysis after age five is about two to three times more common in boys than girls. And one US sample of eight to 11 year olds, it affected 6.21% of boys versus 2.15%. Yeah. More than twice. Uh-huh. Oh, race itself is not a useful standard. It's a standalone explanation for why an individual child bedwets or will wet the longest. Yeah. So it's, I mean, I'm just saying we're a sack of chemicals. We give you a pill, that goes away. Well, listen to what happened to me, dude. So my mother, for my birthday one time, saved up a little bit of money and she got me these electric, a buzzer underwear, right? And it was in underwears that had a buzzer in the front. And when the. When pee hits it. When the pee, pee hits it, it makes a like a. So it wakes you up. Wakes you up, right? But, dude, I ended up, so I would go over to my grandparents, right? I'd go stay there when I was really, when I was really like probably four or five. And they'd let me drink as much apple juice as I could, right? And you, and I would piss big on apple juice, right? If I was drinking apple juice, I knew I was wet in the bed. Okay. And the second it hit my lips, I couldn't stop drinking it. So I would drink like one of the big ones at night. Dude, and then my grandparents didn't know I had these underwears. And so in the middle of the night, I'm laying there buzzing. I'm dead asleep. My grandfather. Has no idea what's going on, dude. I wake up, he's on a chair. Your groin is buzzing? He thought I was getting electrocuted. He's on a chair with a broomstick, pushing it against my body like that, trying to get me to be awake, scared, crying. Yeah. What, a broomstick? Yeah. Because I guess he thought wood wouldn't travel energy. Unless he thought the devil was in you, he was trying to exercise you. I mean, look, he might've been trying to touch me with a stick. Who knows? The guy was a fucking pervert. Maybe the person who invented the pill was given that. Gift as his grandma, he said, "I'm not doing this." And it changed it, and then science helped him figure it out. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. What about this, dude? Can you ejaculate in space? Would that be the same as vomiting, kind of? Like, is it the same. Like, can you ejaculate in space? Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, the muscles do that all by themselves. So the way to test it. Yeah. Here's how to test it. Is, because when they first sent astronauts in space, there was the question, can you swallow in space? Yeah. Will phlegm just gather in your throat? But there were all these questions, and it had never been tested. But you could sort of test it. Yeah. You can say, okay, on Earth, can you ejaculate standing up? Clearly. Yes. Okay. Can you ejaculate horizontally? Mm-hmm. Clearly. Can you ejaculate upside down? Now, that's harder to test, but there's no reason why you think that wouldn't happen. Well, if you can ejaculate vertical to gravity, horizontal to gravity, and opposite gravity, then no gravity should be no problem for that action. And sure enough, yeah, you can ejaculate in space. Women ovulate in space. All the normal things, because the body doesn't know if you're horizontal or vertical. It's got to be able to do it all by itself. Veins sending blood, you know, why doesn't blood collect in your down here? Because you have veins and arteries that help move the blood through your system, get it back to the heart. Because otherwise blood would just gather all in your feet? You know, correct, without that. Because of gravity? Here's what happens, yes, here's what happens in space. Your brain doesn't know how to get rid of the blood as efficiently as other parts of your body. So people, their heads can swell up a bit. Really? In zero G, yeah. And there's pressure on the eyeballs. So it's not a picnic. How do they relieve that in there? I don't know all the ways that they figured this out. So, you know, the solution? Rotate the space station. Like any sci-fi movie you've ever seen, it rotates. Yeah. And it creates an artificial gravity, and then you don't have to worry about it. Get on with your life. So NASA still hasn't gone there, even though all of science fiction has. So I'm very disappointed. That's fascinating, man. Oh, by the way, in Lost in Space, there are chapters on every one of these subjects. Oh, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. Everything in there. There's on space exploration, what, you know. Like half of the stuff we've been talking about are things out of there. But also it's like. Yes, that's right, that's right. It's all a bunch of like, it's so many different facts and things that are kind of conversation starters, man. I read, one thing I read in there was that you'll be younger in space. Or that, does space make you younger? Yeah, it doesn't make you younger. Well, okay, it depends how fast you're moving. Okay. If you're moving really fast, you will age more slowly than people back on Earth. Okay. And so it's just Einstein's relativity. So you don't reverse so much as everything ticks slower. Your heart rate, your watch. Everything is normal to you. And you look to Earth and everybody's kind of moving faster. It's a relativity problem. It's not, so it's a fascinating fact and. Wait, explain it to me a little bit better. Well, there's not, it's, it's just is, I mean. But like, if you come back, will you have aged as much? That's the famous twin paradox, right? So you send off your twin and they go and travel at the speed of light or half the speed of light. Wait, they did that, was it Mark and Scott Kelly are the twins, right? Yeah. They're twin astronauts and they sent, they're identical twins. And they sent one into, into the space station for like a year or so. And then the other one stayed here on Earth. Yeah. And when they came back, then they tested their DNA, they looked at their health. There they go, got good pictures of them. What'd they learn? I think I had Scott Kelly on my podcast and I said, "So which twin are you?" He said, "Oh, I'm the good-looking one." It was a fun reply. He's probably been asked that a hundred times. Oh yeah, I don't even believe in twins, but I believe that they, that people love them. Well, so, so I have no idea what you meant by that. That you don't believe in twins? It just makes me very nervous. Okay. And I don't, I don't have, I don't hold any edge against people that are twins. I love them. But? But it makes me very skeptical. You creeped out? No. Skeptical. Of? The reality of it. Okay. And maybe the science. So here's what I said. The good thing about science is. Yeah. It's true whether or not you believe in it. Right. Right. So whether or not you believe in it has no effect. Oh, let them cook. But I'm just saying. I'm just saying if they show up like that. You're a little creeped out. No. I'm just. You don't believe this can happen. I want to see the paperwork. I want to see the VIN numbers. You want to see. I want to see the car facts. You want. Okay. That's. Show me the car facts. That's what I want to see, Neil. By the way, by the way, by the way. Okay. Twins have different fingerprints. Okay. There's their VIN. That's fair. I refuse to say VIN number because the N in VIN stands for number. So I refuse to say that. Okay. Okay. It's like people say, where's the nearest ATM machine? The M in ATM stands for machine. I respect that. Okay. So. So the VIN is their fingerprint. Got it. Got it. It's two different, two different fingerprints. Huh? Do they have the same DNA? Identical DNA. What? So one of them could do a murder and you could think it's either one? Depending on the, yes. Yes. You wouldn't know. Yes. It could be the twin who did it, but you know what's crazier than that? There's some people who are, what's the word? Chimeras. There's some people. That can see at night? No. That'd be good if you could. There's some people where. There's some people where the zygote, something in their fertilization merged two different DNAs into one life form. I think it's, I don't, don't quote me on this. I think it has to do with two that might've been fraternal twins, but the yokes merged. So when you come out as an adult, if I take a DNA sample of your arm, I'll get a different DNA if I get a DNA sample from some other part of your body. And they're called chimeras. Let me see that. A chimera is a single organism, object, or concept made up of completely different parts, genotypes, or origins. A single organism whose body contains cells from two or more distinct zygotes. Yes. It can happen when two fertilized eggs fuse together early in the womb or through cell exchange in twins. Right, it's two separately fertilized eggs. So they would be, it's not a twin, it's not an identical twin. Got it. So, but it can show up in the same body. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ooh. So, it means if I do commit a crime, and I leave DNA on the scene, and then they get DNA off my cheek or something, and it's not the DNA that I left, they wouldn't implicate me. Yeah, it's pretty wild. That is wild. It'd be a good murder mystery if you wanted to just throw in some chimeras. Yeah. They're very rare, people. Just throw a couple in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we've been talking about people going to space, right, and space travel and what's going on. And it's kind of become this privatized thing now, it seems like, in a way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With like, you know, Elon's trying to get there. Yeah. Yeah. Bezos is running it. Yeah. Do you, what are your fears about, like, space? And, like, do you think it's going to get gentrified? Like, I know in your book, you talk about how much stuff is getting left in space. Like, what are your fears about, like, space? Like, do you think it's going to get gentrified? Like, what are your fears about, like, the privatization of space? Yeah. Yeah. So, the space debris is a whole separate issue. There's not only all the satellites, as I said earlier, Elon is now rising through his 12,000th satellite. Wait. Wait. Tell me about that again. What? No. He's launched 12,000. He has 80% of all satellites orbiting the Earth were launched by SpaceX. Okay? So, aliens coming to Earth. Yeah. And they see not only how many satellites are orbiting it, but the level of debris that's left over from destroyed satellites and paint chips and rocket boosters and things. I think that's why we haven't been visited by aliens. They're like, "What the hell are you doing down there?" And they just move on because it's a trash heap. And it doesn't become a trash heap until it's every trip you take, you encounter trash. You know, you go in the wilderness, you toss a candy wrapper over. No one's ever gonna see that again. They're not gonna come arrest you. But if a thousand people do that and the candy wrapper's everywhere, you've destroyed the wilderness. Oh, yeah. So, space is kind of approaching that. Really? So, dude, check this out. So, this is a video of debris orbiting the Earth. Mm-mm. And. This is real? Earth? Yes. And NASA tracks this. This is just what NASA tracks. The military tracks even more. What? Earth is in the center of that, and the low Earth-orbiting debris is what's directly on the surface. The rest of that are, like I said, satellite. This is just the debris. Not even the satellites we care about. How are we gonna fix it? Just look at. We're zooming in. Look at this. Nuh-uh. Yeah, huh? Well, how can planes even be out there? What is this? Well, 'cause that's orbiting in space. Planes are much, much lower than that. Dude, how do you know it? How do you know it? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know. How do I know what? This is real? Yes. It's as real as twins. Okay? This is the debris that we are actively tracking. Dang. Okay? Bro. Look, if you. And some of y'all cannot see this at home. It is. Some of your people just listen to the podcast. About half. About half. We're looking at a NASA video of all of the. This looks like a snow globe inside out. A snow globe. I love that. You have to go look at this. But do we know. Do we know that this is factual, Neil? How do they get this information? We're tracking it. You can track the debris. Oh yeah. In fact, sometimes launch windows are affected by whether there's a hunk of debris that might collide with the thing you're trying to launch. Well, at this rate, how could they launch anything with this much debris going on? It's dangerous. And you're taking a risk. Space is very empty. You're looking at this compressed onto a screen. Got it. So, usually you don't hit any of it. Mm-hmm. But if there's a lot of debris going on, you're looking at this compressed onto a screen. Got it. Mm-hmm. But if this gets worse, which it will, there's something called a Kessler effect. Ooh. Let me hear you go, ooh. Ooh. Okay. Okay. The Kessler effect. It's where there's so many satellites. These are going 18,000 miles an hour. And I'm not even going to say how many. I'm just going to say how many. Okay. So, you're looking at this compressed onto a screen. Mm-hmm. And you're looking at this compressed onto a screen. - Troy, you're. You break into pieces if you're another satellite. So one piece can break a satellite into, let's say, 10 pieces. So they're hitting each other all the time. Well, not yet. At the Kessler effect is there's a threshold above which if a single satellite gets destroyed, there are enough other satellites ready to be destroyed by its debris that it systematically destroys 100% of the satellites in orbit. That's called the Kessler effect. And you don't want to ever get near that. Really? Yes. In fact, the movie. Armageddon? No, Gravity was basically the Kessler effect. Do you remember that? Yeah. Where the debris just started taking everything out? It says, number of rocket launches since the start of the space age in 1957, about 7,320. Number of satellites these rocket launches have placed into Earth orbit, 27,490. Wow. Number of these still in space, 18,000. 18,840. Of those 18,000, about 12,000 to 14,000 are SpaceX. Wow. And about 2,500 of those or 2,800 of those are not even functioning anymore, but they are still out there. Now, here's the next one. Space objects regularly tracked and maintained in their catalog, 46,000. Okay? Wow. And then this is while total mass of all space objects in Earth's orbit. 17,000 tons. God. Yes. I'm not going out there. Stay here on Earth. Oh, yeah. Unless it gets weird, man. Isn't it already weird? What is your threshold for weird if it hasn't gotten weird enough for you yet? We're there. Thank you. I think we're even past there. Yeah, do you start to think about that? Like, what do you think's going on? What do you think that these elites are trying to do? Because, obviously, going into space is Elon's big thing. Right? Like, is it just him having a blast because he has unlimited ideas? Like, it's like a kid who can. And he's got the money. Right. He can do whatever he wants. Like, or do you think we will need colonization? Like, do you think there's something coming that they're not letting the rest of us know about? I'm not authorized to comment. If you make it in and I don't, dude. I said I'm taking you with me. Didn't I already say that? My boy. You're my first call. Okay. I'm coming. Thank you, dude. Thank you, bro. And I'm going to hold you to that. Yeah. No, no. I will be there, banging on the window. Hey, Neil. I got you on tape, Sam. Didn't they have that space treaty? What was. Well, there's the original outer space treaty from 1967. Yeah. What was that about? And that was peaceful cooperation in space. Amongst different countries, right? All the space. Because it came out in 1967. We're about to land on the moon. Mm-hmm. We're trying to beat Russia. And it says, "We're all going into space." And that's the next frontier. We should do it together peacefully. Mm. Now, here's my rebuttal to that. I'll come. Okay? If you can go into space with all these countries and be peaceful and kind to one another, then don't go ahead and do that on Earth. What do you mean you can't do that on Earth, but a treaty is going to make us do that in space? I know. Show me that you can do it on Earth. Then I'll have evidence that this will work in space. Because I don't believe you. Type shit. I don't believe you for a minute. Space don't want us, dude, if this is how we're acting. Plus, it's very hostile to human physiology. Space is. Space. Yeah. Yeah. There are 100 ways you can die. People say, "Oh, going to Mars, that's like Columbus going to the New World." No, it's not. You know why? Mm. Because when Columbus came to the New World, the trees where he landed are made of wood, just like the trees in Spain where he built his ship. Mm-hmm. So he can repair his ship. Oh, what else? He steps off the ship. He can breathe the air. There are other human beings there to greet him and to feed him. Yeah. On Mars, no such luxuries. Mm. If you crash on Mars, you're dead. Dang. If something breaks on your ship, you're dead. Unless you have like a 3D printer, okay? And what, you could just print you up a little something? Yeah, print up a nut or a bolt or something, you know. Ooh, that's a good idea to bring. I know, I know. From now on, when people say, "What are you bringing to an island?" I got an idea. So what you do is you preload the Martian surface with these things you might need. Understood. The Outer Space Treaty, these are the rules. This is hilarious. No weapons of mass destruction are allowed in space, right? No ownership? Yeah, no ownership. No nation can claim sovereignty or ownership of outer space, the moon, or other planets. Mm-hmm. Peaceful use. Celestial bodies must be used only for peaceful goals. Military base and weapons are banned there. Space is open for exploration and used by every country equally. Right. So there's a later version of this called the Artemis Accords, where in the Artemis Accords, we wrote it. It's the same as this. Okay. It's the same, but it allows you to maybe make a business case for mining an asteroid. Nuh-uh. Okay. The Artemis Accords? Yeah, Artemis Accords. A non-binding set of principles established by NASA and the U.S. Department of State in 2020 to guide civil space exploration and cooperation on the moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies. Yeah, so it leaves open business cases, okay? Now, here's the thing. A hundred-something-odd countries have signed it. You know who hasn't signed it? Russia, China, North Korea, and Venezuela. Wow. So that's the treaty in progress right now. India's not spacefaring. They have a rover on the moon. Oh, they do? I bet it's picking up other people and driving them somewhere. Gosh, would you stop? Is that crazy, dude? I'm just joking, India. Can you still tell jokes like that? Oh, yeah, we can. Yeah, you can? We can. And I'm just joking. On this side of the tracks, you can tell those jokes. And my Indian friends will love that joke. Okay. Because I love them. Yeah, okay. So here's something that— That's wild, though. Here was such a dick move that I only thought Americans would have done. Mm-hmm. But the Indians did it, and I was just so sad. Okay? Because, you know, India and Pakistan have got this thing. Right, they don't get along together. They don't get along. They're right there, they don't get along. Okay. Me buddies. Okay, watch. India, on their rover, on the rover tracks, they imprinted their flag with the Indian Space Research Organization, ISRO. They have a little logo. Their flag and that logo is on the tracks of the rover. So as the rover moves along the surface of the moon, the Indian flag gets repeated there. Hmm. And it'll stay there for a thousand years, because there's no weather, there's no wind, nothing's going to erode it. Now, here's the dick move. You ready? Mm-hmm. Someone on social media—I can't blame the whole country for this—some dick on social media— Yeah. —said, "Pakistan—" Mm-hmm. "—has the moon on its flag," because it's got the moon and the star, the Islamic symbol. Mm-hmm. "—whereas India has its flag on the moon." Mm. Really? Did you need to do that? You're already ahead of them in all these ways, and you got to, like, cast shade? Really? That's a cheap dig. That's a cheap dig? I thought it was punching down. Yeah, and also, India— I mean, it was clever. Yeah, I agree. It was a clever joke. Yeah. But it was like— But it's like you are the meditation guys. Like, and you're saying— Good point. You know? Good point. You're the ones that are supposed to be cool and copacetic and everything. But at least they're not attacking other people with missiles. So I think I would take the first— Okay. Okay. I would take that over— But it's still not conducive to peaceful cooperation in space. Well, I'll say this. It does break the outer space treaty. Don't be a dick in space. Yeah. I think that's kind of what the treaty said. It does. And what was that second one that allowed the business? The Artemis Accord? Can you just show me that one more time? Yeah. It's worded in a—the way I should say it, it's worded in a way that does not preclude business interests. Yeah. That's what I wanted to just read. So there it goes. And look at all the countries that have signed it. There it is. That's huge. Half these countries never getting into space. No. No, but they might. Would you let them be ambitious, dude? You're right. Give them a dream. You're right. Please. Welcome. Go back to the—if you go back to the table of contents, registration of space objects, scientific data, space heritage, space resources. Space resources. How's that for a code word? Let's go to page four. Utilization that can benefit humankind by providing critical support for safe and sustainable operations. The extraction and utilization of space resources. Recovery from moon, Mars, comets, asteroids should be executed in a manner that complies with the treaty. Safe, sustainable activities. They affirm that the extraction of resources do not inherently constitute national appropriation. See, it's very loosey goosey there. Right. But it opens the door because we have a lot of space enterprise ready to—space industry ready to just jump on all of it. Do we have that? Yeah. I mean, is there a lot of things that are like kind of like— Yeah. When we land—when Artemis lands on the moon, it'll be supported by three or four or five different large space industry companies. Space industry companies. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. industrial complex right so we talked about that last time didn't we what was it oh yeah no yeah we talked about generational uh yeah that that's an interesting subject because if the destination is too far and it takes longer than your lifetime then you just they have what's called generational ships in science fiction we talked about them last time we were on okay yeah yeah and you thought maybe you weren't really sure about it do you i don't want to be born on a ship that's predestined to go somewhere with because someone three generations before me mandated that but what if we need you when we land we need me when i what if we need you what if you're out there for a purpose because somebody's going to be born on a ship in space and have to save us you think that'll be how that goes that's a good science fiction story right someone so they are the chosen one they are the savior they're the one they're neo in the matrix it's got to happen won't you think that's a modern day jesus jesus was the savior you know the story of a hero always repeats itself it feels like and it feels like we we need one a savior yeah yeah yeah so uh all these private companies are participating and they'll each do what they do best and you bring it all together and you get the best of private enterprise which runs efficiently and uh they'll bring the cost down so but if they have a damn jenny's ice cream on the moon or whatever i'm gonna fucking what's why you got a problem with that i don't know in our town where i live at they took a lot of the um like mom and pop stuff and they put in the bigger stuff it's okay oh you want okay well if it's a frontier maybe mom and pops will be the ones who do it yeah you're right that's a good point that's how it usually starts that way that's true right right because it's not a big enough industry yet for the big companies to buy everybody out that's true and i joke about this you know on the moon if they have they want to have a colony on the moon have restaurant right but you have to cook a little differently because the gravity is different and the air is you know and i think that's a good point i think that's a good point i think that's a good point and yeah you have that whole chapter on gravity and uh yes yes a whole thing yeah a whole thing but but here's here's my bad dad joke okay okay uh but you have to promise to laugh okay okay that wasn't very confident that was like really no i got you okay i got you got my back on this one okay so restaurants on the moon would surely have an interesting menu they just won't have any atmosphere yeah is that an authentic laugh i thought it was pretty good okay yeah i'll tell that to someone okay restaurant with no atmosphere yeah yeah i'll tell that to someone so a lot of what elon musk you know people you know he's sometimes he goes off the rails and off the chain but i think he literally goes off the rails sometimes what he has done through his efforts is reduce the cost of access to space and that enables whole industries to jump in and play how has he done that well so for one he's reusing his rockets okay he has boosters that go up and there's he leaves a little bit of extra fuel in the booster and then the computers take over and the boosters fall back to earth and they land on pads damn they're gonna hit a shrimp boat down there well actually so depending on the the trajectory they'll either come all the way back to cape canaveral or they have a landing pad out in the ocean and they'll land on the land they're gonna miss that bit they're gonna miss that that'll be bad yeah but i'm telling you how many shrimp boats are gonna be out there and they're gonna be out there and they're gonna be out there and they're gonna be out there suddenly how many new llcs are gonna be formed in louisiana people waiting they want to be hit by they want no oh no waiting for that booster to hit them bro waiting for that rocket bro so it's gorgeous it comes down and then the legs come out and then it lands it sticks the landing oh larry got hit by that rocket larry got hit by that rocket so think about if if you flew to europe and every time you did that they pushed the plane off a cliff and rolled out a new one your ticket would be very expensive right but they reuse the planes and if you reuse the rockets that that's one way to cut it down among others that they're working on so um we talked about we mentioned gravity a second ago is gravity changing at all like over time no at all well if you go to a mountaintop you will weigh less on the mountain that at sea level oh really yeah because you're farther away from the center of the earth but if you're just sitting here gravity is not changing okay no um all right let's get into this let's let's chat a little bit more And I do want to say, too, I know the holidays are kind of coming up. They're not here yet, but I think your book's a good holiday gift. Oh, thank you for saying that. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, just because it's so beautiful. Yeah, it's nice. It's like a nice, it's like something you can get. You could tap in at any moment. And you'd gift it, and it's, you know, most coffee table books, you open it, it's a pretty picture. You might read the caption, you close it. This one, you open it, and it pulls you in. I wrote it, so should I be saying that? I don't know. But every next fact, because it's been star-talkified, the fact has been brought to life with another way to think about that information, then it means more to you. And there's a whole chapter on stuff that people hope they would never have seen again. There's a whole chapter on the periodic table of elements. So, for example, okay, do you know the symbol for lead on the periodic table? Do you know? Do you know what that is? N-A. That's sodium. Damn. White lead, they call it. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. So, PB. PB. PB. Well, PB, where do you get that? How do you get that from lead? Well, PB is plumbum, which is lead in Latin. Plumbum. Plumber. Plumbers used to work in lead. All pipes used to be lead. That's how. Plumbers get their name. Plumb. PB on the periodic table. That's, there you go. I got another one. There's an element we discovered on the sun before we discovered it here on Earth. I think it's called, what is it? We named it after the Greek sun god. Radon. Radon. Radon. Radon. Helios is the Greek sun god, and that element is helium. There it is. Helium's good. Yeah. Radon. That was discovered by Marie Curie, the first radioactive element. She died of cancer. It was sad. She didn't discover mercury? No, mercury's been around forever. You'd think she would have. Why? Marie Curie? Maybe not. Should I have to laugh at that joke? Maybe not. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'll laugh at that one. You laughed at my joke, I'll laugh at that one, okay? Okay, that's fair, baby. Okay, then we cut to me. Okay. That was good. I see what you did there. Okay, we're even, dude. Let's talk about just a couple more little things, and then I want to get a few more things about your book, and then we'll get you on your way. And thanks so much for hanging out, Neil. Sure, love it. I appreciate it. But I'm saying, I think it's a good holiday gift. And it's not a lot of pressure. Some books you pick it up, it's a ton of pressure. But this is like- Yeah, that's good. And personally, I'm not a big reader. If someone hands me a 500-page book, when do you start it? When do you stop? And we're all busy. Where do you hide it? No, but this is not that. It's biscuits of information that just rise up, and then you can't not reach for another- It's galactic biscuits, man. Starbohydrates. Okay, that's bad. That's a good one. No, that's good. I'll give you that. Oh, damn. Well, yes. Starbohydrates? Yeah. Good, good one. Okay. Halloween. Let's get into that. I was never a Halloween person. Come on, Neil. You know why? Once I learned why people dress up, I said, "That's why I don't dress up." Why? Do you think it's sacrilegious kind of? No, no, no, no, no, no. People dress up because it's the one day where they can be something in their fantasies. Okay? Mm-hmm. And I never had fantasies. I never had. I was a very literal kid. You were just a reality baby. Yeah. I was completely reality-based. And so to dress up like something and then pretend to be that, I was just myself. I didn't need to pretend. So I was a literal kid, and I was much later before I would. Really?. appreciate what it is to be fully human, which is you have feelings, emotions. You cry. You. That came later in life for you? Later in life. Later in life. Wow. In my life, I have never. We used to have telephones with handsets. Mm-hmm. I've never slammed down the handset. That's an emotion that I've never. I've never slammed a door out of anger. I just never had that, which is weird because I used to wrestle. I spent eight. I was captain in my high school wrestling team, but it was. If someone beat me, it was like, "Good. Now I know I need to get better." It wasn't, "I'm angry. Let me. " No. I'd never had emotions like that. So I'm enchanted by Halloween, but I'd never had the urge to do that. But I'd never had the urge to dress up. Now you can say, "If I did dress up, what would it be?" I'll tell you. That's fair. I'll tell you. I would be a nerd savior man. Hmm. Okay? I don't have a word for it, because in high school. Because like I said, I used to wrestle. Mm-hmm. I was 190 pounds in high school, captain and undefeated. Mm-hmm. But I went to a geeky high school. Everybody's a geek, and there's a high school across the way that would take our lunch money every time, okay? And I wanted to fight against that. So I had this fantasy that, first, I could fly, and that if there was a geek in training, they beam like digits of pie on the sky. And the more digits of pie, the more serious the situation was. And I see it in sky and I fly and it come down and the kid would be wedgied or something on the hook or something that cool kids did to geeky kids. And I would just pummel the shit out of them. And I'd say, "Go forth in freedom." But I'm a geek too, so I'm a geek protector. - But you a boss geek. - Yes, I was a kick-ass geek protector. And to this day, if I see geeks getting abused in the street or 'cause they're not as cool, they're not dressed as nice, I will intervene. And 'cause I know I can kick some ass if I have to. Plus I used to study martial arts, but more as a curiosity thing, but I wanted to be Bruce Lee, not for Halloween, but. - You'd have been good at it. - Yeah, so the moral to that for me is just, I don't like seeing people harmed or abused just for being who they are. - Amen. Yeah, I agree with you though, right on that. - Yeah. - It's not good. - Yeah, it's just. - Well, I don't know what I mean, it's not good. Of course it's not. But yeah, I agree with you that. Yeah, there's something about like. - They didn't do anything to you. They didn't. - And they're already the underdog. - Right, right. - Sometime. - Right, now, you know, a lot of that changed in my life. I don't know why, I'm a little older than you. - A lot of it's changed in our life. - Yeah, yes it has, because the bullies learned that the geeks know how to program their computer. - Yeah. - And could help them with the math homework. And now the world is run by geeks. - Run by geeks. - Yes. - Yeah, I'm trying to just. - In other words, the most powerful people in the world are geeks. On the spectrum, half of them. - Yeah, I think half of them are on the spectrum. - Yes, yes, easily. - Do you believe that? - One out of six, I'm not clinically, I don't know. Clinically authorized to make this diagnosis, but based on being around my colleagues my whole life, I would say one in six, one in five is on the spectrum. - Yeah. - In some way. Perfectly happy in the lab. Eye contact is a little difficult. - But do you think that that's why we're starting, like we create more stuff that like is tech, but there's not, that we're losing the connection because some of it. - Oh, interesting point, 'cause they're very focused and they can build stuff. - But they sometimes lack an element of being able to. - Yeah. - Being able to read certain like. - That's deep, and I'd have to do the research to conclude that, but let me restate what I think you just said. - Okay. - If geeks on the spectrum are inventing the next wave technology, should we be surprised that that next wave technology has no understanding or sensitivity to the human element, the interpersonal human element? - Right. - Because that wasn't in the people who invented it in the first place. - Yeah. - That's deep. I wonder if that's true. - Because here we are, and we're letting these guys do some stuff, and we're all, it's hurting. - It's hurting, and they didn't want it to hurt on purpose. - No. - They just didn't have the need for themselves. - Right, they didn't understand. - Right. - So why would they incorporate it? - Right, why would they even know that you would become so addicted to your social media and how you look to other people? What's it called, your self-image, it's the, you know, you enter a depressed state because you're not as beautiful as other people who are online curating their presence. - Right. - You don't even know that they're not even real. - Yeah. - Or not, they're not authentic, I should say. - Yeah. - So. - The creators don't understand that 'cause they don't have that software. - Maybe that's intriguing. I'd be curious to see what research says about that. - And I'm not saying all people that are on the spectrum. - No, no, no, but it's a hypothesis worth testing. - Ooh, I like that. Dude, now we're doing something together. That's exciting. Yeah, I was trying to think of some good, what is this one right here? - Oh, pie in the sky, there you, that's a, that would be a serious. - Bro, you look tough, Neil. - Oh, I didn't create that, that's somebody, I don't know who did that. - But still, that looks good. - Yeah. - What about Michael? - We are now looking at AI rendered version of me with a pie superhero outfit with a cape, stars on it, and there must be 500 digits of pie in the sky. - That'd be tough. - And the world is about to end. - Yeah, and I think that's current, okay? What about a Halloween costume, Mike DeGrasse Tyson? See if you can put that in AI, see what happens in it. - No. - Well, the thing about science is, you know. - And then there's the supermodel, Tyson Beckford. - Ooh, here you go. - Oh! - Oh, let's go! - Oh! Oh. - Dude, and let me say-- - What's it say on my arm there? - Frick or knockout. - Oh, okay. - What about a Tyson chicken nugget? That would be good if he was a little nugget. - Oh. - That'd be good. You'd eat yourself too, probably. You know, who wouldn't? - That works until you die, yes, okay. - I don't know, that's true. But hey, if you're starving, that'd be a risky moment, wouldn't it be? That'd be a risky moment. Oh, that's cute, Neil. You do not look happy about it. - Oh, no! - But you would definitely probably have a little bit of yourself. - Chicken tender, there you go. - Chicken tender's good. No, let me see with Tyson Beckford, 'cause he's a supermodel. - Yeah, let's see if I-- - Let's at least-- - See if I look hot. - At the very least, man. - See if I could look hot with Tyson Beckford. - Or Neil deGrasse Tyson, too. Put that in there. That's a-- - You don't mean deGrasse High? - Yeah, remember that? - That'd be weird. How are they gonna, they can't mash that. That doesn't-- - Neil, it's science. There you go. - Why am I in a wheelchair? - Because that character was in a wheelchair, Drake's character. - Tyson Beckford? - No, no. This is deGrasse, Neil deGrasse. - Oh, deGrasse! Oh, oh, oh, gotcha, gotcha. - Neil deGrasse High. - You stepped ahead of me there. - Yeah, this was Neil deGrasse High. - Oh, that looks innocent enough, doesn't it? - Yeah, it looks good. - Yeah. - Oh, there you go! - There you go. - Oh. - Let's go. - Oh. - Dude, that's awesome, man. Well, look, there you go. Look, I'll say this. You got some great costumes that come, that just because you exist, some cool new universes can show up in the world. - I officially give you my permission to post these that you just created. - Okay, thank you. - Of me in there. - Okay, thank you. - Okay. Oh, there he goes. Yeah, that was Drake. I forgot that was Drake. - Yeah, that was him, man. - Yeah, yeah. - He's talented. Let me see, where can we? - Did you ever want to be abducted by aliens? Do you fear them, or do you? - I, more than ever, would like them to come get me. - Really? - Yeah. And that's the truth, I think. And I don't mean that in any, like I'm scared for my life way or anything like that, or I'm gonna-- - Yeah, but so my same sentiment is maybe for a different reason. I want to be abducted ever since I was 10 years old. I wanted to be abducted, not 'cause I wanted to leave Earth, but that I wanted to see what the rest of the universe was like. And if they could abduct me, they should clearly have access to the universe in ways that I don't. So it was because I was a curious, cosmically curious kid. - Hmm. - Yeah. - Wow, that's pretty cool, man. - Yeah. - Did you ever feel like they might not abduct you because of your skin color? - Never. Never. They're aliens, for goodness sake. - I didn't mean that in a bad way. - No, no, no, no. I had no such thoughts, because-- - 'Cause I've had black friends that are like, "Aliens don't abduct us," and this type of shit. - Oh, there was the Key & Peele skit. - Huh? - You know the Key & Peele skit? - Uh-uh. - It was hilarious. It's a suburb, suburbia, right? - They're so funny. - And there's zombies coming up the street. And they turn to this home where black people live, and it goes around back, and they're barbecuing, and then the zombie just recoils, and it goes back to the street and chases the white people. - Aww. - So these are racist zombies. - Damn, dude. - It's a whole skit. - Really? - It's an entire skit. And so all the black people just hanging out on lawn chairs, and the white people are just going crazy. - Oh, dude. - So I had no such thoughts that, "Alien would somehow see me as a black human, "just as a human." But I knew, 'cause I'm old enough to remember, the Apollo program, the Mercury 7 astronauts, and all these guys, none of them looked like me, in the slightest. Not only that, on Broadway was the number one hit musical, "Hair," and none of these guys had hair longer than an inch on their head, all these crew cuts. So I was interested in space, not the film. Not because of the Apollo program. 'Cause it looked like there was nothing in there for me. - Wow. - And it was more pure curiosity with the universe, and me and the aliens, we'll take it. - Wow. - Yeah. - If you got in there, right? Say they come and get you, okay? They're doing a special, right? And they want to get different types of folks up there. - Uh-huh. - You know? The whites aren't cutting it anymore. - Well, no, just think about it. Ask yourself this, okay? When you look at, pigeons. Are you grouping them into kinds of pigeons? No, you're not, because they're just pigeons to you. But if you really did it, some surface patterns of their feathers are different, okay? And when you look at an alligator, do you even know who's a female and who's a male alligator? No. - No. - You don't, and do you know with the, you don't even care, because you are so different from the alligator. You're not focused on how alligator's different from each other. You're focused on the fact that it's a frickin' alligator. - Yeah. If you were an octopus and you look at humans, are you saying, oh, this human has a different color skin than this human? No, you're a creature that swims in the ocean with eight legs, okay? All you're going to see are these humanoid things that have a head only four limbs and not eight, okay? And you're living in the air, not in the water. That will preoccupy your awareness of them. If humanoid aliens came, which is all Hollywood can think of creating, the octopus will not distinguish between us and them because they always have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, a head, shoulders, neck, arms, legs, torso, feet, arms, hands, and fingers. And that's it. That's what we do. Do you know, do you realize that all life on Earth has common DNA and that bananas have 25? Identical genes to human beings? Nuh-uh. And because of that, if you get an alien from another planet that has no DNA at all or has DNA but none of it is in common with us, it should look at least as different from humans as bananas and humans look from each other. And all Hollywood depictions are they're walking, they're talking and walking, coming down the street. Whistling. You know, so I. I had no such thoughts that aliens will notice my skin color. And I'm pretty sure any future aliens would feel the same. I just didn't know because a lot of abductions seem like it's a lot of times often a guy that seems kind of white. Yeah. Well, actually, one of the first and most famous abductions, you can look this one up, is the Betty and Barney Hill case. Barney Hill is a black man. Was he? Betty Hill was a white woman. Let me see him. Oh. Yeah. Oh, yeah, he looks kind of black. Yeah, yeah. Barney and Betty Hill were American couple and civil rights activists who claimed they were abducted by extraterrestrials in a rural portion of the state of New Hampshire from September 19th to 20th, 1961. The incident came to be called the Hill Abduction and the Zeta Reticuli Incident because two ufologists connected the star map allegedly shown to Betty Hill with the Zeta Reticuli system. The story was adapted into the best-selling 1966 book, The Interrupted Journey. And the television film, The UFO Incident. And that television film, James Earl Jones played Barney Hill. Did he really? Yeah, yeah. It was pretty cool. Very cool. But so, anyhow, so, so. And you obviously played James Earl Jones. This is CNN. So, so, so, anyhow, so aliens early on have been abducting black people, but not in the numbers that they do. They're white people. But this is an early mixed couple. That might have been why they got them. Oh. It might have been. Who knows? And they look like a beautiful couple. Yes, they're very well-groomed, I think is the way you say that. Yes, they look like a beautiful couple. And I'm glad they got brought back. Did they get brought back? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, good. Yeah, and so it's. So I'm just saying there's precedent for at least some black people to be abducted. But you are correct. The overwhelming majority are white people and English-speaking people. Hmm. If you look at a map of all reported UFO incidents in the world, they go MUFON, M-U-F-O-N, they'll have a map. Maps, they're UFO sighting maps. That's it. Whoa! Okay, notice hardly any in Mexico. Every dot there on this map. Wow. is a reported UFO sighting. Now, it could be that if you don't speak English, you don't know where to report it. That could be so, I get it, but. But you could just tell your friends. The difference here is. Now, rotate the map or go to some other place. Can you rotate the map? There you go. Rotate it around. Look at that. Okay, a little bit in India. Keep turning. England! There you go. Dang. And then right across the channel. Okay, now come down to Australia. Okay, well, Australia doesn't have many people to begin with, but in all the major cities. They're reporting it. Correct. And what about China? Are they reporting it? Are they reporting them? They're not allowed to, are they? You know, I'm just saying this UFO thing is such an American phenomenon. And so either the aliens just like English-speaking people. Or. Or no one else gives a shit. Or it's just. The English people know better how to report their sightings than other people do. Or we're more gullible in thinking that something is aliens when it's just some natural phenomenon. So. This map is staggering, I think. And, dude, I'll tell you this. Honestly, I think that the final war on the planet is going to be blacks versus aliens. Really? Black humans versus aliens, yeah. Really? So that's a movie that looks like it's going to be in the sequence with predator versus aliens. I mean. Predator v. aliens, humans v. aliens. Black people v. aliens, okay. Is somebody going to have to battle them? Oh. And I. I don't. Let me cut you off here. Is it like. Wasn't there some movie called Jason Takes Manhattan? And someone did a parody on that. Jason tries to take Harlem? I couldn't. Jason comes up with this mask and a hatchet. Boom! Get out of my. Get out of my back. Black people are not going to stand for this? They're not. Black people, at a certain point, are not going to stand for aliens' bullshit. Yeah, yeah. And I think more of a white society will just fall into it too easy. At a certain point, black people are going to detect this bullshit. We've all seen the videos of people trying to scare black people with Halloween tricks. Like someone pops out of the can and they get punched. Yeah, it's just. Yeah, stay in the can. Stay in the can. Yeah. I see. That's interesting. So all the white people of the world would have acquiesced to the demands. of the aliens and would have just gotten absorbed. And black people are holding out. Yeah. And it'll be the final battle. Yeah, I think that they end up being the savers of the world. Wow. Wow. Because I think it's just like. That's a movie. Because every great story is the arc, you know? No, that missed its time. That should have come out like 1973. That movie? With black exploitation films. Where black people are kicking ass and it was okay for everybody to do. Even white people said, okay, we'll give it to you because we've been so hard on you all these years. We'll kick our ass for a few years in the movies. That would have been a good time. Black people versus. But I'm talking about. That one had the movie Blackula. Did they have that? Yes. Blackula. Oh, damn. Yeah. Yeah, so that was the era where this movie should. Who is that? It's not Richard Pryor, is it? No, no, no, no, no. It was a serious movie. It looks like it would be a joke. But no. I would love to see that. And look, there he is biting some white chick. I've seen that before. But no, I think. I'm not even joking, Neil. I believe that that is going to be the. That's going to be the battle. And I believe that they saved the planet. That's what I believe. Somebody is going to hear this podcast and is going to write that script. We need it. We need it. I mean, I'm at a point where like, we need. That's what. Because I don't know what else can save everything. Yeah, yeah. Another thing, they come down to these badass spaceships and here we go. Here we are getting our guns out of the cabinet and shooting at. Really? Like, don't you just see what has happened here? The bullet will like absorb into their ship and it will become part of their ship. Yeah, for example, right? Yeah. Can you just extrapolate what's happening here? So, that's right. So, the black people, we don't have as many guns as the white people do, but we would know the guns would be pointless. We'd have to find some other way to get them. They'll figure it out. Yeah. Maybe barbecue. You think? That seems racial. That seems racial to me, dude. After all the stuff we've said. I know. They'll listen to our. They'll listen to jazz. Jazz will. Oh. Now we're talking. Yeah. And then the aliens just be chilling, smoking. Dude, that's how they'll. There'll be some way, but that's how it happens. That'll be. It'll be their muse. I believe that. It'll be their. That's how I've always believed that. How long have I said that for, Nick? That which calms. 26 years ago. How long ago? Two to six years ago. Sorry. That which calms the inner beast of the alien is some smooth jazz. Your book, before you go, yeah, anything else about aliens or we can go into your book as a chapter on the Zodiac? So, thanks for giving my alien book a shout out. It came out earlier this year, back in May. Take Me to Your Leader. Yeah, yeah. It's a small book, very fits-in-your-pocket kind of thing. And that book is like everything you need to know for your alien encounter. And it's grounded in physics. I mean, so it's not. It's to try to anchor the conversations people are having about what they see, what they think they see, what they want to see. It's in there. There's a chapter on alien intelligence, alien technology, alien powers. What powers do aliens. in a movie that might be possible. on earth, even if it's beyond our current technologies. So it's a very serious but fun exploration in that. So thanks for giving that a shout out. - Yeah. - But the Lost in Space, like I said, that's a big fat old 5,000 fact book. - Yeah. - National Geographic, they don't do ugly. - Yeah. - Right? - Oh yeah, some of the images and just like, yeah. It's a nice journey of kind of information and enjoying yourself, you're laying on a couch. - Yeah, yeah. - You're enjoying something, you're sitting there. - You gotta dip, dip in. - Yeah, put a dip in. - Yeah, yeah, and you know, for my podcast, I wanted it to have a tagline, but our marketing person nixed it. I wanted, 'cause you come and you have fun and you learn something, so the tagline was, "Learn something for a change." That's what I was gonna say. And they said, "No, that's too off-put, it was too." And so, in this book, it's like learn something for a change. - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - So, last question before you go, I guess. - All right. - Could aliens bring new elements and stuff and new science here that we haven't seen? Like, would it alter the fabric of our science? Does that make sense? - Yeah, it's a great question. So, in the chapter Alien Powers and Alien Science and Technology, I explore the science that we have discovered on Earth that applies across the universe and across time. They are beholden to that, but then, there's other things about the universe that are mysteries to us that they might have harnessed, like dark matter, dark energy, wormholes. You know how to make a wormhole? You need a negative gravity material. It'd be a substance, normal things have gravity, this is negative gravity. - Like what, mud or something? - No, no, no, it just doesn't exist. We don't know, but maybe an alien figured out how to make it. And if you can make a negative gravity thing, instead of bringing things together, which gravity does, it pries things apart, which is what you need to make a wormhole. Yeah. So, but here's the thing, if they master wormholes, then they connect where they are to where we are, and they just step through, they wouldn't need spaceships. They would step through like Rick and Morty. You know, Rick has a, he opens a portal, or who's this dude in the Avengers, Dr. Strange. You just step through. - And they would just be here. - They'd just be here, if it's a proper wormhole. Right, it's not a whole tube that you pass through. So, if they mastered that, then they would not be seen in spaceships. - Where would you go if you could wormhole? - Oh. Center of the galaxy. That's gotta be bad. There's a super massive black hole there. I would need radiation protection, 'cause there's a lot of lethal, illegal radiation. Electromagnetic energy coming out of there. But, you know, the center of the galaxy feels cool to me. - How many people have we sent there? - Zero. - Ever? - To the center of the galaxy? - Yeah. - What do you mean? We've only been to the moon like six times. - Oh, man. - So, what do you mean? Go to the center of the galaxy is like- - Well, fuck it's, yeah. - 30,000 light years away. - Oh, I didn't know that. - Oh, galaxy, dude. Galaxy. - Bro, I don't know. - Okay, what, Earth? Earth and the planets and the sun? Solar system. - Okay. - We and 400 billion other stars? - Uh-huh. - Milky Way galaxy. - Okay. - We and thousands of other galaxies, the Virgo supercluster of galaxies. Other superclusters combine the universe. - They keep renaming this thing and making it bigger. - Bigger and bigger, yeah. As we discover it, yeah. - As we discover it. It's like they just kind of give you a little more bread, you should eat a little more bread crumb. - Well, incremental, that's why we make new telescopes. So, is there new physics? There could be. - But the physics we know is not gonna be different for them. - So, our physics would have to apply to them? - Certain aspects of our physics, yes, because we've tested it on Earth and across the universe. - Got it. - So, the periodic table of elements, which you saw in your chemistry class, that is full. It used to have gaps in it. And we said, wait a minute, there's a gap here. There must be an element. Let's look for it. Let's synthesize it. Let's create it. Bada bing, here's the element. The first thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna take it, and the first element, this is in the book, the first element that was manufactured, 'cause there was a gap in the whole element. Do we see this in nature? No, nature doesn't make this element. Let's make it ourselves. That's how badass we are. - Really? - We made this element. And we named it after the prefix we use for things that are artificially made. You know that prefix? Tech, it's called technicium. - Technicium. - We invented that. And-- - Wow. - I-- - And that's a real element? - Yeah. In fact, this has very important and significant medical application. - And can you just buy it? Or is it like a-- - I've never tried. There are labs that can synthesize it, but-- - Wow. - Yeah, you can't, no. What are you gonna do with it? I mean, what would you do with it if you-- - I don't know, just have some. I guess, I don't even know. I mean-- - Yeah, yeah, no, yeah. - I didn't know it existed. - Well, right, so there's-- - Yes, you can buy techni-- - Technicium? - Technicium, but it is strictly regulated and very difficult for private individuals to obtain in pure form because it is radioactive. - Yes. - Nevermind. - Radioactive. - Do not want that in my house. - Wanna keep your gonads. - Yeah. - So, the element is full. When the Knicks were in the playoffs, they hadn't been since I was in middle school, okay? - 52 years or something. - Yeah, yeah, some, yeah, I'm an old fart. And so, while they were in the playoffs, I tweeted, I said, I forgot the exact number, but it's approximate. I said, the last time the Knicks won the championship, the periodic table had 11 fewer elements. Just to measure time by our rate of discovery of these elements. So, we're up to 118. Nature only makes 92 of them. - Wow. - We manufacture, so we got the periodic table. That is what the universe is made of materially. - What I looked like last time the New York Knicks won a championship. Look at you. - Yeah. - Look at you, boy. - Oh, yeah. See, I'm very geeky. I got a camera. That was one of the world's first selfies, it turns out. You know who selfie'd this before me? Is Colin Powell. Has a photo of himself in a mirror. So, I just thought this would be a cool thing to do when I was 14 or something. - Dude, that's cool. - So, that's one of several posts, and I have like a karate kimono thing on. - Yeah, I can see that, man. - Yeah, yeah. So, if you-- - So, you had some cool hobbies. - Yeah, yeah. - I developed my own film, and I was a geek kid, like I'm saying. - Can there be more elements, though? - So, no, because those elements are just how many protons are in the nucleus. There's an element with one proton, that's hydrogen. Two protons, helium. Three, lithium. Four, boron. Five, six is carbon. - Yeah. - Seven is nitrogen. Eight is oxygen. - Good. - They all have names, and they're in sequence. There's no room to fit any other element, 'cause we're counting protons. At the high end, we're up to 118, proudly, but maybe the aliens have 119, 120, 120, yes. - What about kryptonite? - That's entirely, krypton, that's a gas. - And we have it? - That's a gas. - Do we have it? - Oh, yeah. - Fuck yeah. - Oh, yeah. Krypton is a noble gas. - Good. - Not that anybody asked, but in the time that has elapsed, since the Nix, last one. - Last one at championship, we've discovered eight new subatomic particles. - Dang. - The J. Psi Maison, the Tau Lepton, the bottom quark, the gluon, the WZ boson, the top quark, the Tau neutrino, and the Higgs boson. Nobel prizes all around. - And they are all entering the portal as well this week. - Yeah, what's the next one? Not that anybody asked, but the last time the New York Nix won a championship, Steven Spielberg had not yet made a feature length movie about aliens. That's how long ago that was. So whatever they make their craft out of, it's gotta be these ingredients. - Got it. - So I can talk about these ingredients that they have. Maybe they may have some fancy alloy, sure, but they're made of these ingredients. Can they, do they have negative gravity substance? Maybe, I don't know. I'm not gonna preclude that. Maybe they figured that out. Can they read your mind? If they get close enough, maybe. 'Cause your brain is electromagnetic signals. - It does? - Yes. And that's why you can put electrodes on your head and read your brainwaves. So yes, in principle, yes. We don't know how to do that yet, but I give that to them. - Yeah. - I'll give it to them. They're more advanced. - Yeah, sure. They came all the way here, give it to them. - They came all the way here, give it to them. So there's a whole conversation there about powers they have, but I'm not giving them the physics that we've already established. - Got it. - We're good with that. Yeah. And we know that because we can measure atomic phenomenon in other stars and other galaxies across space and throughout time. And so we're good there. Be proud of that. - Amen. What do you think is like the next biggest realm of discovery in science? Like where is science really gonna start to? - I think we're gonna get in our jobs. We're gonna get in our genome and start messing. We're gonna start playing God, I think. Oh, you want to play a piano with fingers. Let's put in the gene that gives you a sixth finger on each hand and then compose something that'll do that. I think who we are and what we look like might become boutique-y. Okay. And that's, I hope that doesn't happen because so much of what makes life interesting is working with what you've got, how inventive you need to be to work with how you are and what. Right. It gives us a purpose. It gives you, let me work with this. Right. Let me see what I can do here. And this urge to be normal, I think every interesting thing that's ever happened in civilization was created or imagined or assembled by people who are not normal. If everybody were normal, nothing would happen. Think about that. Yeah. So in praise of being abnormal, there's a famous quote, I think it was George Bernard Shaw, reasonable people follow rules and do what they're told. Unreasonable people break rules and do things that they're not supposed to do. So all advances in civilization have come about from the work of unreasonable people. Wow. If you only do what you're told, you will never make a discovery. Amen. I mean, that goes back to even some of the stuff. It's like the person that's different, the person that's going to do things at a beat of a different drummer or whatever. Right. That's the part like- Celebrate that. Yeah. That might be the savior. That might be the liaison. It might be the patriot that gets us to the next level. The link there. And here's just an interesting fact. I don't know what percentage of the public is. Trans. Some numbers put it in low single digits. And then if you're like a normalist, you will say, well, fix that. They're not normal. They're abnormal. Okay. Do you realize that 98% of all atoms in the universe are hydrogen and helium? 98%. Everything that is what we care about and love, is enabled by what's in that 2%. The iron, the oxygen, the silicon, the nitrogen, the phosphorus, the everything else is what makes this universe what it is. And it's in that 2%. The variety. There it is. The cadmium. That's in there too. Is it? Yes. Yeah, dude. Yeah, man. You got to have variety. You got to have difference. And also- It's the forces we put on ourselves. To try to make people conform to what is normal or average. So that disturbs me. I want people to celebrate being different. Yeah. Not be sad that they're not the same. Right. Yeah. Amen to that, dude. Yeah. And a lot of it is like stuff like media, online stuff that just it's created to create the fight. Oh, yeah. Because in the end, I think people, you walk up to anybody, most people would take care of each other. I'd like to think so. But generally, they would do so if you were the only two in the boat and all you have is each other. But if you're with a clan of 100 people, and there's three people who are different out there, it's way too easy to reject them. It almost comes naturally within us to protect what's in group and reject what's out of group. Well, hopefully, we don't get into a place where people are like, you know, things are getting that rough out there. I hope not. I mean, it definitely has happened that way in some parts of the world. Oh, for sure. Definitely. I'm not saying that it hasn't, for sure. Yeah. But I mean, I hope it doesn't get to like where things get so dystopian out there and stuff. I don't think that's going to happen. In the end, do you think that existence wins, like that good wins? So in that vein, there's a paragraph I want to read from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot. Okay. Okay. And it encapsulates so much of what my people feel as astrophysicists. Because we see Earth. Not just as living humans on the surface. We think of Earth from space and from deep space. Okay. And what does it look like? What does it feel like? What are you thinking? Okay. And there's Earth, just this orb adrift. Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all the rivers of blood. Think of all those generals and emperors. So that in glory and in triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another. How fervent their hatreds. Our posturings. Our imagined self-importance. The delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of pale light. So I think about that all the time. You will not find legions of astrophysicists leading soldiers into battle. Yeah. That is not ever going to happen. You would think we could do better. And I think most of us want to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know? Well, you know, it has to be what I found. The most potent way to get someone to accept someone else is to have your kids want to marry one another. Okay. I mean, think about it. Historically, marriages were like pacts between countries to bring peace among them. They marry the royalty off, and now you've got to be friends. That's the truth. Maybe there's deep truth in that. Oh, I've always said beige. Beige power, man. I think it all ends really beige, man. I've always said beige power, dude. Neil deGrasse Tyson, thank you so much, brother. Thanks for having me back. I mean, I enjoyed our last time together. But I'm not leaving until we both look at this baby-fied version of us when you asked me a question and I answered it. Okay. Let's take a look at this. That sounds fair. Let's check it out right here. This is like. I think what AI was intended for. Oh, yeah. Is outer space gay or straight? Okay, so I'm going to give you an answer. Are you ready? Yeah. Practically everything we see and measure in space, not only objects, but temperature, size, density, is on a spectrum. So for you to say, is the universe gay or straight, I'm going to tell you, whatever the universe is, it's on a spectrum. So it's bi. That was good. Yeah, I've never even seen that, dude. You haven't seen it? You don't see your own stuff? Uh-uh. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't. My mother sends me stuff sometimes. Yeah, yeah, okay. It was fun, dude. Our last conversation was fun, man. I've listened to it a couple times over the years and just grateful to have you back and just grateful that you keep. Well, thank you. just contributing to the world, sharing and opening your heart up and sharing things that are important. Whoever will listen, I'm there for you. You've done a great job over the years, man. So thank you so much for your contribution. I keep laughing and I meant that, in space. Yeah. You knock on the door, I'll let you in, and. Hey, and if you do that, then I won't be lost in space. How about that? You'll have a guide. Yeah, I will. Lost in space, 5,000 facts for navigating the universe. That's your new book. Yeah. It's a beauty. Thanks for the shout out. Yep, you bet, man. And thank you so much, Neil. All right. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. 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