Overtime – Episode #731: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Kevin McCarthy, Katy Tur

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-night series Real Time with Bill Maugh. He is an astronaut physicist and author a take-win of your leader, Neil LaGrasse Tyson. He served the 50s and speaker of the House, Governor McCarthy, and she asks his kitty tour reports on my mass now, kitty tour. All right, first one is for you very topical again. This happened last night, a rocket belonging to Jeff Bezos Blue Origin exploded on the launch pad. How much failure should we expect when it comes to rocket development? I would guess a lot, and hopefully not when the people are in it. Yes, and so I don't know what next gen that rocket was. If it was an old gen, it should not have blown up in some heads of roll. But if he's experimenting with something new, some new design, you expect some failure. And if you never fail, that is evidence you are not on the frontier. Right, absolutely. Same in the arts. Oh, yes, absolutely. But the first thing I thought was, is this the same rocket that Katy Perry was in? No, I'm not being facetious about it, but you know it's not. I mean, SpaceX had the same thing. The question, NASA had the same thing. The answer is that you don't give up, that you learn from each one. I'm sure they learned quite a few things from that, and they correct it on the next one. And the beauty of it is that it's a private company. So they have the money to spend, unlike NASA. You can't blow that. Well, if it's a matter of cash. If NASA did it, they'd go study it for a year. Why? The private sector gets back in and it does it again. That's why private space is doing that. But what an engineer says a rocket launch that blows up, they say, it is an experiment rich in data. Well, that's space on the bright side. SpaceX just had their launch, and they literally blew it up after they calculated all the data they wanted. But you guys used to always be Obama on the fact that he was like picking winners and losers, because they were, you know, Selendra. Yeah, it was one of your big scandals for it was dumb to do that, or just under it was dumb. Selendra was a dumb investor. But when you're in these new fields, some of them aren't going to work out. That's true. And you should accept that. Yeah. Tesla did work out. Exactly. So why were you so critical about Selendra? It wasn't expected that some of them would work and some of them wouldn't, but it was worth the effort to try to bring us into the green energy era. I agree. From that perspective, but no. But you wouldn't know if Selendra didn't work, but I tell you this, when I was in office, I authored the SpaceX, and they didn't want to fund Elon. And they were funding and buying them from Russia. It was really McCain and I who forced us to do that, knowing it would cost more at the beginning, but long term, we could build it in America then. So you do want to take risks, but there's a better way to do it than government directly funding. You give them the incentive and the companies will rise up, some will fall off, but the most efficient ones will rise better. All right. So, Kevin, what are the chances of California electing a Republican governor? Very slow. Exactly. But Massachusetts did it many times. You know why? You can't get blue with a Massachusetts. Okay, you know why? It will invade America. And Maryland. Yeah, so it's not an impossible thing. And you know what it is for this year as well. Structure dictates behavior. How much have been elected here for governor? A long time ago, yeah. Well, the top two system has failed. Yeah, but that was the top two system has failed us. Right now, I don't believe any of those candidates running for governor are qualified to be governor, okay? I think we're losing on both spectrums. Massachusetts did it, and Baker was the most popular one. And Maryland, blue states with Republican governors are the most popular because they're in a blue state, so they can't be can-packed in. You know what happened? But they're not crazy woke. You'd get a socially moderate, physically conservative Republican, and the state would like a check-in balance, and you could no longer do that. Why can't the whole country do this? Because we have a system that stops us from doing it in the top two. If we had a system that each party put out their very best, they would have better candidates. And we'd have a better choice. How could we get there? We have to change it. How? Well, we can do it with a referendum. Or we could make an initiative and have the people vote on it. So you want to go back to see what closed primaries we were saying? I'm not saying closed primaries, I'm saying let the party select. You could have an open primary, but the independence can join Republicans or Democrats, their choice, but Republicans get to pick the nominee. Neil, if first contact happened tomorrow, who would you trust most to serve as humanities ambassador? Probably you. Well, you say that. You say that it's not only somebody. You say the universal language is math. Yes. By the way, this is what Mr. Politi told me in high school. He said, he said, that's the universal language. Was he a teacher of yours or some other person in your life? He was my priest on math. I don't want to tell you what happened next. Anyway. No, he was my math teacher. But it would have to be someone who speaks math. You speak math. I don't. Yeah, I do speak math. And so math is a language of the universe. You want to commune with the cosmos. You become fluent in math. And alien comes. They would not have come here without some understanding of math. That is a certainty. So whoever's in the room, when it happens, you got at least have someone who's fluent in math. I don't mind. There's some politicians that want to jump in on this. The ones that are more diplomatic. Because maybe there's a tense negotiating point that's neat. You got to bring in a diplomat to solve. You can use Steve Woodcock. So I just have no experience. So it would definitely be the scientist in front of you. What I would do is not an individual. I would be delighted to have a first encounter. But I take him immediately to the National Academy of Sciences. And then we have the biologists, the chemists, the engineers. And then we will do right by that encounter. That's the Academy of Sciences. It's written as a law by a Republican president. That's right. It was Abraham Lincoln. Okay. What is the panel thing? I'm giving a shout out across the aisle here. What is the panel thinking of the idea that was put out today that maybe the Iran war will end? Because there's a talk of a $300 billion rebuilding fund. In other words, we're going to rebuild Iran. We're going to make it into, like, you know, member Gaza was going to be okay. What do you think? Now, it sounds a little like when Obama gave Iran money. And that was like the worst thing that could ever happen. Oh, this is totally going to be different. Okay. Yeah. Let's have an old story, the mouse that roared. But wouldn't there have to be regime change first? You would think so. So why are we even talking about giving the money until we know that the people. Because the Street of Hormuz is closed and we need it open. That's the only way to get it done. Actually. I don't see Congress authorizing the money. And I don't see this administration giving them that money. So, at the end of the day, how this ends is very important for the world. The uranium cannot be there and they cannot control the open waters. That's how it has to end. Can Donald Trump get there? I believe so. How? I mean, we've already played all the cards. You know, it's easier again to warrant it out. It's a greater threat to threat and use military force than when you're already in it. Look, I think at the end of the day, Iran has some severe pressure on their point, too. But this is a regime that likes to kill their own people. They'll sit and wait it out and they'll try to wait until after the election. I like the idea of the other countries joining the Abraham Accords and that this becomes a bigger solution than just the straight. Thank you. Well, Kevin, I was sympathetic to the idea. I know, I know. But, you know, I just feel like we went into Iraq and Iran won that war. Every time we go there, it seems like Iran wins the war. Do you think that he is another option other than boots on the ground if he wants to meet those goals? Yeah, I don't see what the other option is. And we don't want to do that. And plainly, he doesn't want to do that. I don't think he ever will. Yeah. That's a much different battle. Do we have evidence that we've actually destroyed the capacity to purify uranium? Because that was the whole point. No, we don't. And everybody is now focusing on the straits and oil prices and the like. But if you purify uranium above certain levels, it's weapons grade. And no one should lose sight of that fact. All right. Final question for you. Do you think missions to the moon like Artemis are worth the money the government spends on them? I saw a picture in the paper yesterday, a diagram of what it's going to look like when we have a base on the moon. Yeah, so what was it worth if it's exploration, you're doing something that's never been done before, you are not in a position to judge the value of that to our future. Do you realize we're in the centennial decade of the discovery of quantum physics? And at the time, you would have said, why are you studying that? I'm a carpenter. I got wood atoms. That's all I care about. And we've learned about how atoms work in molecules. And it is the foundation of this creation storage and retrieval of digital information. It is 40% of the world economy exploited by knowing what the quantum is and how and why it works. So that's, if you were around back then, would you say, don't study this. This is a waste of money. Go build another railroad or go build something else. Somebody's got to be on the frontier because that's what pulls civilization into the future. So what did he say, quantum, okay? Well, I just, I was just an example. He's an example. Okay, but connect that to somebody like a layman like me, who like, how did that affect my life? What did that bring to you? I have a better example. My physics professor at college, he studied molecules in space. And he discovered a new phenomenon where the nucleus responded to electromagnetic fields. And he got a Nobel Prize for it, shared a Nobel Prize. This became the founding principle of the magnetic resonance imager. Oh. It's based on the principle of physics, discovered by a physicist who had no interest in medicine. It was a frontier MRIs. But it's an MRI, if I guess the name. Technically, it's an NMR, nuclear magnetic resonance imager. But that's one of the two N words you're not supposed to use. So they took away the nuclear, because you're not going to go into a cavity. That this is the nuclear, they're not going to do that. So they took away the word MRI. This is an example of a frontier-- and you can't pre-select that. So you have to-- this is what made America great-- is that we funded Curiosity-driven research, and that had a pathway through creative engineers right directly into our economy. And so where economy is the envy of the world. You know, I've heard a guy say this, that if England, the UK, were a state of the United States-- Yeah, it'd be 51st-- 51st in GDP per capita. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Don't take it for granted that we live in this country. Right. And the investments in science-- Right. --that has occurred over the centuries. But also, climate space has gained so much. And look what you live now, too. If you want to have the internet and you're sitting in Ukraine, think Elon Musk for that. I mean, a lot of it-- And American Airlines. Yeah, yeah. Right, yeah. Yeah. So yes, so private enterprise gets you so far. But there's the research that does not feed the quarterly report or the annual report. The government invests in that. That creates the industries that the government then draws tax-based funding. But think about how many young kids got so excited when they saw that's Artemis go around. Oh, yeah. And the new young astronauts. And what did they go back in class and study? I mean, I think the return on the investment is more than we'll ever spend on. And, and, while if you were only one of your science, I would say, yes, just in robots. But when you come back and describe with the far side of the moon, like you realize, I don't think anyone ever gave a ticker tape parade to a robot. I don't think anyone ever named a high school or a medical school after a robot. There's something about the human element of discovery that has been with our civilization from the beginning that we cherish the accounts of what people have for seeing something that no one has seen before. There was also an amazing coming together of people in this country to watch the launch, to-- They were invested in-- And it was not partisan. And it was not partisan. And they launched the landing as well. They were rooting for them. When Congress was listening to the whistleblowers and the accounts of aliens in the back closet, it was Republicans and Democrats just sitting there together. And I said, wow, I haven't seen this. I haven't seen this. So if aliens bring us together and the moon brings us together, space is our frontier. Oh, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10. Or watch him anytime on HBO on demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com. 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