Neil deGrasse Tyson | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #420

Some tour dates to announce. If you want to come see The Return of the Rat tour, we'll be in Louisville, Kentucky, January 25th and 26th. Indianapolis, Indiana, January 27th and 28th. Shreveport, Louisiana, February 1 and 2. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, February 3 through 5. Corpus Christi, Texas, March 24. Houston, Houston, sorry, Texas, March 25th. Uh, Phoenix, Arizona, April 26th through 29th. New York City at the Beacon Theater, May 13th. In Austin, Texas, June 1st through 3rd.

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Um, I'm excited to, uh, to come and see you. You know, it's hunting season. It's hunting. People are out there setting traps, snares. Put a Taffy. Some people put a damn Taffy out there and they'll catch a pigeon on that [ __ ]. People do all kind of thing. If you like to hunt, then check out the Hitter Hunting Club collection. New merch now available at theovonstore.com. We've got hoodies in orange and maroon. We got a raccoon on one of them because, you know, my brother's out there killing raccoons out there out in, um, Southern Utah. He's out there. Uh, we're just really getting those little damn criminals. They are. We got camo hats, traditional and orange. We got it all. Elmer fudge yourself up. Elmer fud your cousin, man. Fud your cousin. A bunch of cousin futters. Get that Hitter and more at theovonstore.com.

Today's guest is an astrophysicist. He's an author. He has a new book called Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization. We're going to chat a little bit about it. And he's just, that, you know, he's that galactic bad boy. He's that, um, you know, he's that, uh, outer space, uh, Joe Montana. You know, he's going deep with the facts, baby. You know what he is. Um, he's science. He's a science man. He's a mannequin for science. He likes the facts and he wears them. And he wears them well. We're happy to have him here today. Mr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Out loud.

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Sit and tell you my story.

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There's an old joke. Uh, there's a guy. His name is Tex. And people said, why they call you Tex? Are you from Texas? And he said, no, I'm from Louisiana. And he said, why they call you Tex? He said, because I don't want anyone calling me Louise. I could see that. That was just a cute something from the 1960s. What old, old sort of old-timer, old-timey joke? Yeah.

That's one of, one of my favorite jokes. Is, uh, they have this guy, Crystal Lee. He's a comedian. And he has a joke. It says, um, "Oh, I saw the first 48." It's a TV show where they have 48 hours to solve a crime. But really, they have as much time as they want. That's one of my favorite ones. Um, and then this one's a little edgier, but it's, um, "What's the last thing you want to hear when you're giving a [ __ ] to Willie Nelson?" "What? I'm not Willie Nelson." Okay. I've heard that somewhere. Yeah. That's not my joke, but it's my favorite joke.

And, you know, the, uh, George Carlin has a [ __ ] joke. He said, uh, "Here's a sentence that's never been uttered in the history of the world: 'Stop giving me a [ __ ] or I'll call the police.'" And ever since I heard that, I said, there are sentences in the world that just have never been uttered in the history of the world. Well, that's funny because Joe Rogan, when he says that, everything has been, he says, like, everything has been done. Like, you know, no, no, no. I'll give an example. Okay. Okay. We, uh, in New York, 20 years ago, we opened a new facility to the universe. And we have models of planets and molecules and things that are dangling. So you get the size, the relative sizes of things. I gave a tour of the facility to Martha Stewart. Wow. Okay. She's all that, by the way. Because as we're walking around, and it was like a display surface, she's like, "Oh, tidy." She was taking the fingerprints off the, off the, off the. He's probably taking her fingerprints off. She's been guilty or something. So watch what happens. We're walking around and, and we have these orbs. And she says, "Dr. Tyson, you have dust on your molecules." And I thought, I said, "Wow. That sentence has never been spoken in the history of the universe." That's fine. See, I think that's it. I agree with that kind of stuff, right? Yeah.

One time I was on his show, and the first thing he said, he's like, "You know, there's been another Theo Von. There's been another in a, like, there's just, he wants the multiverse to be another one of you." Oh, we can go there. We can go. That's what he goes into. But you actually, in your, uh, did we begin yet? We all up in the beginning. I think we're rolling. We're rolling. Yeah. Yeah. We're good. Let it go.

I love what you've done with the place, by the way. Oh, that's very nice. We're just about to get up. We're, we're getting a new studio. So we're, we're getting close to the end of the time. Don't make it too impersonal. I mean, make sure the studio is still intimate. Just feels intimate. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. It's important, right? Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise, what are you doing? You know, you're on stage, you know, and that's not the point of a podcast, dude. That's a great point. Because we've been looking at places and I'm like, I don't want something that's too corporate or something. No, it doesn't feel right. It ain't right. It ain't right. Yeah. Feels like more you want. And when you're on stage, that's you. Be on stage. That's different, right? Yeah. Here, we're chilling. Yeah. Yeah. We're killing. You want it to feel that way. Yeah. Exactly. That's a great point. I'm glad you, I'm really glad you said that because I needed some affirmation there.

Um, but in your book, in Starry Messengers, so this is your new book, right? And thanks for, for checking it out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I tried to check out as much as I just, as much as like, um, I had time to kind of, uh, here's what you do. You're here in LA. You're in LA. Okay. You get the audiobook. And then when you're stuck in traffic, you just three days of traffic get through the book just fine, right? That's how they should market them. How many days of 405 traffic? You know, four days of traffic.

Um, but one thing he said about it was, individual, that the end of their, uh, you, you kind of almost did a little bit of an equation on the individual. It's kind of towards the later in the book, you talked about it. It was just like that each person is unique. And you kind of went into, you went straight there. Yeah. Oh my gosh, because, yeah, that's the life and death chapter. So there's just, tell me about that. I just want people to hear how unique they are. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, just the book is at Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization. And it's what the world looks like if you're scientifically literate and you have a, and, and you're thinking about Earth from space. And the world looks really different. Not just the world physically, but people's interactions are different. You have some strongly held opinion. And I say, no, you don't. You think you, you think you've deeply thought this through, right? But you haven't. There's this part of it. And have you thought about this? And have you thought about that? I'm not here to hand you an opinion. I just want to make sure that whatever opinion you do have is deeply, is, is rationally formed. That you, that you've folded all the information together. Then I walk away and think, how the hell you want. I don't care. Yeah.

I think, yeah, it definitely helps like adjust maybe the scope of stuff. Like if you're looking at some from this angle, what about look at it from this side? Or what about it look at it from the inside? Or what about a look at it from the history of its beginning? Like, exactly. And a quick one before I get to the, the, uh, how unique we are. Uh, just a quick one. You know, I don't know if you, you buy tuna. Uh, now when you buy tuna, it's very clear whether it's line-caught tuna. Oh, really? Mine caught. Okay. That's a big selling point. Because when it's not line-caught, it's net-caught. You know what happens when they drag a net? Occasionally, they drag a dolphin. Dolphins are air-breathing. So if they're caught in the net, they suffocate and die. Oh, okay. You don't want that. So you get line-caught tuna. And I'm just thinking, so for people who just care about that, I'm just, I wonder what about the tuna? Just cares about the tuna? Do you just not give a rat's ass about the tuna? Wait, what? What? What? And it's, and, and, and then they said, "Well, dude, kills the dolphin unnecessarily." Or so. So then I said, "Well, then make dolphin burgers." Okay. He said, "You can't have that." And I said, "Well, why not?" You go to the deli. Yeah. Okay. If a deli made dolphin salad sandwiches, they'd be picketing out front, wouldn't there? Okay. I'd have a cut of it. Look at your Theo Von. I love it. We had owl one time at Thanksgiving. Oh, Thanksgiving. Oh, man. Okay. So, uh, my point is, if you, if you go to a deli, you, and there'd be picketers out front if you're serving dolphins. No. Watch. But what else does the deli serve? They sell dead chicken, dead turkey, dead salmon, dead pig, dead cow, with with roast beef, dead vegetables. I'll get to that in a minute. But they sell all kinds of dead animals in a sandwich. And this is just another dead animal. But somehow we culturally, philosophically, we've divided up the, all the kingdoms of life. And we do carve-outs. Yeah. For what we want to protect and what we don't. And often that carve-out is arbitrary at some level. Yeah. And just be self-aware of that. Are you high and noble because you're saving the dolphin, but you're eating the tuna? Right? I don't know that you entirely are civil. Dolphin is a mammal. Well, so are pigs and cows. All right, last I checked. Yeah. Okay. They're just, I think people, they're not as graceful. They don't, they can't do as many. Well, most of them admit that. Say, "I will not eat graceful animals." Right. "I'll only eat clumsy animals that are ugly." So it's an attempt to just make you more honest. Yeah. With yourself about the opinions you carry.

There's another one. Let's say you're a vegetarian. This is from the chapter, "Meat Eaters and Vegetarians." Okay. I go there because, you know, saying that's what I'm saying. Each chapter is a, is a point of conflict in civilization. I'm trying to illuminate places where people could think differently or maybe not have to think that way at all. Because in fact, what they felt would, was deeply held argument, really just evaporates in the face of a cosmic perspective. So here's one. You're a vegetarian because you just don't want to kill animals. Okay. You, you don't want to kill. Fine. So in your basement, you have a humane mouse trap. Okay. Oh, yeah. I've seen that. You've seen those? Yeah. They, some of them, it's like a little. It goes, it goes in. It gets an art on the walls inside of it. It's inside. It's like a mouse condominium. All right. Yeah. So they go in. You got to check them every few days. Every few days because they'll, they'll dry out. All right. So anyhow, so you check it. And then you, and what do they do with the mouse once they capture it? Let it free. They let it free into the wall. All right. Because they don't want to kill animals. All right. I get that. But do you realize that a mouse in the wild lives between nine and 18 months because it's highly likely to be swallowed whole by a owl or pecked apart by all manner of woodland predators? Okay. Carnivores. And so, so what you've done is doom. You've doomed the mouse to be eaten prematurely in its life. So the best thing you can do for the mouse is leave it in your basement where it will live, sex up to six years of a full fat life in your basement. But you're not doing that. No. Because, yeah. So I guess it makes us feel like some type of noble if we transfer it. I'm just saying. But you're really putting into a harder life. In a harder life. Correct. So if, so if you want to say, well, that's just nature's loop and circle. Well, all right. So you're saying it's nature's circle to have a owl eat it. Then by the way, if you crawled into the domicile of any animal, they'll kill you if they could. They'll kill them. They will kill your ass. Yeah. They don't care, bro. If you, if you lay down into an ant nest, they will bite you. So, so all right. But oh, no, we have the intellect and the power to capture something and remove it from your home. And I'm just saying, if you cared about the mouse, you'd leave it in your basement. Yeah. That's all. That's that's my only point. Yeah.

I think, well, that's a good point. A lot of, a lot of this book is like that. It's kind of, I thought it was nice about the book that you can kind of pick it up whenever. You can kind of almost start in on any cash. Yeah. Because the chapters are independent of each other. But, and each one is a, is a, is a way in a way, a chapter on the things we all argue about. Yeah. The chapter on on there's a one on politics. You know, are you left wing, right wing? What are you arguing about? And why? And have you really thought it through? There's the vegetarians and meat eaters. There's, there's, um, a chapter on life and death, risk and reward. That one. There's a gap in the human mind. I have no other way to account for this where we do it is not natural to think about statistics and probability. Oh, yeah. It's not natural. And did you know that that doesn't feel as much fun sometimes? That's true. It ruins something. What you want to be true, or what you feel to be true. Yeah. Or the mystery. It takes away the mystery. And but it's a triumph of human intellect that we even went, could figure it out in the first place. Here's what you have. You go to, you go to Vegas. And, and there's someone puts money on a seven on a roulette. And I'll say, why are you sticking with the seven? Let's say it's due. And they're looking at, and the roulette table, they have a list of all the previous numbers. Yeah. And they say, it hasn't shown up. It's due. No, it's not. It's not due. Every roll has the same probability. Every time. Every time. It's not due. All right. What is so, what is that feeling then that we get? What is that? I feel, I'm telling you, I'm telling other things that people rolling dice and they need a low number, like a three or four. So they roll the light, the dice gently. And if they need a high number, they'll throw it hard. No. And so, so do you know who exploits this about us? Casinos. Casinos know we suck at math and probability and statistics. So they exist. Other human beings learn this about human beings and created an entire industry to exploit it. Damn. It's sad. My people, my people. The American Physical Society physicist, um, this was back in the '80s. They were going to have their annual meeting in, in San Diego. And there was a snafu with the hotel reservations. Vegas said, "We'll take you. You got 4,000 people." At the MGM said, "We'll take you." So all the physicists went to Vegas. And we know probability and statistics. We understand the fact that basically you don't win relative to the casino. At the end of the week, there was a news headline: "Physicists in Town, Lowest Casino Take Ever." [Laughter] So it's just, it's sad. Almost the saddest chapter that I wrote.

Well, why do we feel that? So what is that feeling that makes us feel like, is it a feeling that we create? Is it? Or where does that come from? That makes us feel like this is it. It's because we don't have the brain wiring to know otherwise. I have no other accounting for it. We just don't think. By the way, that branch of math was one of the last to be discovered. Do you realize probability and statistics was developed and discovered after calculus? Wow. You can pick. I think it's because the brain doesn't even know how to go there. I have a, I have a research paper from the mid-1700s. Which it feels like a long ago, but a lot of math had been developed before that, including calculus. And in that paper, it says, "I've just discovered how helpful it is to take an average of numbers." Right. That's pretty normal. That's normal stuff. And somebody had to discover this. Wow. About the world. And so, so we, yeah, I guess we don't want. Because do you think also at that time, there was a lot, there's also back then, there's more sorcery. There's more wizards. Yeah. There's more, less than than the Middle Ages and stuff. But there's still a few milling around. Yeah. A few. And, and so, and so I think people, there's a little bit more mysticism then. So probability probably is something. It probably would be the last thing you think about if somebody over here is, you know, Hester Prenance, somebody at a dam. That's a perception party. What you're saying? I think is because we had sorcerers and wizards and people with mysterious powers and shamans and things. They could live in the mystery of the probability and statistics. And you think it's a power that they wield. And so there's no urge to try to decode it because it's their powers, right? Yeah. So I agree with you. I think, right? They hadn't really debunked all those powers. And religion was really at the, at the, on everyone's breath. So there was a lot more, I think, uh, mystery. And it's not just probably even physiology. So for example, you go back, you know, three, four hundred years. If you fell on the ground, writhing and frothing at the mouth, people would think you were winning something from God. No, no. It's no, no, no, no. You, and you're doing this, and you're shaking. The devil just occupied your Bible, boy. That's what the devil looks like and feels like. So, oh my gosh, the devil's there. Let me go to get the priest. So you're in a small town. How far away is the church? It's two blocks away. Okay. So you go down. You know, you could be choking on the damn muffin. Okay. You know what I'm saying? It could be. But I'm specifically referring to that condition. Okay. You're frothing at the mouth. Okay. So they get the priest. The priest gets the robe, the holy water, the crucifix. They go to on location. They bless them. Put the. And then the symptoms go away. Oh, now you're healed by the priest. That is the exact. And it was a seizure. And it was a seizure. It was an epileptic seizure. Epileptic seizure matches the time scale of you going to get a priest down the block in a small town. Yeah. Okay. Wow. And so, boom. Why think it's anything but the devil?

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We are so, so I don't blame people for this. It's just the reality of discovery. And, and if you question what you see and, and find ways to, to experiment with it, and you'll realize, no, it is not the devil. It is epilepsy. That's uncontrolled firing of your, the synapses of your brain. It's still a, you know, a tragic affliction that's not entirely cured. We can control it with drugs and things. But that's an example of the mystery that existed back then.

Do you believe in the devil? I remain unconvinced that such a thing exists. Dang. You challenging him. By the way, Jews don't think of hell. Just to Jews into heaven. But no hell. And therefore, there's no devil. Oh, wow. That's in taking the easy way. That's why I hadn't thought about it that way. Yeah. And it's better real estate, too. If you're, if you're, I feel like if you're advertising it like that, like others are heaven. Yeah. Yeah. Don't worry about the hell. Right. Right. Right. Right. Maybe they needed less forces of control over their conduct than the Christians later did. I don't know. Yeah. That's one thing about Christianity, man. It's too, sometimes it's like, too much pressure. Well, yeah. And no one could fulfill that. No one can live up to possible. Which is why, here's another one. In the spirit of your earlier comment, here's another one. Oh, you got sick. And this person didn't. God is punishing you. You did something against God in the last two weeks. Yeah. You were touching your privates. All right. Whatever. I mean, we all do stuff. Oh, I do. And it's, and it's easy to find it and say, "Oh my gosh, I must be punished for that." And, and when that happens, then you blame starts getting handed out. So here I got another one. Consider, consider that Muslims. The, it's part of the rituals of being a Muslim is you're cleaning your hands and your feet and you're, and your ears and your nose. And there's there's an ablution, whatever the word is, where you, there's a cleansing daily. Wow. Daily. Okay. Good idea. My grandmother, I think, was Muslim then. Well, just think. But just think about this. Back then, nobody's showering every day. Nobody. People's, but some funky times, okay? All right. There's some people don't shower every day today. But you could. And in the United States, we probably take more showers than anybody else in the world from the research I've done on that. But point is, if a disease comes through and it comes from contact or or some other thing because you're dirty, you get sick. And the Muslims don't. Oh, so they seem powerful. Oh, my gosh. And you're Christian, and they're Muslims. You're saying they put us a hex on me? These heathens? These non-Jesus following? Okay. Wow. This is how this can happen. I got another one. You ready? So now I'm still around the last one. You had one. You ready? You got. Okay. Here it goes. All right. So we would later learn that many of the plagues, uh-huh, uh-huh, were from a flea. Okay. Like from a, um, like a little fly. Oh, yeah. There's a flea. Just regular, regular flea that the house flea that you get on, yeah. Yeah. And pets. Okay. So now watch. So the flea would get infected and would bite you and you'd get the plague. Okay. Okay. The plagues have killed more people than practically any more than wars. Okay. Wow. All right. So, so, wow. Plague is like a blight on you. All right. So now watch what happens. Where did the fleas come from? We would later learn they came from rats and mice. Yeah. Okay. That were infected with the plague. So if your house had rats or mice, and mice were common, look at old Renaissance paintings. There's mice in the corners of the paintings. It's really funny just to see this. All right. So now watch. Maybe they were good luck, huh? If you owned a cat, you didn't have mice. You didn't get to play. You're gonna get the plague. No, wait a minute. Who owned cats? Well, there are many women that owned cats. So women didn't get the plague. And they were there for sorcerers. They were witches. Witches. And some of them are. And, and you still associate a cat with a witch. Yeah. To this day. To this day. I mean, when you're, you know, storytelling about items, these are the two, uh, uh, so attachments. Those are them. So these are, this is what happens when you live in a pre-scientific era. Wow. The blame game begins. But that's fun as hell, some of it. Well, for a movie. But I don't want to live in those times. Yeah.

So this book is an attempt to unravel this blame game. When you see things happening, it's not my fault, it's your fault. But did you really look through your opinions and your thoughts? And, and, and it was neat. Some of it made me mad. Ah, good. Good. Some of them are like, [ __ ] out a woman. No, no. It's mad because you knew it. You knew it's true. And it's against your urges. Yeah. It was like, damn, Neil, I want to believe what I want to believe. You know, that's what it felt like sometimes. But no, but I'm not, I don't think I'm heavy-handed. I think it's their offerings, right? Have you thought about it this way? Yeah. No, I don't think it came off like I'm trying to kind of think. No, I don't think it came off as like, no, at all. I think it was like, I don't, it wasn't my intent, right? If it ever felt that way, that was it's just. Well, you're a fat guy. You're a factor. You're a man. You know, and, uh, you know, I battle, you know, like, I think I've always kind of battled the dark arts overall. So it's like, I've never really looked at a ton of the facts, you know? It's always been this more ethereal sort of. But what you feel, what what you want to be true, rather than what is true. And by the way, that's, uh, that's that's coming a long way in life to realize the world. This is the difference between the different kinds of truths. I spent a chapter in the "Truth in Beauty" chapter. I just talk about. I'll just say spend a minute on it now. So there's something I call personal truths. This is something no one's going to take in a free society. No one's going to take it from you. If Jesus is your savior, and you know true to your bones, that's a personal truth. In a free society, and especially in the United States, where it's constitutionally protected, your freedom of religion, no one should take that from you. Okay? You'd have a legal case if they tried. All right. Other personal truths. Oh, well, uh, Muhammad is my last savior on Earth, my last prophet on Earth. Okay? That would be a Muslim personal truth. Other truths are, Beyonce is your queen, right? Or whatever the things you feel. Okay? Personal truths are the foundation of our strongest held opinions. And in a pluralistic world society, that we should cherish that. This is why people are different from each other. All right? You don't want everybody to be the same. Oh, that's called a, a dictatorship. Yeah. If everybody aligns with exactly the same. Yeah. They don't want it. The problem with your opinion, if it's in a personal truth, if you try to have someone else agree with you, you have to have an act of persuasion. So what? But in the limit, that becomes all-out conflict and war. People fight over personal truths. Kill each other because their personal truths don't agree with your personal truth. So personal truths, when they go outside of yourself, risk bloodshed. Right? In the history of civilization has demonstrated this. All right? Then there's a political truth, which is just something that becomes true just because you heard it often enough. And that's a weakness we have. And not a weakness. Evolutionarily, it made sense. If you see something repeat a hundred times, that's reality. Oh, yeah. Okay. But you know what happens now? We would people have hijacked that urge to recognize that something that repeats must be true. They've hijacked it. Now they just find something that they want to be true, and they repeat it to you. You hear it enough, it must be true. Yeah. There it is. Yeah. This festival nowadays also, we have, you know, since we have technology and we have this advancement, like, you know, with the internet, social media, it's so, it's easy to get things in front of people so many times. Yes. It's easy to, I mean, our attention span has been high projected. It's been hijacked completely. That's the word. There's no other word but hijacked. And in the old days, we called it brainwashing, where you repeat something and then it becomes true. That's hijacking this feature of our evolutionary brain that it's trying to create order out of chaos. Like Stockholm syndrome, we almost are slowly developing almost some variance, it seems like, of a Stockholm syndrome or something. Like we're like, all like, Elizabeth's smart, you know, without the, or Elizabeth dumb. That's who we're becoming. You know what I'm saying? We're all like, you know, we don't, we're just bearing with what we have to deal with all the time. Exactly. And so you try to sift through what is true. And it must be that which was repeated often enough. That's a political truth. Then there's an objective truth. Okay. What does objective mean? And the methods and tools of science are exquisitely tuned to establish objective truth. So these are truths that have been demonstrated by observation and experiment and repeated experiment. What is the word objective? Objective means it's true whether or not you believe in it. Okay? So it's no doubt true. Yeah. Because I can show that it's true. And it's not my bias that thinks it's true. Here's the data. Now you see. And I don't believe you. I think your wall current affected this. So I'm gonna do it on 240 volts while you did yours on 125 volts. Okay. 20 volts. You do a different experiment of your own design. You get the same result. So that's objective. It's a fact. When you do it enough times, and that all experiments are great. This is, this is why science, uh, it wasn't really developed as we now practice it until around 1600. All right? I know that feels like a long time ago, but a lot of the world unfolded before then. All right? And so once we learn, if you say something is true, let me test it. Let me, let me find out. Let me devise an experiment. And if I can verify your statement with this experiment, and someone else can, and a third person, we're good. Here. That's an objective truth. And what objective truths have going for them is that they're true whether or not you believe in them. I don't like them. Well, because the actual nature can't be fooled. Nature is the ultimate judge, jury, and executioner. Yeah. If you overeat this week and you gain three pounds next week, you can't protest with placards saying, "I protest the law of gravity because it made me heavier." No, you don't have that option. So it seems to me, if you're going to base laws on things, uh, but there's a whole chapter in here on on law and order, right? If you're going to create laws in a pluralistic world, you base the laws on the objective truth, right? Because that applies to everyone. Don't base a law on your personal truth, because that's forcing it on me, and I have a different personal truth.

Is climate change an objective truth? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. So what happens is, you believe in climate change. It's not a belief. It's not about a belief, right? It's, but it's when it's objectively true, you don't have to believe it. It just is true. Yeah. I believe in it when it's really hot. I believe in it. It's like a hot day. I'm like, damn, they're right. They're right about. Oh, [ __ ]. I'm serious, dude. So I'm like, we gotta fight this. So, so here's the thing. So, so if it was only determined that way, then another person that was in a cold snap would say, "No, I don't believe it." Right? And everybody's making up their own theories about it because they're, it's their own life experience. But an experiment takes the information out of yourself. Okay? It's not your perspective. It's not your bias. It's not your worldview. And you get all the data available. And then you establish the objective truth. So, so in climate change, and I give an example here in the probability, in the risk and reward chapter, um, you probably heard the number, 97% scientists say it's happening. And 3% it saw that in here. In the last 20 years, um, there are basically no scientists left denying it. So it's basically 100 damn right. And one holdout. But let's go back to when it was 3%, because that's a fun number. Okay? All right. Let's do an experiment. Some engineers. There's a bridge that's there. You don't know where it came from, but it's a bridge. But it's brand new and it's about to open. And you say, "I want to drive my truck across the bridge." And 97 engineers come up to you and say, "But I don't know any of the other engineers. So we're not in cahoots or anything, yeah. Um, if you drive a truck that's going to collapse, and you're going to die, you'll likely die plunging into the ravine." So 97 of them say that. Three say, "Oh, Theo, go take your F-150. Drive across. You'll be fine." What are you gonna do? Making my way. He's feeling it. He's feeling. Just saying, man, I take the General Lee off that. Master. That's what I'm saying, man. But no, I hear you. So, so you would probably listen to the 97 engineers, especially if you're not an engineer yourself. Yeah. I'm thinking if you got to look the engineers in the eyes now. No eyeballs got nothing to do with this. That's you trying to be human about this. Ah, don't be human. That mess you up. Let me feel what you're saying. No, they'll show you the research papers. There's no eyeballs in the research paper. There's no emoticons in the research paper. So then what is that? That makes me want to look him in the eyes and see. What is that? Oh, I'll tell you. I tell you. It's a good one. It's a good one. Uh, we, and again, I think it's understandable evolutionarily. If you look someone in the eye and they tell you something that just happened, that is more true to you than a statistical table with charts. Right? Bar charts, then a pie graph, then a pie graph that says the same [ __ ] thing. So that, and advertisers know that. They hijack this. Okay. Testimonial. But in the watch, they could just show a bar chart and say, "This detergent is better than all the others, and here's the data." They could show that. But no, they show some parent and a kid, and they put it in the machine, they pull it out, and look how clean. And the eyewitness testimony has huge value to our emotions because another human being is communicating it. Right? And so you, so, so I'll give you another example. You could be, it's a little more obscure, but you, you read in like Consumer Reports or whatever, that this one car is like a vacuum, a vacuum cleaner, is the best one. And it's working every time. You walk into the vacuum store because you saw the data. And someone's walking out saying, "I will never buy one of these again. It struck." Oh, you can't say a vacuum sucks. Sorry. Sorry. Uh, no, this vacuum was awful. Oh, it reversed. And it made my whole place. I would never do this. And you, you hear this person. You don't even know them, but they're not a human. And they're speaking with emotions. Huge effect on me. And there's, there's fire in their gaze. Okay? You're gonna back out and walk out of that store. "I ain't getting that. You ain't getting nothing. Not gonna happen. Broom. I'd rather use a [ __ ] broom." Okay? So I think it's natural to trust another human, right? In that context. But that's why we have to train ourselves to trust the data. And in science, when you become a scientist, I'm taking statistics and data analysis and probability essentially every year I'm in school. It's not just one class and you move on. There are different nuances over there. Different ways you think about it. Different ways you ask questions. You know what science is? It's a professional way of querying nature so that you can not fool yourself into thinking something is true that is not, or that something is not true that is. Um, did I say that right? Whatever the opposite. You might have. I don't know. I was following. It was good. No, no. I'd say that you don't want to be fooled because nature can't be ultimately. Nature, economy, right? And we have biases where, so you don't want, do whatever it takes. I'm going to give you the scientific method. Do whatever it takes. And I'm going to reword that. Do whatever it takes to not fool yourself into thinking something is true that is not, or that something is not true that is. Doesn't mean getting a video of it. Does it mean getting getting someone else to check on you? Did you have your coffee this morning or not? Is that the measure? Were you more alert? Did you miss something, right? Do whatever it takes. And when you do that, it ain't got nothing to do with the passion in their eyes. Oh, just. Okay. Now, so let's take this into something that is the, a realm that doesn't have as much probability. Probably go for it. So let's take it into the realm of love, right? Love, it or affection, things like that. So whenever you met, are you married? Yes. Married 34 years. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. Congratulations. Thank you, man. Wow. That is a damn record. Almost. You should win a Nobel Prize for that. I met her in relativity class. She doesn't really agree in mathematical physics. Dang. Yeah. In graduate school. So that was fun. Yeah. Better in relativity. That's wild. Um, so all right. So you're talking about love, okay? Love. So do you, I mean, are you, do you take these same concepts into like whenever you were falling in love and stuff like that? Or was it more like a normal? Okay, so starring class. So, so the answer is yes, I do. Why? I don't often talk about this. You want to hear? You want to hear it? Yeah. Well, I'm just curious because I don't have a wife or anything yet. But it's mathematical. Okay. Then this could be helpful to you. Okay. Okay. It could be helpful. Okay. All right. At this point, I'll take on any. It's a little bit of mathematical. Okay. How much mass have you had in school? I took a couple of them. You took a couple? I took at least, yeah, a couple of weeks. I was good. I did all right. You did all right. You did all right. Okay. One of them at high altitude. I took one class out in Arizona at pretty high altitude. You know what they say that if you learn something under certain psychomotor, uh, uh, conditions, that you recover it better under those same conditions? Oh, wow. Like if you get high and you learn something, if you get high again later, you'll learn, you'll remember that better because you match the mental states. Oh, dang it. Yeah. I've read that. I haven't read it lately, but a few decades ago, I think I wrote that. Okay. So I'm glad it made it. Okay. So here it is. All right. Here it is. All right. Um, you gotta follow me with some math here, okay? Okay. It's not complicated. By the way, I, I don't know any dumb professional comedians. You all are smart people. You're perceptive. You know what's going on. You have to know deeper what's going on to come at it from the other side and show why it's hilarious. Okay? That takes insight. You guys are the keepers of the soul of the social and cultural mores of civilization. Yeah. I think a lot of us try to be. Jesus. I don't know what I'm doing, but I think a lot of us try to do our best. Yeah. You're holding up windows, not windows, mirrors to what we think, say, and do. And so it's a fundamental part, I think, of modern existence because without it, my gosh, how, how unpleasant the world would be. It would have these perspectives. That's my. I'm not just blowing smoke. I'm just saying. And you, especially, have a certain authentic honesty that is palpable. And it's like, whatever you say, I'm with you on. I feel you. This is what he was saying. Do you feel what the person? If I can't feel what you're saying, go home. Right. Right. What are you doing? You just, just type it up and send. You know, text it to me. I, if I, if I'm not looking and you're in the eyes, you know? So, okay. Yeah. Well, it's helping me because it's like, you know, I think I have a, I'm not like a naysayer of science. I love, you know, I'm grateful for science because I exist. And I'm grateful that the world exists. And that we're able to have all types of different experiences of like caring about each other and getting to travel and see different things. And then my eyes work. Like I'm super grateful for science. I think sometimes I get a fur, like I have a fear sometimes of like, if anything's out of like the vid, like out of like right here, everything else can seem a little bit questionable, you know? So I think it's just, uh, you know, it says probably the questionable part is because you, you create your own worldview. Yeah. And you're, and everything makes sense to you in your worldview. And something's trying to poke it from the outside, you're understandably skeptical of it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm probably skeptical. I'm rejecting it because, no, I got my thing. My my situation. It works for me. Yeah. And I like to just, I like to daydream and stuff, you know? So science sometimes they want to really, hey, bro, you know, we need you to pull these daydreams over here. And we gotta tag them. You know, we just, we need to get the weight and the density of these daydreams so we can have them on file. So I respect it. Um, and I'm really, really grateful that you're here. Um, but yeah, so tell me about that when you went into, so here it is. And this is a little geeky. Yeah. It was a geeky thing. So all right. Um, you can have a line. And you can measure the length of the line. Okay? Right. Whatever. Okay. Uh, that's the only thing you can measure about it. There's no area. There's no volume. It's just a length. All right. Now I can add another line at like, right angles to it. And when I do that, I can actually trace out a square. Okay? So now a square has more than just a length. It has area. Okay? This area inside the square. And that area is defined by both, both axes. You need both to get an area. Okay? All right. Let's add a third axis. Oh, now X, Y, now.

Z, now you don't have a Y, you don't have a square. What do you have? You have a cube. Now, my mushrooms, I think you have a cube that's full. Each of these, right? So now it's a dimension. Okay, right? So now watch. Now I can take that to higher dimensions, but I won't. I would stick to three. Okay, we can go to four and five dimensions. Let's stick to three.

So now you ask yourself, what do you care about in a relationship? Okay, it wants a person to look hot. Nothing wrong with that. Make a note of that. Okay, um, you want the person to be good and bad. Okay, that it's not just fine. Be honest with yourself. That's another. By the way, you can be hot and not good in bed. Oh, yeah. Or vice versa. Okay, so, so these are separate coordinates. Okay, okay.

So all right, now watch. Let's get a third one. Uh, you want the person to be kind. Let's say kind. You want an evil, evil person? No. Okay, no. So each of these is completely separate from the other. You can be beautiful and and evil. You can be ugly and kind. But you can be, but you care about those three, right? So now rate this person from zero to ten in those three categories. Just go ahead and do that. So you say, um, a person's really kind and they're great in bed. Only give them a five. Okay, in looks, the green bed, and they're kind.

All right, here's what you do. You know how you get the volume of a cube? You multiply X by Y by Z. Okay, the area of a square is is X times Y. The area of a, the volume of a cube is you multiply all three. I'm telling you to take those three numbers, multiply them together. You will get the volume of your love. The volume of what you care about. Okay.

So now watch. Now here's my point. What you need to do is, because presumably you're, if you're in the field, the different people out there, get each person's volume and go after the person that has the largest volume. Because they might be higher in one than the other. But if you really care about them, it's the total, the totality of that package that matters, especially in a relationship. Those features don't always stay the same. They could vary. Yeah, sometimes they grow better looking as they get older, or they might, you might get more attracted to them, or less attractive, or less attractive. So there's very much different skills. Often some of them get less, you know? Yeah, it's a mix. It's a mix.

So let's say they get a little less attractive, but the other bits were strong. So you have a volume, a strength of a larger volume to work against. If things start, uh, shifting. Okay, in this. Okay, I'm telling you, you can take that to higher dimensions. So it really bad. What are they hot? Are they have a, maybe a good sense of humor? Something you might think, oh yeah, for sure. Okay, um, are they curious? Do they want to keep learning? Okay, that's important. Do you have, of course, why wouldn't it be? All right, because I want them to keep learning about me. Because, or no, that's just no, that's selfish. If they're, if they're curious, you're part of what they want to keep. Okay, that's fair. No, no, dude, no, you're right.

Okay, so I, sir, so I went around with a five-dimensional, uh, so in math, we call it five-dimensional vector space. So that's what I did. Okay. So what I'm saying is, there could be someone who's the hottest person you've ever seen and and and you could be distracted by that. And so I'm marrying that person, and then they're not so hot 10 years from now, or they get a little chubby, whatever you're valuing or not evaluating. And then all of a sudden, everything you marry the person for isn't there anymore. And then you divorce seven years later. So you gotta look at that volume. Got to look at the volume.

And by the way, be crass if you want to be crass. Do you want to marry someone who's wealthy? Put that in there too. Put it in there. Okay, don't be ashamed of that. Because, right, because any one of these can change. People say, oh, I want just, that's shallow. You need the personality. People's personalities can change. Why are we sometimes ashamed to look at the criteria we honestly want to look at? I, I got my, I got through that. I matured out of that. Because, because society wants you to not want that. And if someone is honest, I'd like your wealth. I enjoy it. And by the way, the wealth can go away too, in the same way you're looking. All the, all the things can. But if it matters too, then it's one of the coordinates in this volume.

By the way, if any of those go to zero, because the volume is a product, you're multiplying these numbers. If anything goes to zero, the volume goes to zero. Oh, really? Yes. Oh, because you do, you're not adding them, you're multiplying them. Wow. So, so try to make sure that the likelihood of it going to zero is, or if it does go to zero, if you don't matter, then it shouldn't have been in the right. It has to be things that nothing could go to zero. So then, but, and if you do that, then you're probably going to be picking things that have some real value to you. That correct overall value. Correct. Objective. Or just be honest. I just want money. And if you, if you run out of money, I'll divorce you. Right.

And, but the person could be fun and happy the whole other time. Oh, yeah. They're buying sandwiches for everybody. Y'all are having a good time or whatever, you know? That's people are their own individuals. So what happened? What happened when you got delayed? You, you invite her out. Where'd you take? Or where do you? Oh, well, we, you know, we were graduate students at the time, you know, very poor. You know, so a big meal is like a 12. Oh, yeah. Good dish. And, uh, so, um, oh, oh, I have to say this. If, if I'm airing all the thing, so I took her for granted initially. Oh, and, and we broke up initially. And then I, and then like six months, I said, what the hell did I just do? Oh, my gosh. I went back to that volume and I said, all these other people are not feeling that volume the way she did. And I was really sad.

Did you go back to her and tell her? I was, I could, because I broke up, I can't. But you can't do that. She knocked on my door. She came back to me. And what'd she say? And I don't remember because I was distracted by the fact that, oh my gosh, I have a second chance here. Wow. And so on that second chance, that's when we moved in together and got married three years later. And he didn't mess it up the second time. No, no, no. And, and the strength of a marriage is, is how, how big is that volume? Because yes, they will vary, and people will get crabby, and people, you know, you, there are things that will test it. Of course.

With something that you and your wife like to do together, is there anything like that? Do you feel like helps keep a marriage together over time? Is there any, you do things together. Yeah, you just, and do new things together so that you have a new memory to add to the portfolio. If you always do the same old things, it can get, you know, you see the person every day of your life, right? And so, so just make sure it grows. Have you take, do you guys take like classes? Or is there stuff like, uh, do you just take walks? Like, what are some fun stuff? Yeah, we do take walks. In fact, I should take walks with my ex-girlfriend. I liked it. Yeah, walks are simple. They're low budget. Let's go another block. It's an incidental fact about it, not the, not the instrumental fact. Okay, hey baby, I love you because every step is cheap. No, that's not, that's not gonna fly.

Is that why you're not married yet? It could be. Probably. I gotta start investing more. Here's the thing. We all are fairy tales. You see the courtship, which is so romantic and beautiful. And, and how do those fairy tales end? What's the final word? Um, final phrase. The end. No, before that. Oh, um, happily ever after. They live happily ever after. Wait a minute. Why don't you show me some of that? Oh, yeah, that's true. Give me some hints. How do you pull that one off? Yeah, like Rapunzel. They don't show you she's selling her hair in China, you know what I'm saying? They don't show you. It'll show you the odds. Leave that one out. So we, we're trained in the courtship. And then we'll say this, Snow White as an opioid. They don't show you some of the truth. Dealing with actual life problems and challenges. Yeah. Or that, uh, Goldilocks is in the bestiality. They don't show you some of the troops out there. Neil, damn, you're right, bro. That's what I'm saying. They just gave us the Goldilocks are sleeping with the with the bears, you know, it's whatever. I know they don't tell you that she has a crush on, uh, Gail Sayers. You know, they don't tell you she's out there been running around with Jim McMahon. They don't tell you all of that, right? So we have no, no literary life experience even thinking about what happens beyond they lived happily ever after. So you have to sort of discover that on your own.

Is that band? Is it? Do you feel like? Is it hard for you to let? Is it? This is it just your? Was it just the brain you were given that made you more scientific? Um, or was it like, uh, do you feel like it was a nature or nurture? Like that you develop that as, um, because as it was a skill that you needed to help process your own like life and childhood? That's an important and perceptive question. And I have to unpack that because you put a lot in that one. Because we talk about that kind of stuff a lot on this show. Excellent. I'll go there. Let me go there right now. So I, everyone wants the secret to things. What's the secret to intelligence? The secret to this. That implies it's only one thing and not something more complex. And so I remember when I was a kid, this is a slight off-ramp, but I hope it's worth it. When I was a kid, it was in seventh grade. I did a book report on Ponce de Leon. And he's the guy, the Spanish explorer who went into South America searching for the Fountain of Youth. Okay, you drink from it and you have eternal life. And I remember reading that and I say, that idiot. Why would he even think that exists? He's going to commit an entire voyage to to believe that there's just some elixir coming out of the ground and he lives forever. Really? A full-grown human being believe this? I was thinking to him. I was already, I was a geeky kid, okay? Yeah, I'm 12, I think at this point. But I did the book report on him. And then I noticed as I got older, this is something deep within us. Nobody actually wants to do the hard work to improve their health, to live longer, healthier lives. They want the instant fix. Yeah. And realizing that Ponce de Leon was looking for the Fountain of Youth allowed me to see what people were doing. I'm old enough to remember yogurt. Eat yogurt, that you live forever. Dannon had a commercial with centogenarians eating yogurt. Oh, yeah. Okay. My mom would eat the yogurt. I'd be like, damn, Mom's gonna be around. But that's what I'm saying. So you, we're, we, we want there to be quick fixes for things and quick answers and quick solutions. What's the latest kale? Kale. Eat. Did you eat your kale today? No. If not, you would die. You're gonna die a miserable death. Okay. You'll be dead by noon. Yeah. There's definitely, and kale is so hard to eat. You know, it feels like it does not want you eating it. If you had bacon too. Yeah. Look, I ain't saying nothing, but it is what it is, baby. They knew that with collard greens, they put in the ham. Hockey. You wanna eat leaves? Put some dead animals, dude. You could put bacon under a damn corpse and I'll. Actually, actually, you know what, um, cannibals called humans long pig. Really? Yeah, because of all the animals that you would eat, the humans and pigs come closest. But it tastes like bacon. You have to cure it and do the things, whatever. But anyhow, uh, I have some cured human. A little. Yeah, I'm just saying, would you have any, uh, if I were starving, I mean, I have, you know, I have, yeah, I see you, dog. No, no, I'm starving. Hey, bruh. No, wait, wait. If I'm in a mountain and the help is not coming and people died in the plane wreck, otherwise we will starve to death, I'm eating me some dead humans. That is not, that isn't, I'm not thinking. What are you eating first? What part do you think? Uh, not muscle tissue. I would say, you know, the bicep maybe. Or or I would, I would take my cue from from just what you'd get in the store. Ribs are some good eating. I love ribs. Yeah, yeah. So no, I wouldn't hesitate. It's not about morals, it's about survival. Yeah. So, so, but by the way, if there's a pig over there, I'm eating a pig. I'm not eating the dead human. Yeah, that would be weird. If you're like, I'm gonna have Randy instead of Pumbaa. I'm eating Pumbaa. Okay. Pumbaa ain't surviving the day, okay? So that'd be crazy. There's one dude at the plane crash and he just wants to keep eating the people. Like, but do we have and pigs and cows and turkeys and chickens? What are you doing? He crashes on a farm. Yeah. He crashes into 7-Eleven and he's still over there cutting up an old lady. We got some creeps out there, man.

So now I'm completely distracted. What the hell was I talking about? Zach. Um, um, I, I don't, we kind of went out. You were talking about, you know, I don't know. You started about bacon. It's been a long road. I don't know. I know it has. Uh, just, no, we were talking about love. Love. No, we got off. We, okay, we evolved. Evolved. Uh, oh, oh, I remember. How do I, how did I become me? Okay, okay. Oh, yeah. So did this. Yeah. Did you, do you think you developed a sense for science out of nature or nurture? So watch. So I'm walking through life, watching people want to believe that simple things will fix everything. Those are the YouTube, uh, ads that get your attention. You've been doing too many sit-ups? Just do this and you'll have ripped abs. Just eat this, drink this, and it'll be, and you don't have to do any of that work. And I thought to myself, there must be something deep within us that just wants to be lazy about what our accomplishment, our accomplishments. Okay, yeah. But that's a kind of an off-ramp just to say, I'm not, I don't care about nature or nurture. What I care about is that whatever you are, you know, you can improve it. You know, this in practically everything we do, you get better at it from trying, from practicing. In practically everything we do. So I'm not going to say nature nurture. People say, oh, well, Michael Phelps, he's got really flexible big feet that flap in the for swimming, and he can fly. Me, he's got webbed fingers. I don't know. He's a long head. Okay, I don't know. But they'll say whatever they will about his body. But wait a minute, uh, he's in the water 30 hours a week. Yeah. Did you factor that in? Is that where's that in your equation? Right, for him succeeding? How about that? Okay. So generally, you part the curtains. Someone's working really hard at what might look easy to them that they have accomplished. Right. So I, and I don't think that about you. I feel like you've obviously put in the, um, what is it, the hours that it takes to have your credibility. So let me get back to your point. So when you were a kid, wondering, it's very simple. It's very simple. All kids are curious about everything. They overturn rocks and, you know, poke things and generally create chaos at home. And most of what parents do is they spend the first years of the kids' life teaching them to walk and talk, and then the rest of their life tell them to shut up and sit down because they're wherever they go, they make a mess. But that mess, the parents think they're making a mess, but no, they're not. These are the results of experiments they've been doing to discover the operations of nature. If you happen to leave an egg up on the counter, and a little toddler, and because you're making breakfast, and the toddler is reaching up, you say, no, don't touch that. And I'm saying, no, let him grab it. Let him, what did the egg cost you last I checked? 40 cents at most. Watch. You know, the egg is going to end up breaking. But so what? Once the kid starts playing with the egg, yeah, and then they do something with it, and then it breaks. That's interesting. Something can be hard yet fragile. Hmm. How many things in life are that? Most of life. Eggs are hard and no. Most things are solid. This is hard and not fragile. But a lot of experiences in the world and stuff. I mean, well, no, that should be thinking emotional. And I'm talking about physical objects at this point. The egg is hard but fragile. Okay. And so that's, they'll learn about that. Very fascinating. And it's brittle. It doesn't bend. It breaks. Yeah. Okay. So these are structural properties of organic substances. All right. And then what's inside? There's this transparent goopy stuff and there's a yellow thing. What is that? And then you tell them that might have been a chicken. Oh, my gosh. Blow their mind. Blow their minds. And by the way, you see that colorless stuff? If I heat it, it turns white. You can watch it change color in front of your eyes. There's this seven science experiments to do with the kid reaching for the egg that you didn't want them to touch. And you just squashed that because you don't want to use the 40 cents. Yeah, because you want to have a damn quiche for yourself. Okay. The president of Harvard once said, when people complained, why are you charging so much for edu? He said, if you think the cost of education is high, you should try the cost of ignorance. That's even higher. Yeah. Okay. So all I'm saying is that curiosity is beaten out of us by the time we're in middle school. If you retain that curiosity, that rampant curiosity, you're a scientist. A scientist is a kid who grew up physically, but not emotionally, not mentally. If I see some, hey, what is that? Let me poke that. Let me see what's behind it. And it doesn't have to be a physical object. It could be like fictional objects. I watched the Thor movie and I'm saying, gee, I want to know how, I wonder how, how much does that hammer weigh? I'm still curious. Okay. Wasn't hammer weight? And I heard a sentence in the movie that enabled me to calculate how much his hammer weighed. Wow. They say, uh, hammer forged in the heart of a dying star. Oh, my gosh. I'm an astrophysicist. We deal in dying stars. I got this. Hide some dense stuff going on in a dying star. I filled out the density and I tweeted it and I said, if Thor's hammer is made of, in the way the movie says, it has the weight of a herd of 300 million elephants. Ah, that's why nobody could pick it up. The Hulk couldn't pick it up. You need the magical powers of of Thor to do it. So now I saw Lou Ferrigno at the post office one time. Lou Ferrigno, both the original TV. Yeah, the original one. Yeah. And his wife was making him move boxes around. He was all pissed. And I'm like, you're the freaking Hulk, man. Move a couple of boxes. You know, he's got to be green to do that. Yeah, dude, get with the program. He was without his paint. But watch what happened. Okay, because I'm in the geekiverse. Yeah, I'm thinking, yes, I tweeted that out. That was like total nerd alert. And then I got out-nerded. No. Oh, somebody said, uh, Dr. Tyson is wrong about this calculation. Okay. So yeah, I got totally smoked on this one. So what happened was, in 1991, Marvel issued a Thor's hammer trading card where they said Thor's hammer is made of a fictional material, Uru, and it weighs precisely 42.3 pounds. Ah, so they kind of cheated. Well, yeah, yeah. But, but, uh, I, I'm getting to your earlier point. I wanted my answer to be true. Right. I think it's a way better answer than 42.3 pounds. But it's wrong. It's in the cannon. In the Marvel cannon. It's just simply wrong. And you got to know when to hold them, when to, uh, when to fold him, and when to, what's the third one? And when to walk, uh, when to walk away. We're in a run, I think. Yeah. And that's, I think usually out around alimony. Yeah, yeah. Hold them, fold them, run. So, so that's an example of still being curious into a dollar. And all scientists are like that. So, so no, it's not nurture, nature. It's, did you protect your curiosity in childhood? If not, you'll ossify. I love that word. You'll harden in your own beliefs. You won't even seek out things that might conflict with what you think is true. And because you're comfortable where you are, right? You know what it is. And we want to be where we are. We want to be. It's right here. It is. Well, yeah, you get, you want to, yeah, you get from a place of like, I'm right. And it's funny because I don't really like being in that place. Even there's part of me that does like it because it feels like I'm winning. But there's another part of me that knows it's not helpful to me as an evolving human. Which wins? Sometimes one, when sometimes the other. I think sometimes someone, one way, some of the other. But I'm grateful that that I have that I have awareness of both. And I do find my own way. That's half the effort, by the way. If you know that this is going on, you're there. And I'm grateful that the one does does battle a lot of times and say, you know, I know you want to sit right here with this. But there's, you, it's only fair if you look at more to the story. I think I told her to myself too. There's a name, there's a guy named Walter Bagehot, I think is his name. I quote him in the book. And I think this is the right quote where he said, there's no greater pain of the human existence than the prospect of having a new idea because it would just conflict with what you, who you are, and how you've defined yourself. Yeah. So, and why do we want to be, why do we want to stay? Why do we want to have that definition? I think I know why. It's comfortable. Here it is. Here it is. You ready? You must have been the worst person in class. You must have been. No, no. Every time the teacher's like, does anybody have an idea? You know, you must have brought a fake hand. No, it just, just put it on your desk. Straight up. Every time. Every time. So, no, I'm so here's what I think is going on. You know the Alice Cooper song? I don't know the title of it, but I know the lyric, schools out, summer schools out forever. Okay, this is a celebration of not learning. Ah, and we know people, if not ourselves, on at the end of the school day, we can't wait for the, the alarm to go off at the end of the day, or the Friday comes, or more likely the last day of school and the summer. Say, school's out. And you toss your books in the air and you run down the steps. And I'm thinking to myself, your only job was to learn about this beautiful world, about this majestic universe. And you're celebrating not learning. And so I'm not going to blame the people. I'm going to blame the school. Because if I have you for six hours a day, and you come out and you'd rather not be there, I have failed. Not in a little great sense as a teacher. I have failed the system. You know what should be happening in school? I shouldn't be loading you with textbooks with with bold-face vocabulary words that you memorize once for the exam before you move on. No, no, no. I should figure out a way to make you excited about everything you learn. Yeah. So that at the end of the school day, you're sad to walk out of school. Imagine the world that would be. And you know what schools should do? It's not, let me load you with knowledge. It's, let me prepare you to be a lifelong learner. So that this curiosity that we have infused in you in kindergarten through 12, or kindergarten through 16, if you're in college, there, whatever, when you come out, that is just the beginning of the flame that will coerce within you for the rest of your life. Because you will spend much more time not in school than you ever did in school. And once again, I'll use the word again, if you ossify in your knowledge by getting out of college, getting out of high school, if that's, if that's where you are, you will never grow. The world will leave you behind. And you'll just be the grumpiest person on the porch, say, get off my lawn. You, what, what are these youngins know? I know because you are comfortable in your ignorance. And you don't even know your ignorance because you came to it from from having learned, but only up to a point. And without the curiosity, you don't keep learning. Curious. It's all about the curiosity and the ambition you have attached to it. It's don't tell me about nature, nurture. I'm not even, I'm not even thinking that way. Yeah. I think, well, I grew up in a place, you know, I grew up in a place, um, in Louisiana. We had, you know, I've talked about this before, like the, uh, primate testing facility where they, uh, created the polio vaccine was in our town. So Tulane University didn't know that. It's just a primate testing facility in, um, in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. And I remember one time, a bunch of the monkeys had gotten out, right? And they came and got us out of YMCA summer camps. The police did. The tallest kids to help them. And so we're out there by, like, the monkeys on the trees. And you got to reach for him, or how are you going to get them? The monkeys are just out. Yeah, they wanted like a chain of people, I guess. Oh, okay. And so, by the way, when the monkeys get out, there's nowhere. That's, that's a scary fact, right? Oh, in hindsight, knowing now what I know about monkeys and chimpanzees, I think it was a bad idea. Oh, okay. But at the time, we didn't know. So, you know, it was a smaller town then. So we're out there just wrangling chimps out by this Kenny Rogers Roasters. He used to have like a Kenny Rogers had a, uh, chicken establishment for a while. And they had like, kind of rotisserie chicken. It's pretty good. They had like this cornbread thing. They're pretty good. But, um, but anyway, and also in our area, um, they had a thing called LIGO. LIGO. It was the, it's still there. It's, you know, what I'm talking about? Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatory. Yeah, there's only two of them in the, well, in the United States. In Louisiana and up in Oregon or Washington. Washington. Yeah. So that was another thing in our area. So, you know, there was, by the way, just to be clear, that is discovering colliding black holes in other galaxies across the universe. Damn. It's a new kind of telescope. And you got it there in your home state. I knew they were up to something. No. Yeah. And by the monkeys are running. Hey, skate. Monkeys achieved consciousness and intelligence. I wouldn't be shocked. That's a Planet of the Apes [ __ ] going on. I would not be shocked. Yet, I've seen some people there that work at some of the gas stations. Definitely. They have a banana for lunch. I'll say that. Dude, there's some interesting folks there. No chimpanzees peel the banana from the bottom, you know that? Yeah. Yeah. You know what my friend does? He breaks the banana in half if it's if it's unripe. Yeah, that'll work. Yes, that's true. Otherwise, you got some mashed banana right there. But we used to hear about, um, because they were over there hunting grass. All we heard was that they had gravity hunters out there. That's, that's a, that's a good way. That's a poetic way to put it. So that's what we heard. And so there'd be people like, if you saw somebody that could dance real good, you'd say they were like one of those gravity babies or whatever. Or sometimes people would have parties and people would say, oh, you know, we're gonna get so, and they would live near there, by the, in Livingston Parish, Louisiana, where that LIGO center is. And they'd say, we're gonna get so [ __ ] up, we can't even feel the gravity. Yeah, yeah. There it is. Yeah. Wow. Zoom in on that. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah. So what's going on there? If, if your listeners have access to this, viewers, so those are two long tubes. And they send a beam of light from that central building simultaneously the full length of both tubes. And then there are mirrors at the end of those two, both tubes, and it reflects back and they recombine the light. And if the light recombines perfectly, then nothing happened between those two, uh, reflections. But if a gravitational wave washes over Earth and goes through this facility, one of those beams will be slightly delayed compared to the other. They're doing that out there. And they can measure it. I know people that can't read out there. They delay. And so they're looking for a variation in a fraction of the diameter of a proton. And that is a completely evacuated tube that goes up and back. Um, so tell me this. So say they find a, say, say there's some variation. What does that tell them? That there's some pull on there. Of course, it tells you that the thing actually happened. Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves. This discovered them. It's 80, 60, 70 years later. Wow. Okay. No, no more than that. Uh, this was 2000. When was that? Uh, this century. Einstein made the prediction in in 1916. So you're talking basically 100 years. A century. There's a prediction and then a discovery. And this is, this is ground truth that our ideas actually match objective reality. Okay. And you want to say, well, how does that put food on your plate? It doesn't. But it advanced technology in a way that will surely have applications later on. Einstein wrote down the first equation in a paper called On the Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Obscure quantum physics paper in the 1920s. Okay, late teens. And why are you doing that? You're a smart guy. Why don't you help put food on people's plates? Wanna do you know what that's the foundation of the laser, which would not be built until the 1950s. And, and lasers back then were like, cost tens of thousands of dollars and their room size. Now they're impulse items at at Walmart. Yeah. And for laser pointers, right? Oh, yeah. But lasers are now, you know, barcode, now photos can do it. But in their day, barcode reading, laser surgery, LASIK surgery for your eyes, um, laser cosmetics removal. So who, oh, lasers. You put a laser on anything. On anything. And do you think Einstein's saying, yes, we're gonna have LASIK surgery with this equation that I wrote? Now, nobody's thinking that. So the people say, why are we doing this with smart people when the smart people could be solving the homeless problem? Because we don't know what the future is. You don't know what the future is. Somebody might invent a laser that makes home, homeless people happy. Okay. So you don't know. What about this though? So say that thing picks up some sort of gravitational wave. What does it mean? It means that there's a black hole that's kind of sucking on Earth a little bit. No, it meant two black holes collided. And the collision is quite catastrophic. And it sends a ripple. It's like tossing a pebble in a pond. Okay? And you see the ripple go out in all directions. Except the pond surface is only two. It's flat in space. This is a ripple that goes through full three dimensions of space. And it's moving at the speed of light. And it washes over Earth at the speed of light. And by the way, remember I said, make sure you don't think something that's true that's not, or there's that or isn't true that it. Okay? So suppose you're just a mischievous graduate student. And you're in that facility. Say, I want to, I'm going to tweak this. And all everyone else is going to think they actually discovered something. Okay, yeah, yeah. Or I suppose you did. Suppose you, you're diabolical. You're just a prank. Oh, I would do that either. Uh, you're just a prankster. All right. We have built-in protections against that. Oh, damn. We have another one. They got a ring camera. We have an entire other LIGO in Washington. Oh, making sure. Yes. Okay. So you would have to coordinate with another prankster. Yeah. To do it at the exact moment. Okay. Whatever. Now, okay, they both made the measurement. But separated by a fraction of a second. Just what you'd expect if the wave came from one direction, continues to wash over Earth, and goes across and comes out Seattle on the other side of the Earth. Okay, that 1500 miles, whatever that distance is, takes time to do that. They were able to measure that precisely. It was good.

So tell me about this. So let's talk about outer space for a second. Yeah. So I'm your guy. Yeah. Who's in been in the seat. But, uh, there aren't that many astrophysicists out there. So you have, you know, if we did have a guy who was a science man recently, and he was, he, well, he, he was in charge of the cryonic freezing. You know, those, the, there's a cryonics institute where they freeze people on the possibility that they bring them back to life. On the possibility that one day they'll be able to bring him back to life. Do you think that that's possible or no? I'm not con. So I think what will happen is we'll figure out what ages us and we'll nip-tuck fix that. And then who cares about the frozen people at that point? We can all just keep living. Oh, I mean, I don't. Right, right. Is it, are we gonna need them? That's right. That's what I'm saying. I don't know. I, you know, uh, people that want to live forever in the life and death chapter here, I comment on that. Do you really want to live forever? It's a whole thing. Because if you live forever, what motivation do you have to do anything today? Nothing. Nothing. But that's what I kind of like about reincarnation. It's like when people are doing reincarnation, they're like, I'll get to it. You know, when you believe in reincarnation. Yeah. But you, you don't know what you'll be reincarnated as. And so you could be recording as a roach or an ant or something. Yeah. It's hard to fix a shelf as an ant. So that's a risk. Risky business there. But let me lay a little bit of mathematical thinking on you. Okay. Um, for me, there's nothing more motivating than the knowledge I'm going to die. Um, think of the prisoner in the cell. And they're putting an X through every one. Because every X is one day closer to getting out. Well, let's do that for your life. Every X you spend doing nothing, that's a day you could have done something. And you're gonna die one day. Yeah. And it's there on the calendar. Okay. This would so motivate me as it does to be as productive as I can, as helpful as I can, try to make a better world for your privilege of having lived in it. So if knowing you're gonna die brings meaning to your life, then living forever is a life of no meaning at all. Damn. That's how I think about it. So no, I don't, I don't want to live forever. Yeah. I think if I got to, if I could live forever, I'd probably go swim more, honestly. Or do something like, you know, that I don't really love doing, but I kind of wish I did more. That's a weird, that's a weird wish. If I live forever, I would swim more, even though I don't like it. Who's, what do you, I'll give you another chance. Answer that again. There was a lamest. No, if I could live forever, I would do stuff I didn't really feel like doing. Well, yeah, because it would be like, you'd have so much time. You know, I don't know if I can live forever. I don't know what I would do. That's a great question. What would you do if you could live forever? No, I would say that is the sentence. You have to do it. I, I don't know. I, I don't know because so much of how I organize my life is knowing I'm gonna die. Right. And I have to think about. And get back to you on that. Okay. I'll get back to you on it too, then. Fair. And I hope it's not, I'll swim even though I don't like it. That's the lamest. No, no. Okay, I'll try and do better. But I just, that's how that's what I think I would do. I know you are cleverer than that. You're gonna give me an answer that's better than me.

Do we, what culture or ethnicity on Earth say they're, say aliens show up, right? Is there a society or culture or ethnicity that's best evolved, you think, to handle it? Scientists. Really? Scientists. Go ahead. Theo, if an alien landed right in front of us and said to you, Theo, take me to your leader. Are you going to take him to the White House? No. No. Of course not. Are you thinking to Congress? No. No. That's a great question. What's my point? You would take him to, well, I'm not going to speak for you, but I happen to be a scientist. But if I were not a scientist, I would take him to a scientist. You would? Yes. A biologist or a, a physicist. Somebody who's, by the way, say science is closed that day. Come back out to lunch. Come back tomorrow. Open at nine in the morning. So, you know, even science has a sandwich, bro. Where would you take him? You speak of science like it's the one dude behind the counter. Let me finish. What happens if you're trying to talk to him? Okay. My point is, mathematics. I give him a treat first. I think you'd have to treat. They're not a pet. They just flew here in a spaceship way more advanced than anything we've ever conceived. Okay, here, here's a chew toy, dude. I'm just saying, you gotta give them a little. You'll be the first human zapped by an alien laser. Oh, at that point, hit him with that Snickers. Dog, then you're friends forever. Steven Spielberg, where they're eating, what are they? The, the Reese's Pieces. No, no. Oh, yeah, dude. Well, he'd bring his friends next week. Now, you give a Reese's to an alien. It's gonna get diabetes. How do you know it can handle it? It's just so pretty. That's a good point, bro. Now he's stuck. What if he becomes all lazy and stuff? When you start getting them acclimated, it's fat and lazy on Earth. That has to be a movie, right? You want to do a movie like that? I don't know. But okay, so he's here. What do you do? What I'm saying is that I have a periodic table of elements that are elements across the universe. I know mathematics. That laws of physics that apply across the universe. They got here from across the universe. So those, those laws would be totally the same. When they're planning, totally the same. So if you're going to start with a language like, oh, this is a cup, and this is a fork, and this is, it's like, this is our elements. And this is, we call this aluminum. We call this. And they will know. And they start to develop a common vocabulary so that you can communicate with them. Because they're not going to speak English, nor French, nor Mandarin, none of the above. That being said, if they send radio signals here, the largest radio telescope is going to pick it up first. And you know where that is? Hold on. Let me think. Arizona. Uh, it was once in on American soil in Puerto Rico, the, uh, Arecibo telescope. But that collapsed out of disuse and, okay. The largest radio telescope in the world is in China. Wow. So the first humans that will hear, hear the signal sent by aliens will be Chinese astrophysicists. But we're talking about if they visit. So if they visit, I'm saying bring them to a scientist. The scientist will know how to think about and pose questions to them. For this, for this reason, and I got a little dust up when I saw the movie Arrival. And aliens visit and they park these pods floating over there. And so the government gets two people. They get a, a linguist and a physicist to decode their. And I'm thinking, no, no, you get a cryptographer and an astrobiologist. That's what you want to do. I don't know if you saw the movie. The alien is like a septipod. Looks like an octopus, but it was only seven things. And it's squid inking messages on a on a glass. It's underwater or whatever medium it's in. And so, oh, there it goes. Okay, your boy brought it up on the on the on the screen. You got it right here. Okay, Arrival. Yeah, yeah. Yes, Arrival. Diplomacy scene. Yeah. So we're trying to find out what are they trying to say to us and why. And so I would have brought a cryptographer and, uh, and an astrobiologist. But they brought a, was it a linguist? A cultural linguist. And a, not an angle linguist. Um, uh, could you look that up real quick? The, the profession of the woman that was, she hot too? I don't remember. Because you got to bring a hottie out. If an alien shows, I think you gotta show up with some real diamonds. Yeah, she was a linguist. Linguist. Okay. So, so they have a linguist and a physicist. Physicist is good, but not as good as a cryptographer who's trying to figure out what the hell they're saying. So I posted that. And I shouldn't have. That should have been my forbidden Twitter file. No, because with my people are in movies all the time, right? We have astrophysicists. All how often is a linguist in a movie? Yeah. All right. I always did one chance. And I felt bad. I burned them. I threw some shade on there on there. But now, what about this? So tell me this. If the Chinese, so the Chinese would be the first people to know that, right? No, no. To hear a signal. Okay. That comes over. Do you think that they would tell the rest of us or not? Uh, probably not initially. But, uh, but eventually. No, no. The thing is, what, what should they? They built their own damn telescope. That telescope is a mile in circumference, by the way. You want to get a sense of how big it is? It's called the FAST telescope. 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope. Acronym FAST. But if they know and they don't tell us, man. But then they get to, they can, they can have a horse and say, we are the chosen ones. And everyone else on Earth isn't. Send your ray beams to, you know, I don't know what they're gonna do. Um, but there it is. Uh, we have another image. Oh, we are. We're looking at the image on the screen. I was there. I visited there. We filmed there for Cosmos. What? Oh, my gosh, bro. You gotta hold onto that footage. Oh, my gosh. We gotta make this. Why are we not? We have anything like that? Because we are not. We'd like to think of ourselves. We're Americans. And we're lead. We are. We over history, we've been reactive to challenges from other countries, not proactive. And what are we now? As far as when it comes to

Challenges from outer space, we have nothing that rivals that, wow, at all. So when it comes to space, we're not really the number one. No, no. In, in space, in access to space. Plus, you have the billionaires' boys' race that's up there, you know. And by the way, there's a whole chapter in here called "Earth and Moon" where I just talk about the relationship between Earth and the moon and going to the moon. How we went to the moon to explore the moon, and we looked over our shoulder and we discovered Earth for the first time, and it changed us.

Between 1968 and 1972, do you know what happened? Well, we saw the picture of Earthrise over the moon. And I claimed that there was a firmware upgrade to our awareness in this universe because what happened immediately? By 1970, we founded the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that monitors climate and weather. We had the Comprehensive Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act. We banned leaded gas, we banned DDT. The first Earth Day was 1970.

Birthday was pretty chill, okay? It's chill, yeah. But if you ask any of them why you have Earth Day now, well, because it's the right thing to do. This is the firmware upgrade. They're not thinking space, right? They're just thinking, "Obvious. We should." No, you know what else was going on in 1970? We were at war, hot war, cold war, campus unrest, civil rights movement. In 1968, two leaders were assassinated. 1971 was, it was the shootings on Kent State campus. We had issues here on Earth. Don't tell me, "Oh, it felt like the right time to protect Earth." We had other issues. Something else was operating in your brain stem that you weren't even aware of. That's the, that's the firmware upgrade.

Do you remember? You would have seen videos of it. The crying Indian, yeah, okay. People throw trash out the window, and he turns around and he tears. And he's in, headdress, of course. That dude was, was Italian. Who's an Italian actor? Yeah, he was Italian. Italian heritage. So, so back then, you could do that, right? Right. You could do that back then. But my point is, when did that public service announcement come? 1970. People were, people were throwing trash out their window for decades. So something at that point, upgrade, made us think, "We got to start looking at this place that we're on." You know what that's called? A cosmic perspective.

Now, what about this? Do you think we are due for other firmware upgrades? I would like to think so. A firmware upgrade where we stop killing each other. Yeah. You think? You know, there's no greater argument someone gives for killing someone else than what they believe in, rather than what is actually true. It's almost like the less evidence you have for something, the more you're willing to give your own life or to take someone else's life for it. And that's some weird stuff for our species. Weird behavior pattern.

For now, the world is a much safer place than ever before. Here's a number to sleep on. You ready? Yeah. Probably. We live in a time where if a bus drives into a crowd of protesters, kills 10 people, that's world headlines for a day. It's national headlines for a week. It's local headlines for a month. Okay? Kills 10 people. Between 1939 and 1945, 1,000 humans were killed per hour of every hour between 1939 and 1945. That doesn't happen today. When, yes, we have war, we have conflict, people are dying. It's not like that. Not like that. It is not like that. And not long before that, there was another world war, plus a pandemic on top of it that ultimately killed more people than the world war did.

So less people are dying. Yes, we have more people. And fewer people are dying. And fewer people are living in poverty than ever before. Okay? And so, yeah. So we have about eight billion people in the world. Uh, we'll level off at 10 billion. There are very good reasons to think that it won't go above 10 billion. It's not, it's not going to keep growing. Yeah, because people aren't having as many children. They're not having as many children. We're living longer, so that mitigates that. But then not having as many children. And the developed world, the developing world, that used to have the most babies, the women are getting educated. And educated women have fewer children. Yeah. It's true, man. They was just running. Is that how you say that? I didn't know that was a way to say that. That's a new way. I never thought of saying it, man. This black hole is close. No more kids. When the day you'd have many, take that thing. You have many kids because kids would, kids would die, right? You didn't, you want to run the farm or whatever you're doing, right? So now they don't die. We keep them alive. And so you, the, so the birth rates are dropping. Uh, even in the developing countries. And in some countries, the birth rate is below replacement level. So this all averages out and you will settle out at about 10 billion. But what my point is, we live in sort of safer times than ever before, even if it doesn't feel that way.

Interesting. You were talking about feeling before. Uh, was it Gallup or or one of the polling agencies? For the last 30 years, they've asked people, is your community and yours, is it, are you safer this year than you were last year? No. It's more dangerous. It's fear. For 27 out of 30 years, people have said it's more dangerous than the previous year. And in those years, the crime rate has dropped precipitously the entire time. So they're selling fear. That's what sells. Evening news, really does. Evening news. And I have, I have an example on this. When I grew up, every night, I grew up in New York City. Every night, the Evening News would lead off with a fire in some home. Usually it's a space heater. There's a little space heater. No, back then, people smoked in bed. Okay? Okay. And it was before, that's great. And it was before, that's fun to do. But smoke alarms, yeah? Okay. And by the way, I got something funny for you. I'll just tell you just in a quick minute. But the point is, I was certain I would die in a fire. Dang. I would never live to adulthood because I saw that every single day. And so now there are fewer fires because we have some, there's a few, and they make big news. But the rate compared back then, New York has fewer firehouses. We've been closing firehouses. People just don't need them. But it's more boring, though. And by the way, what really saved things are smoke detectors. Because I'm old enough to remember, you might be a little too young for this, where before smoke detectors, you had to buy flame retardant things in your home. Your curtains were flame retardant. You, you, you're your child had flame retardant onesies. Yeah, really. Okay. But if you think that through, if they're in the crib and the flame is strong enough, it's not going to help to burn their onesies. You don't want the onesies to ignite. Your kid is dead. Oh, yeah. Long dead. It's almost like when you get the hash brown, but it's in that little thing, you know? I don't know if it's exactly like that, but I know, I know exactly what you're talking about. Where's the potato? If the whole thing is brown, is hash brown? Okay, yeah. I don't know if I need this little holster for like, I just, you know. Okay, so, so, uh, so my, my point is this. Flame. And we later learned some of them cause cancer. That's not what kept people alive. Ultimately, it's the smoke. It's the smoke detector. Wow. Um, but where was I going with that? I was at some bigger point I was making. Well, I think things like that take the fun out of everything. You know, they used to have these, um, you know what you're talking about. Crime rates. So everyone thought the crime rate was going up. It's been going down the whole time. Your perception is not reality. Oh, yeah. And that's a lot of what this book is. But the whole, the whole book is that, um, oh, I remember. We had these underwears that had a buzzer in them, right? Because I wet the bed, right? So I was probably, probably late 20s. And we had these underwear when I was a child that got a buzzer right in the car. I didn't know that. Yeah. So the pee would, would, uh, liquid hit it, they'd go off, and you'd wake up and you'd go to the bathroom. Yeah. Didn't know they had that. I mean, it was interesting. It helped. I mean, it was embarrassing because you hit, like a lot of people with the buzzer was right, right? Like, are the cops coming? Did it work? Is something in the oven? It'd be like 4 AM. You'd tell your friends, like, "I think something's in the oven." Yeah. Sleepovers are awkward, right? So, did it, did it work for you? It worked pretty good, I think. And then a pill came out, and that really, yeah. I think the pill was it, yeah. I mean, that shut me off. Better living through chemistry. We are sacks of chemicals. Yeah. And the evidence of that is, you ever seen the book of medicines to treat your ailments? It's all chemicals. Yeah. I'm just saying, we're sacks of chemicals. Yeah. That's what helped. Uh, so you went to bed until your 20s? Oh, yeah. That's late, dude. Oh, I was late. You gotta set up a hose or something. Oh, dude, my whole life. I'm a late bloomer. Wait, so in your, not to get all TMI here, but, uh, when you were peeing in the bed, were you dreaming that you were peeing in a bathroom? Sometimes I would be dreaming that I was peeing. Sometimes I would even be dreaming that I was peeing in a bed. You know, it was like my brain couldn't get. Well, that's an authentic reality. Couldn't give me any more clues. Okay. But sometimes, yeah, I would just be just deep asleep. I don't know. But yeah, I just, I just wet the bed, man. I wet it as a child, and I wet it as an adult. You turned out okay, though? Yeah, I think I'm just a late bloomer, man. Everything has been about 10 years. Okay. Really? Your first one? You know, you're okay with that. Um, why does it feel sometimes when I look at outer, when I look at space, right? I'm standing there, I'm looking out at space. By the way, if you're in space and your jet pack stopped working, if you pee forward, you'll move backwards. That much propulsion will help. Well, in space, any propulsion works because there's no friction anywhere. So if you send any liquid out, for, you could fart the other direction and it'll propel backwards. So don't pee and fart at the same time. No, no, no. You lose your, your net momentum. Yeah, you just stay there. So choose, are you gonna fart or are you gonna pee? Okay. And we're good, right? Damn, I wasted all my fuel. You're just sitting there. Um, what if, um, no, that's advice I'm pretty sure you didn't think you'd be getting today. I didn't, at all. Right. But I'm glad to know that. Take a can of beans if you're headed out. Um, by the way, you know the Swamis that they always show pictures of who are levitated, yeah, with their cross legs? Um, so you can't do that unless he is actively expelling gas out of his butthole, okay? So you'd have to like eat a lot of beans and sew up the butthole to get very high pressure. Damn. And then pop it open, and then he can levitate. Wow. Yeah. So there, so that's, that's definitely advertising. Then they're using that. They're obviously. Well, no, I'll say completely defying known laws of physics. So nobody can really levitate like that. No one has ever done that in a controlled laboratory. Okay. So if they can do it, there's some magic that they do. And, okay, it's just not useful. If I can't reproduce it in the lab, under controlled conditions with cameras and everything, it's just not useful. And it's so magic isn't real. No. Well, you know, the Arthur C. Clarke edict: "Any sufficiently advanced science..." Uh-huh. "...is indistinguishable from magic." Hmm. That's a good one. Okay. So if an alien comes up and and waves their hand and something happens, you'll say, "It's magic." But to them, it's science. It's just super science. Correct. If, in fact, I, I tell you, I don't mean to brag or anything. You do magic. No, I did when I was a kid. Actually, I can see that. I did physics magic. I'd pull the, the tablecloth out from under. I still do that. It's fun. Yeah, yeah. I have large hands, so I can palm a card pretty easily. Um, so, so I did that as a kid. I made money at kids' birthday parties. I think I was 12 or something. Wow. Doing it for six-year-olds. What was your first job? Oh, I was a camp counselor and I worked a whole summer and I made $150 for YMCA. Uh, it was a version of that. Yes. It was some other thing, but it was through, through a church thing. Yeah, yeah. I went to YMCA camp. It was fun. Yeah, yeah. And then I went to, well, before then, I went to camp. I was in a YMCA camp several years in a row. Camp was fun. No, it's good. It was good. It was good. So, but, but let me tell you, the job I hated the most, just, just the whole optics of it. I got to college and I'm on a work-study program. But the, the work part was like, whatever job you can get. That and that was contributed to your tuition. Yeah. Same. I had to be in the bookstore. Well, no, fine. If it was a bookstore, but not the job I got. Okay. I cleaned the bathrooms in the dorms of other students. Probably just all semen in there. I mean, not, you know. So I'm just saying, just the, just the out of my cleaning bathrooms, you know? But I'm doing it for fellow students who I'm, I'm gonna see in my physics class or in my art class. Right. And it was, it was just, I did it, but I just thought, "They need a different way to work this out." Yeah. Okay. And so, yeah, but it puts you through college and you get through college and that was that. You earned your stripes, man. I'll say. You went through. I mean, you, but, but you know what I regret? I've never had a job where I had to tolerate the behavior of someone else, like a checkout counter or a server at a restaurant or a flight attendant. I've never had to tolerate someone being a complete [ __ ] and smile while you're doing it because corporate policy says the customer is always right. I've never had to do that. Oh, that's everybody at a CVS now. I feel like they have to put up with everything now. Yeah. So that's interesting. I try to be empathetic, even though I've never recognized that. Oh, my gosh. Is that it? Usually it's kind of an important job to have. Yeah. Um, is outer space like, is outer space gay or straight? So there's an entire chapter here called "Gender and Identity." Okay. Uh-huh. I'm just putting it out there. Okay. General. It's an entire chapter. What that looks like through a scientific lens. And what I will tell you is, oh, yeah. I remember you talking about the facial structures. Okay. So I'm gonna give you an answer. Are you ready? Yeah. Is outer space gay or straight? Every 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 gonna tell you, whatever the universe is, it's on a spectrum. Okay. In fact, the very word "spectrum" comes from what happens when you take light and break it up into its colors. We just happen to assign names to the seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. But it's a continuum. We're just being lazy by assigning seven colors. Our brain doesn't want to see nuance because it's easier for us to think in binary. So it's, "Are you with me or are you against me?" Well, maybe you're somewhere in between. Are you a boy? Are you a girl? Maybe they're expressing themselves somewhere in between. And your brain has a difficult time recognizing a spectrum. And so you're requiring it be into a bin. So there you are, forcing other people to match how you see the world. And that's wrong. That's no. I'm not, let me not say it's wrong. I'm gonna say, um, the world is not gonna change to fit your inability to recognize how it's actually manifesting. It's not gonna do that. So, so it's, by no, it's on a continuum. So whatever it is, you can say, "Is the universe sweet or salty? Is the universe?" Whatever it is, you're asking me, "Is it this or is it that?" Ah, that's the binary brain trying to force a continuum into two categories. So it's like Chex Mix, except with more objects, more kinds of objects than what you find in Chex Mix. Chex Mix has like five things in it. Yeah, that's true. Okay. Imagine if Chex Mix had everything. Damn. In a continuum and it kept changing. Now look at how our brain works. We have hurricane strengths, right? Oh, yeah. They measure this wind speed. Do you realize it's a continuum? But we, we divided it into five categories, right? But it's a continuum. Do you realize you can go from low category three to high category three, and it's, and they'll just talk about, "Irma is still a category three." One mile an hour faster and it's category four. It's breaking news. Oh, yeah. "Hurricane Irma is now category four." Yeah. Excuse me. It's one mile an hour faster than it was yesterday. Yeah. People lie to say the wind's broken. Okay. So I'm just on the winds. Making a bowl of cereal. Some guy said, "That's funny." That's funny. So my point is, even with hurricane speed strengths, we force them into categories when it's actually a container. I see. So it's a continuum out there. So, so because it looks kind of gay, I feel like. But then sometimes it does things that seem really straight. But those are also my definitions of those. Correct. You're forcing the universe into your two categories, right? I think what's tough, I think for people, just in layman's terms, is when you have a template of society over time, and the, and things start to come in and make it evolve or adjust, it's hard sometimes to get those things all the way to the grassroots level. I would claim that the template was always people forcing a natural variation into categories. Ah, do you know Joan of Arc? You remember she was, remember you read, she was burned at the stake. Yeah, yeah. 1400. Was she doing witchery? Okay, well, okay, that would be one way. You would burn people at the stake. But, uh, they couldn't burn her at the stake for not being religious. She was very religious. She was trying to kick the British out of France, her mother country. She led soldiers into battle. Wow. Do you know half? I don't know if it was half, precisely, but a big reason why they indicted her and burned her at the stake was for cross-dressing. Damn. And I thought, "Okay, there's a, there's a passage in the Bible in Deuteronomy." You ready? "If a woman don the clan the clothes." This is very close to precise. "If the woman does the clothes of a man, she is an abomination unto the Lord thy God." Oh, man. And so they said, "We can get her on that." They're like, looking, trying to throw the book at her, right? "We got her on this because you can't lead soldiers into battle with a skirt riding side saddle." Yeah, that does not work. No, you got to put on at least a strong hat at the Earth. So, is she an early person who's just a tomboy who's expressing herself? Male though she's biologically female? Oh, she'd have been in a league of their own, probably. Okay. So we know, yeah, grown up in classes where there was the tomboy girl and the slightly effeminate boy. We, if not ourselves, this has been with us forever. Yeah. It's in literature and it's in the thing. And the difference between then and now is we have a, a raised social consciousness. So that those folks on the continuum are, are less so the object of mockery in storytelling. They're just other characters now. And there's still more room to improve that. But I'm saying, um, you have people who are trans, people who are, who are, uh, full up trans, or just simply wearing clothes they're not what you want them to wear based on what you think they should be. Yeah. Is that a free country? If this is what, what concerns me a bit, a lot of the resistance to this comes from the conservative side of the voting public. And they're trying to control the freedoms of people's expressing themselves in some way. I read, so that the pursuit of happiness, did we read this somewhere in the founding documents? Of, and if my pursuit of happiness is wearing a skirt and putting on makeup and lipstick, no matter whether or not I have a penis, um, you want to take that away from me? Why? That is it, in a way, a violation of what it means to live in a free country. Yeah. I think people just accuse you of gaying or whatever they accuse you of, like queering. The fact that it would be an accusation at all, rather than a recognition that there are people different from you who live in this free country. Well, look, I'll tell you this. A lot of times I've been around a lot of, like, sometimes there's a lot of drunk, man. You know, and I don't drink, but I'll get around them sometimes. And you could see they start wanting, uh, you know, they start, you know, their lips get a little wet. And you see them wanting to be, you know. So I think, you know, if we were honest with ourselves, it wouldn't even be a problem. If we were honest with it centuries ago. Well, yeah, there's probably just old. And also, some of it is templates. Some of it is tradition. And people want to like, people worry, I think it's too much if you lose, like, and I'm not saying they're correct traditions, but I think a lot of people worry if you lose tradition, then what does that mean? I think, you know, I think we're still evolving in a way that we want to look at at existence on a larger scale and not just in the scope of our own life. I'm a big fan of traditions. And let's call them rituals for the moment, okay? A Thanksgiving dinner is a ritual. The traditions and rituals in and of themselves, I greatly value them. They become, they're some of the greatest, uh, binding forces in a culture. Are traditions? Yeah. Okay. In Passover, the Jew, the, the observant Jews of the world are all doing the same thing basically at the same time relative to the sunset. Okay? And so that's a binding force. But if your tradition is not the celebration, but what you look like, what you sound like, what you say, how, what you think, then that's, those are traditions trying to remove freedoms that your country might otherwise be giving you. Yeah. And so they come from traditions. Yeah. They kept tribes together. Oh my gosh. Where does the other stuff come from? Like, yeah, like where does it? But I think it maybe it feels like I'm trying to decide what that feels like to people that makes them so commonly that those are things that are hung onto. You know, uh, well, if they, it's one thing because you have your own ritual. Okay. I used to always have candles for dinner. Okay. I, I blow through yards of candles. It's a romantic. And I'd like a bottle of wine. With my wife. No, no. And so, but so for me, that was a little bit rich. When my mother burned candles, and she was Catholic, and candles are a thing in a Catholic church. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I, and the candles are burning during the mass. So I, a little bit of candle worked into me. But I'm not, that's nice. I'm not forcing someone to do something with the candle, right? Okay. I'm not forcing someone else to pray to the candle. I'm not trying to change the behavior of someone else. It's just something I do. And I do it all right. It's when you cross over and require other people recognize this, yeah. Um, or, or you require other people abandon it just because you don't want it. That's not a free country. That's all I'm saying. You can imagine a country where everyone's homogenized in whatever way you want. Those countries exist. I didn't think that was America. Yeah. I didn't say that, right? I didn't think that was America. Well, it's just, it's really, it's, I spent six years in Texas. I met my wife in Texas. Oh, but Austin, Texas, UT Austin. Are you a Texas fan? Uh, so the funny thing, be honest, I don't know if I haven't told anybody this. Uh, so I'm a New Yorker in Texas, which was a little bit mind-blowing. You know, just the Confederate flag is everywhere. And the gun, the gun rack on the back of the pickup. Yeah. And it's just a really, I was, I was almost anthropological for me to observe the Texas tribe. That's what I was thinking. What does anthropological mean? It means I'm, I don't know that I'll ever assimilate, but this is something interesting to observe and take notes on. Okay. Okay. I'd be an anthropologist. Okay. Studying the culture. Okay. So I did that. And were you really wearing that hat? Really? And those boots? Like, really? And this is a woman you're talking. And your belt buckle is that big? Really? And this is all weird. But again, I'm recognizing it's another place, right? I don't want to homogenize them to be New Yorkers. This is Texas. A good point. Just got its own history. Six Flags Over Texas. Yeah. Okay. It's sick. Texas with six different countries. All right. I don't know anybody else that can say that. You know, the six countries? Mexico, uh, Spain, I think France, uh, the Confederacy, the United States itself, and the Republic of Texas. Oh, damn. What did I, did I leave one out or count one twice? But that's where you get Six Flags. The, the amusement park. You didn't know this, dude? You didn't know that? Finally, some stats I can use. Oh my gosh. Finally, some information I can use. That's how you get Six Flags. The kid didn't come out of nowhere. Yeah. I didn't know. I never thought. You go into the state capitol and you see the flags. Yeah. I've actually been in a state capital right there. Yeah. But, um, so I'm there. And, and no, so here's what happened. When I left Texas, it was six years later. I, I get back to New York and say, you know, I want to wear some of those boots. So the next time I visited, I picked up some boots. Yeah. And then I, you know, I kind of liked that hat. Not the full up, you know, seven-inch brim, but the smaller brim. So I own six cowboy hats, five pairs of boots. And one of them is like ostrich. You know, I guess a stretch. They get out digging out the animals. I don't have the lizard or whatever that one is. The, no, the alligator. I don't have the alligator. But, so I got some stretch at the house, dude. I wear that on Fifth Avenue. I'll do that. Yeah. And so it, people, it turns heads. But I'm comfortable in that because I, I felt it. It took, it was a time delay, right? It was, I feel it now. And now I can appreciate a Texas movie or Texas culture, Texas music, which is not, it's not country western, really. Uh, it's not, it's not Nashville, I should say. No, it's not. It's, it's a lot more, it's a lot more like red clay kind of. Yeah, yeah. Um, and I didn't know a sad song until I heard a sad Texas song. I mean, yeah, I'm a big fan of the blues, you know. Blues all up the coast, you know, the Mississippi on up to Chicago blues. But up the river, I guess I should say. But, uh, Texas, you know, up some singing and, you know, in my dog. Oh, this is sadness. Sadness. Okay. Parker McCollum. You gotta listen to him. He's kind of a sad. I'm a blues guy. I'll do it. He's, yeah. You know what? His is a little bit of blues in a way. Um, so, you know, I often theorize, we talk about a lot of this show, like beige. The future is all going to be beige. Like eventually everything's kind of merging. We mean skin color. Yeah. That eventually everything is just kind of merging. Um, and I wonder if it'll be like that with sexuality as well. That everything will just, will everyone be like, kind of this beige trans kind of like, you know, gang bang? You know, or like everybody just like, you know, will everybody just be like a beige trans graffiti artist? That's what I feel like. I feel like we're all just kind of. Because I think there are enough people in the world that value individuality, that we will never be so homogenized. Really? Yeah. That's what I think. Uh, so let's take this to a, a scientific limit. Okay. We cannot control the genome. What is that? Uh, you know, so I got your genes and I can see you in in the uterus and I can nip and tuck and snip and think and you'll come out, uh, six feet tall, with this color skin, this gender, with this thing and this that. And I can make you. And that's not outlawed. We don't, the ethics of this, we don't know how to do that yet. But I don't see why we'll net that wouldn't one day happen. Our ethics are not really quite keeping up with it, not from what I've read yet. But there are people thinking about it. Okay. The first thing we're gonna do is cure diseases, for sure. All right. You know, genetic, right? You'll go in and stop people from having different kind of Down syndrome, right? Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So obvious ones. And we all have to agree which, what to cure, because even that has ethical issues. That's true. For example, it was not until 1987. I report on that here in the gender and, uh, express gender and identity chapter. Not until 1987 where the American Psychological Society, Psychiatric Association, whatever their acronym is, um, the, the American Association of Psychiatrists, it wasn't until 1987 where they removed homosexuality from the Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders. Oh, it used to be in there. Yes. So you asked the question, it was before 1987 or even earlier, and you had the medical capacity to quote fix someone whose genetic profile, if that's where it's found, makes them gay, would you do that? Back then, they probably would because that's a disorder. They thought it was a mental distance. And then you find out that at least 15% of the, one out of six is this. At what point is it a disorder? And what point is it just the natural variation of who we are as a species? Damn. That's crazy. So the guy who's writing the disorders obviously was a straight guy. Ah, perceptive. Right on. And, and there's the guy, what's his neuroscientist? I always forget his name. But I guess if you're super straight, say you're super straight, you're wandering out of a cave or whatever, right? You're a straight guy. You see him. I know that I'm straight. Can I tell you how I know I'm straight? How I know I'm straight? Because I wrestled for eight years the muscled, sinewy, sweaty bodies of other men. Yeah. And at no time did I even have a tingle in my body. It's like, "I'm gonna pin your ass to the mat and get up and walk away." Okay? That's what I'm good. I was captain of my high school's wrestling team. I'm just thinking, my hands are all over men's bodies. If I had any urge, I would have felt it then. So if they do one, two, three, four, and you still have to tapping out, the longer you stay there. Oh, it's counting the thing. But I think, yeah, you just stay there and don't tap because it feels good. I think that's crazy, baby. Yeah. So, so, so I'm, I'm just gender heterosexual. Do you ever wonder if you could ever? But because some people think you could evolve into it. Like, I, you know, I wouldn't. Like, I would wonder if one day I could be, when I'm 70 years old, be a homosexual. You know, I don't, I don't know all the drivers and causes and what's genetic and what's cultural. I, I don't know. I don't even care. It's just whatever people want to be in a free country, let them be that. Yeah. Right. So to even argue it, it's like that's like arguing, should someone wear their hair one way or the other? Where the part? It's, it's how you express. But I wouldn't say I'm a straight guy. You got your moment and you're rocking that. You've been rocking the mullet from day one. That's your thing. If you came out with an afro, you're somebody else at that point. Yeah. But this country allows that. I don't know if your fans would allow it, but the country would allow it. Like, okay, what about this? So I think, yeah, I could see if you're a straight guy, you're writing the book, right on. What is, yeah, a straight psychiatrist, right, right in the book. You see a guy, you know, you're hanging out with your buddies, one of them reaches for another guy's wiener or whatever. I could see you being like, "Oh, this is, uh, this is." But do you think he thought it was wrong, or he just thought, "Just it simply?" I don't know that they value judge. They're just saying it's a disorder, right? The need of repair. So, but it was a disorder based on that things are just supposed to be this way because they had whatever biases they had, whatever inability to embrace the spectrum of humanity presented to him, right? Does nature, is nature just, or does nature gay also? Oh, okay. Uh, their books on this. The, I forget. Rainbows. Can we look this up real quick? Rainbows, uh, just look at rainbow and sex. And there's a book that'll come up. Uh, just real quick. Evolution's Rainbow. Okay. So, so there's a book called "Evolution's Rainbow," okay, which explores what species out there actually have full spectrum sex, okay? Gay sex, bang sex. There's some, there's rape in some. There's dolphins. There's some. There's no other way to understand it unless. Okay. So there's a full range of what's. And I don't care if there's a line called or so here's my point. That I don't know that we should care what the rest of the animal kingdom is doing. Do you know there's a, there's a mole rat that's called this? This comes in a mole rat where one variant on it, they mate for life. And the other one, there is promiscuous as go all get out. Damn. And they're both mole rats. I got both variants. So they're both, they're both mole rats. So, and then people say, "Oh, eagles mate forever," and they want that to be, we want to emulate that. And then you find out that bonobo chimps, they're [ __ ] all the time. Oh, to resolve differences, to, to fight each. Just look at this video. Yeah. It's behind the wall. Gotta go behind the wall on the video. And so, and but also very close to us genetically. My point is, we're human. I don't care what the other animals are doing. You can find an animal that'll support or or deny whatever claim you're trying to make about us. So forget them. We're our own species. Yeah. And that's true. We have the capacity to grant freedoms in some governments to your, to support your happiness. We value that. Yeah. That's cool. Because it's crazy to think that some countries don't, right? That's why I'm glad I'm in America. Yeah. Am I good at that, right? Am I getting like a B plus? Um, what about this? So, um, so do you think we'll ever really be able to travel like into another galaxy, like interstellarly? Do you think you need, you need a wormhole? We're not doing that without a wormhole. We don't have like diesel or whatever. We don't have anything that'll push us there. Is no rocket? No. There's a rocket that would get there eventually, like in a few million years, but you don't live that long. Yeah. We, we have rockets powerful enough to get you around the solar system in your lifetime. But to the nearest stars at those speeds, it would take 50,000 years. That's why they're talking about generational ships, where you go, you have babies, they grow up, they have babies. So people, it's called a generational ship. Wow. It's a little weird because it's a little weird because you're, we're, we're obligating the unborn to continue a mission that you're starting that they didn't have freedom to reject. That's an ethical thing right there. I don't know. Are you for it? I'm just waiting around for the wormhole. Just say, "Yeah, dude, let's sit in the boat." Come on. Um, so, so yeah, so then we don't have anything right now that'll ever get us. So we are almost kind of stranded here. Stranded in the solar system. It's not so bad. A lot of good stuff going. No, it's cool. Yeah, yeah. Why is it when I, um, when I look up at the, like the sky? By the way, just to be clear, we got to the moon, hung out on the moon, and came back in less time than it took Columbus to cross the Atlantic. Wow. So we're doing all right. You know, I'm okay. I'm okay. We get to Mars when I'm 10 people. But we can send hardware to Mars in nine months, a little less. That's good. The wormhole, what would it, how big would it be? Would you have to, would you be able to walk into it, or you have to kind of step into it? I, I, we, okay, no. It's like, let me step across it like as a threshold. Yeah. You've seen, uh, Marvel and and Doctor Strange or, uh, Rick and Morty. These are these are literal. They call them portals to other dimensions, whatever. But a wormhole would just be that. You would just go through on one side, come out the other. And you would not see the fabric of the wormhole. It would just be a hole in space. And it's a hole every direction you look at. When we think of a hole in a floor and you fall through, this is a hole in full three-dimensional space. No matter which direction you go in, you're entering the hole and you'll come out in another place. And, uh, in some places, if you take space-time and curve it, in one of the illustrations we have up on the wall now, it's curved. So if you were to travel that whole distance around there, because that could take you a long time, you bend this. Imagine it's a piece of paper. You bend it, cut a hole through the two edges. You didn't have to take that long route and you bypass it and you get to the other side of the galaxy before the end of the TV commercial. And that's how the warp drive people do it. Is that mathematically possible? Yes. Really? You promise? Oh, yes. On paper, we can do that. But you need some matter that can, that's the opposite of gravity. So it's negative energy stuff. Are we building that? Can pry open? I'm not authorized to say if we're building that. Are you really not? Yeah, I'm just kidding. Oh, plus, that's what I would say if I wasn't authorized. I'm just kidding. That's exactly what I would say. Uh, that's like asking someone if you're a spy. Yeah. Say, "No, I'm not a spy." That's what a spy says. You know, there's no way out of that one. You know, dang, man. No, no. So, so what we, could you take stuff with you? Or would you have to not have any like carry-ons or whatever? Like, how would you? Do you remember Terminator? When he came through time, he had to come through naked. Oh, yeah. Because clothing couldn't go through the, the portal. Or only living tissue could go through the portal. But here's a problem that I think they forgot. Or they, hair is not alive. So you're going through balls. She should have gone through complete bald ass, bare ass ball. Plus he has living tissue, but it's on top of his metallic skeleton. Oh, yeah. So, so the skeletons shouldn't have made it through. He would have just been a pile of flesh or along the ground. They weren't entirely consistent with their own rules. Would you be brave enough to go if they offered it? To go? No. I'd send a gerbil first. True. First. I'm not going through first. Damn, bro. People ask me, "Do you want to ride on Elon's rocket?" And say, "Only after he sends his mother." Yeah. Brings her back safely, then I'll go. Yeah. Until then, I'm sitting right here. Wow. Yeah. You wouldn't go? Huh? Until I know it's safe. All right. Two gerbils go. Then they come back. And they're not weird or anything. When I'm doing the, uh, the hamster wheels, we're doing the hamster dance, right? Right. Smooth Criminal on the wheel. Yeah, yeah. So, um, did he do that in Smooth Criminal? Maybe he might have. I think it was, yeah. But he did a lean on it. Yeah, yeah. It was the first concert you ever went to? Oh, thanks for asking. I don't go to many concerts for, uh, not noble reasons. One of them is I prefer the quality of a studio album to people screaming in the background. Oh, yeah. The occasional song is good. Like, like Free Bird live. That's the only way I'm consuming that song because it, it's longer than the album. It's like three minutes longer or something. And Leonard Skynyrd is jamming and every of the instruments. So occasionally you get the extra stuff going on in the live. But mostly I like the acoustic quality of studio albums. So therefore, I'm not going to see you in concert. I'm going to buy your album and just listen to you at home. Okay? That's one. Two, concerts are too expensive, dude. I'd have that money growing up. It's expensive. So I just didn't go. And plus, I didn't have a car because I grew up in the city. So concerts were not, just when you're in the city, it's less of a thing. Most of the people went to concerts in Madison Square Garden were out of town or it's coming in from Jersey and Long Island and things. So, but I think my very first concert was Earth, Wind, and Fire. Oh, yeah. I saw them in Austin, Texas. And then I saw, uh, The Commodores. Oh, yeah. Then my sister worked for PepsiCo, which had retained Michael Jackson for things. And I saw Michael Jackson. Pretty good seats too. In Madison Square Garden. No way. So these are some good stuff. I'm not, yeah, that's good. Uh, how was that? That was good. He did stuff. White all the way back from ABC. It was a full retrospective. Wow. Yeah. It was a full retrospective. And so I saw him. Uh, I saw Simon and Garfunkel. But my favorite, it's like my, they're my, my people. Let us Fila. Is that them? No, that's the Beatles. Huh? Right. We're saying that again. Got some real estate here in my. Oh, yeah. That's him. Yeah. Yeah. That's him. That's one of the songs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so just a, a balladeer, is that a word? A balladeer of the era? Yeah. Uh, Simon and Paul Simon and, and or Garfunkel. And a couple of other concerts. Oh, oh, this one was good. I saw the 50th anniversary concert of The Who. Oh my gosh. And, and, you know who opened for him? Joan Jett. Oh. Oh, that's good. That was good. Was it good? Oh, man. And I, I, I recorded. I know I wasn't allowed to do this, but I recorded Roger Daltrey singing the line because he's 70 now, singing like, "I hope I die before I'm old." That was his lyric, right? His dude's lyrics. That's, uh, research. Yeah. That was told. I was totally. I was at dinner the other night. I went to dinner the other night with David Spade, actually. We were both doing shows somewhere in San Diego. Cool. And I'm name-dropping there, but he's my friend. And we had, and anyway, Roger Daltrey came and he sat at the table next to us. Oh. And he, and David knew each other. So I just got to watch them talk to each other for a second. Very cool. So that.

To me was pretty cool. Cool, yeah. Um, God, you know, I do cities too. Do you know that? You go perform? Yeah. Oh, and speak? Yeah. And just answer questions? And and and and they're in theaters, dude. Yeah. I believe that, right? And and the numbers that they get for stand-up comedians, they because we're not Broadway, right? We're not, you know, you're you're a one-person show on the stage, right? With very little overhead to produce your show, right? And so that's the same with me, whether it's a screen and I show the universe. But, uh, I always find it interesting to see what comedians came before me or after me because I'm a big fan of your trade. Uh, so thanks. Yeah. I think a lot of guys, obviously, well, it's an interesting thing about Joe Rogan is he introduces people to a lot of other people that they may not have been introduced to from his audience. Yeah. Audience base. It's pretty fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's done it all. He's the stand-up and the TV host and everything. Yeah. Yeah. And he just is so curious. He is one of the most curious people I've ever met in my life. He's a consummate researcher. That's an example of it. And the difference is, he's curious in the moment, and he's got an expert, and he fills it up, and then the expert goes away, and then he fills in the blanks with his own thoughts. Yeah. So, so if you want to do that, right? You have the curiosity. Your guest stimulates that curious curiosity, and then you go take out books and finish the gaps. Yeah. You know, look at the documentaries, and then your your curiosity isn't just satisfied in the moment. It's something that goes beyond the moment, so that you get the broader, deeper understanding of what's going on. That would have helped him when he got that dust-up with the vaccines. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They got on to him, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Totally got on them. And people pulling out of Stitcher and things, you know. Was it Stitcher or SoundHound? I forget what, what, whatever. It's Spotify, sorry. Um, yeah. And people are pulling out of Spotify, you know, out of solidarity. So, I, it's so he got in his dust-up. It's because he's curious in the moment, but in an odd sort of way, right? Right. Because the next, the next shiny object, he wants to know about that, right? And then he gets, he knows just enough about that, and you get into, uh, into that zone. Yeah. Where you know just enough to think you're right, but not enough to know you're wrong. Hmm. That's a zone that many people get into. Yeah. I think a lot, I, from what I remember, and I don't know all of it, I think a lot of his stuff was that the, the bio, the bio companies were really pushing the vaccines on people a ton, you know. There'll be, yeah. But is that a reason to not protect yourself against COVID? What you have to do is, yeah, some of that can happen. All right. I don't know how much it happened during COVID. But we're honest with ourselves about profit motives, right? Yeah. So now you watch, now you look at who's dying in the hospitals, okay? It's people who are unvaccinated with comorbidities, primarily. And then other people who are sort of unvaccinated and older, who were just sort of at risk, but not being old is not as self a comorbidity, like being, right? But it is. But right, these are factors. They're people who were not getting vaccinated. And so, do you want to stay out of the hospital? Do you want to not die? And you look at the death toll, the excess death because of COVID, um, it is a, you can see the bump in the, in the, um, mortality statistics over those two years. There's, there's, whatever it is, that's level because with the same amount of, approximately same amount of people, number of people die every year in the United States. And then in 2020, it went up. And then when the vaccine came in, you saw it coming down a little. And then the people, so yes, it's a free country, but you can catch it and then spread it to somebody else who needs the protection or can't get vaccinated because they have an immune problem. Do you, so at that level, you're being selfish. That's all. Do you think in hindsight that I always felt like herd immunity would have been the best thing for that? I don't, I'm not a scientist. Yeah. Sure. But herd immunity, it depends on the lethality of the drug and how quickly it spreads. That'll determine the exact herd immunity. But you got to typically be up around 90% vaccination so that 10% would not have to be vaccinated and they won't catch it. But the herd immunity in a rational society that cares about its citizens, the 9% 10% that don't get immunized, it's because they can't be immunized. Do you want the herd immunity to protect the weak, the people who are immune compromised, the people who have some genetic disorder where they rely on you to be vaccinated so I don't catch, so they don't catch the disease? That's how we should be using herd immunity, not because you're, because you're, um, by the way, the liberals and conservatives met each other on the other side of the fence for this. The OG anti-vaxxers were liberals, okay? Who don't trust the pharma and don't trust the big business and all the rest of this. And then the, the freedom angle came in from the right. Uh, you can't, you can't, I don't want this in my body. Right, right. It's dangerous. Vaccines are dangerous. That vaccines cause or, yeah. So they cherry-picked things and they go to websites and they spend, you know, an hour or more but researching it. And then they'll claim to know more than the medical professionals. So, sure, if you, if you don't want to be get vaccinated, go live alone until the, till the virus goes away. But stay out of the zones of people who could catch it from you if you caught it. Do you feel like if we would have not done a vaccine and just let the virus go through us, it would have just went through us? It would have killed five times as many people. Really? Easily. Easily. Wow. You don't remember hospitals were overrun? People were in the corridors? They have mass burials? Oh my gosh, how quickly people forget. Well, I remember they put people on ventilators, but didn't, then they realized that they shouldn't have put people. Well, yeah, so on the moving frontier of a new thing, yeah, it's easy to say you shouldn't have done that, right? Right. No, at the time, it's like, you're having trouble breathing, there's a ventilator. And then people do experiments. This is the value of experiments. Say, well, if you tip this way or you, you breathe through a hole in the table, whatever, and there's a better chance. And that gets published, gets disseminated, and then you have a new best practice in that moment. And the public, the public saw this happening in real. Normally, it happens, you don't even see it, right? Because it's a controlled study on some corner of the world or in some country. You don't even see it until it's already tested out. But you don't want to hold a vaccine longer than necessary if you could be saving lives with it. Hence, the emergency provisions that were put into place. So the problem was, I think people don't know what science is or how, or why it works. And if you taught that in school, you'd say, okay, this is a, the mask, but we also need to clean the things because we know viruses transmit on the surfaces. Turns out this virus was less a surface virus and more of an airborne virus. Oh, yeah. I remember I had a buddy who was wearing a hazmat suit to get his Instacart deliveries and he was pressure washing boxes of Triscuits because at the time, that we know that to be successful against variants of a virus, but it, not that one, we didn't know yet. Yeah. But are you going to say, well, we don't know yet, so therefore I'm not going to do anything? No, you do what has worked in other. Okay, you do that until we refine it. People were not allowing science to run its course. Do you think that during the pandemic that the, uh, that the, um, the, uh, vaccine and the bio company, the pharmaceutical companies, that they hijacked science or hijacked them? Well, their studies get reviewed by, uh, panels of scientists. That's what the FDA does. That's the whole point. One of the main points of the FDA is to do this. So they study the efficacy of the, of the virus, of the vaccine, and they study how effective is it against children also. Things like, it can be effective, but at what dose? The most, there's more than one moving part here in the studies. They did the studies and they found it was like 95% effective against that variance. So they said, let's roll it out. No need to do further experiments on this on the effectiveness of the vaccine. Now, here's, here's an interesting challenge. If your vaccine is so perfect that it knocks out this variant perfectly, it might not be effective against another variant of that same virus. Right? Oh, it could be too perfect. Okay. It could be too perfect. Correct. And so, though we need research. This may be going, I'm not, I'm not on that frontier of of a viral serum. That's more sort of a cocktail of antiviral elements so that whenever the thing tries to morph or or mutate, we got you. You can't mutate out of this, out of this group of, um. And so what they do now with the flu vaccine is they just, they have the specific, um, uh, uh, they have the specific recipes and they, they do a cocktail together for the, the seasonal flu virus because they see different flus showing up and and they put them together. But I, I foresee a day when you take one antiviral serum, it takes, cat, takes out all viruses. That'd be a fun day. Do you think that? Yeah. Because a lot of, we had Bobby Kennedy on, and he was talking about like, he was really against Dr. Fauci and a lot of, like, yeah, he's, yeah. He has a book, "The Truth About Dr. Fauci." Right. So he's, he's, he's an environmentalist, so he was always grew up like about the environment, right? Yeah. Then he's like about the environment inside of your body. You know, I, he believes that a lot of vaccines and stuff like can cause more damage over time. Yeah. Except when you look at the people who don't die for having had the vaccine. So there's a, a lot of, I mean, there's a lot of cherry-picking of data. I mean, I think he came to this vaccine argument, this vaccine world because he's, he sees the abuses of corporate greed. Yeah. All right. And in the environment, a corporation will do something regardless of its effect on the environment or its effect on people. So he, I think that, not that he's an expert on vaccines and virology or anything, but that he sees big corporations, he sees governments, like he's a lawyer, yeah. And he sees people, and he wants to protect people. So that's a noble cause, a legacy of his entire family, of course, that in multi-generations. So, but what happens is, people can get, they get onto something that they think is true. But the law, there's a larger statistical truth that negates what you think. If you see three cases because the testimony is strong, because or or someone coincidentally gets some other thing after they get an injection, and they, and they, they stand up and give a talk. He said, oh my gosh, this is the, this is what I'm telling you. They're looking into the person's eyes, and you feel their emotions, and you see the fire, and that becomes more real to you than a pie chart. Yeah. So it's interesting. You can get caught up in that. But do you think that these days, like that, because you're from the science community, that like big pharma, like they have enough money and power that they could alter, because that's what I feel like a lot of people, that they could alter the data or cherry-pick it enough and present it to humans in a way that would just support what they want? Well, so, so what that's what I think in the end, a lot of people probably, that's the thing that I think people think that big pharma hijacked a lot of the information or adjusted it to make people believe and think. Okay, except we have people dying in the hospital who are not vaccinated, and people alive who were. Right. So you can keep talking. Okay. You can keep saying whatever you want, but we have evidence that conflicts with your conspiratorial views. Right. And evidence matters in the end. And so, you know, could they have faked? Could they have put their entire 100-year reput, Pfizer or whatever how old they are, but I think it's around there, 100-year reputation on the line by faking data so that we would all think their vaccine will keep us out of the hospital, just to sell it? We would know within weeks, if not days, if that was all a lie. Yeah. We would know because there would be as many people in the hospital who've been dying who've been vaccinated who were not. And those are two samples you want to compare with each other. Yeah. And when you compare that, no, that it's effective. It's effective. Now, what, what took people by, what surprised people is, yeah, you vaccinate, vaccinate me against the measles, I'm not getting the measles. You can breathe on me, I'm not getting the measles. All right. So how, why do people still get COVID after they got vaccinated against COVID? Yeah. They got a lighter case of COVID than they would have otherwise gotten. Ah, okay. You surely know people who got COVID who were vaccinated. There was a, you know, five-day vacation at home. Okay. Use a box of tissues and you're back a few days later. Were they on ventilators? And were they even admitted to a hospital? No. No. When people get it now, I'm like, I almost think they're [ __ ] you know, people are like, I got COVID. Like, [ __ ] get in here. Yeah. Do your work, dude. I'll take it. Um, do you worry about the, like, so science is information, right? And objective information are things that can't change if it's been verified by multiple experiments, right? And there's a result that comes out of it that's not tomorrow going to be different from today. Do you worry about the way that we share information now? Because that's almost scarier. That's, you know, just like news channels and outlets and clips, the way we see things, it's adjusting people's the way we think all the time. It's taking over the value of the information that's insightful and perceptive and correct. That they're not only controlling the information you receive, they're shaping how you receive it, which has an effect on how you then behave and act on that information. So as a scientist, we're trained not only successfully, we're trained to detach from the emotions of a testimony. We're trained to be skeptical of a claim that's made that's opposite other claims that have been made before. If someone says, we've seen the YouTubers, who's the dude hanging on his arm, uh, uh, no, no, no, no, the guy who wants you to do his diet, uh, his muscle grow, he wants you to grow muscles, he's a muscle, Sylvester Stallone? No, no, he's just some guy. He's just some guy, okay? Like a fitness expert, okay? But he's got something he's selling you. And he's saying, you know, the best way to get ripped muscles, it's not by going to the gym every day, it's by doing my thing. Oh, okay. So it's, we respond to that. Once again, it's the easy way out. We respond to a testimony that's saying everybody else is wrong, but this is right. As a scientist, we are trained to be skeptical of that claim. The person that says, all these scientists and all they're all wrong and they're all in conspiracy, but I'm correct, listen to me. We're trained to be, and then not to just be skeptical and go on with life. I'm gonna find out if what you're saying is true. Why is conspiracy? Because conspiracies, uh, and the idea of conspiracy theories have grown more in the past 10 years, I think so. I think so. It seems like, sadly, but yes. Do you, what do you attribute that to? The urge to be comfortable in your own belief system. We started the conversation that way. You were saying, this is what I am, and if someone's poking at the sides, I don't want it. I don't want to know about it. So now you create a worldview, you create an understanding of how things are, either because someone convinced you or you convinced yourself. Okay, now there's a gap or there's some information that conflicts with it. So you're going to say, if you cherish this worldview, that information that conflicts with it was falsified, or that was wrong, they don't know what they're doing. Or if there's a gap in the information, you'll say someone's hiding it. And so you say, by saying someone's hiding it, that bridges you from one bit of information to another, and you can maintain your worldview. Um, as a scientist, it is our duty to disturb our worldview every day. The headline that says, scientists have to go back to the drawing board because their cherished theories might be put in jeopardy. This is [ __ ] we're at the drawing board every single day of our lives. That's what we do. It's what we live for. A new discovery. Who is this? We're not in our office with our feet up on the desk, masters of all the knowledge of the universe. That's not us. Who is, who tests? Who is the final say-so of something from science that it can go into society? Well, in my field, there's none of that because we, the patient doesn't die. Okay? I can be spectacularly wrong about how a galaxy is rotating, and, uh, there's no, there's no product that's going to be made based on it, right? So, so as you, as what you do gets closer and closer to the condition, to the human condition, then you need sort of regulations and careful scrutiny. That's why the FDA exists. And there's no counterpart to the FDA for astrophysics. Can the FDA be compromised or not? Uh, in principle, I think anything can be compromised. But what you, so what it comes down to is, you would say the FDA is saying this. Does any other agency say something completely different? I'm not talking about a YouTube page. A little agency. If this isn't complete, then then let's take a closer look. It's a reason to look closer, not a reason to reject or accept. That's all. And, uh, might they give, oh, so here's one. I got one. Uh, the food pyramid. Oh, yeah. I remember that. This is a completely red. Interesting. I, I'm even gonna say honest. Uh, should I say? Let me not use the word. It's an interesting sequence of events. Okay. Here it is. Okay. There's a study in Europe, tens of thousands of people. It's a diet study. Okay. Okay. And they find out that, uh, the Mediterranean diet is healthier for you. Low in saturated fats, low butter, not so much meat, uh, grains have been there, so beans and and wheat and this sort of thing. And so, and saturated fats, that's bad for you. It'll reduce your. So this study came out. Here we are. Okay. This study came out and it was, it took the world by storm because it was so many people. And European, Europe is is Westernized, right? And we all live a Western life. So this was, oh my gosh, we all got to do this. So drop the saturated fats, drop the cholesterol, drop all this stuff that'll kill you fast, and eat the breads and things. And that, okay? That's what contributed to, uh, to impart the, the, the just the diet, the a carb diet. And when we did that, everybody started getting fat. Um, everybody started getting fat. You know what happens? Something else happens, right? There's a, other side of it. There's another carb in your diet puts your metabolism on a roller coaster, and you end up with food cravings that you didn't previously have because you got your calories from sources other than carbohydrates. So there was a secondary effect that was not folded in. But more important, that European study of, have forgot how many countries was missing France? How do you have a European study that doesn't have France in it? I don't know. People don't like them, okay? I mean, that was no other explanation. We hate the French. Maybe they didn't call them. Maybe they didn't answer when you called. Okay? You have a study, but that is, yeah, that's the cholesterol. Well, not just, you have to have everybody, which is true. You have a study telling people that cholesterol is bad for you, and you're missing a country that is steeped in animal fat, the foreground, the butter, the croissant, the duck fat, all of this. Ducks are [ __ ] awesome. Do you know that the life expectancy in France is like 30 six months? No, it's like six months shorter than Italy, which has the Mediterranean. France has also got to Mediterranean thing, but their diet, you don't think it was the Mediterranean diet? So they had no, it's not significantly less life expectancy than other countries that didn't eat any of that. And that was not in the study. Put it in. So the study had a built-in bias that people were not thinking of at the time. The study was so, this is the bias you have to watch out for. Yeah. Here we are doing experiment, believing something that's not true. And that's why lately they say, put some cholesterol back in your diet. It's, and, and, because we're learning that what we thought was true out of that, from that one study, that's the point. One study doesn't make the truth. You need other studies that test it and re-verify it. Yeah. Because I saw, I was watching, uh, well, I was just watching that show "Dopesick," and it was about like the opioid crisis or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. It was crazy. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy sometimes that, why do we let bad things into our society that seems so bad? You know, um, it would seem like sometimes we would be able to, well, we have addiction problems. I mean, that's a problem. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. Right. If we didn't have addiction problems, then you need none of that, right? Right. Right. Let me get high today, and then I'm fine tomorrow, right? I'm not, you know. So that's a susceptibility we have in our physiology. So, but you can be a gambling addict, and the many addictions. Oh, yeah. We got a lot of addicts listening to this, okay? The addictions are are that weakness. And when you have other people that exploit that weakness, yeah, like the casinos and the drug dealers. Anything. Yeah. Anything. Yeah. Anything someone's there to make money off your inability to stop what you're doing. Yeah. That's what I worry about. Like even with the drug dealers at like big levels, it's like, are we, is our FDA compromisable sometimes? I worry, you know? Or if we've gotten to that point as a country where everything's com, like we're just, it's more, well, if you, if you lose all confidence in the agencies and the entire system, um, then where are you going to put your confidence? Is it the YouTube channel you were looking at? Is it the, yeah, is it the guy on the YouTube channel saying the FDA is wrong about everything? Right. I'm right. Buy what I'm selling you, right? Where? So it's a good question. I think, but that's what I think you see a, I don't know if you see a lot of that happening, but I think there's people who don't know where to put their confidence anymore. I feel like we used to all know where to put our confidence. Does that make any sense? Um, yes. But I'm saying there are people who are sowing doubt in places where there's no need to do so. Uh, people who are indicting the entire scientific community, oh, by the way, while they're still using their smartphone. Okay? I, I sent out a tweet. Should I have left it in my forbidden file? I don't know. It was a letter. It was like, dear flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, homeopaths, and on a whole list of like pseudoscience. Dear, you, you found each other and communicate with one another using a device that, that using a sophisticated device that uses frontier advanced discoveries in engineering, science, technology, and math. Just thought I'd alert you of this fact. Sign, your your smartphone. Okay. This is the letter your smartphone should be telling you every day. Yeah. It's true. I don't trust science. Science is this. Oh, wait. What's the best way to route the round of traffic to get to Grandma's house? Which is using GPS satellites. And what do you think we do as scientists? And by the way, people think that scientists are somehow conspiring. Have you ever been to a scientific conference? We're arguing all the time. Yeah. We don't agree. It's a great point. No, it's just, I, that's a great point. It's really, you're living twice as long as your great-grandparents because of science. Yeah. Oh, I don't trust science. Science. It's interesting, right? Yeah. I don't know. I wonder where all this dis, where the distrust started to really come from. I feel like 20 years ago, it wasn't here. Well, I think maybe it was, there was some distrust that began, uh, with Nixon and Watergate. Oh, yeah. Where can we trust our government and institutions? We knew they were corrupt politicians every now and then, but the system for it to be embedded. And the, and the, the papers, the Pentagon papers, this is stuff that was released out of the Vietnam War, smuggled out, the New York Times reported on it. You learned the, the shaky stuff, shady stuff we're doing. Are we the noble freedom fighters to the world, or are we sleazy corporate? So I think it began then. So it means, yes, skepticism is fine, but skepticism is not the same thing as everything you tell me is wrong. Sister says, let me double-check that. Yeah. That's a, that's a really, really great thing to say, man. And that's a great thing to remember. And I think it's interesting because that's what it's, some of your book, a lot of your book is interesting things to think about, different ways to think about them. Um, and like I said, if you're going to read it at all, read it before Thanksgiving dinner, and you just calmly say, well, have you thought of this? Thought of this? You'll be the calmest arguer there ever was. That's what I will say. There's a lot of great, "Have you thought of this?" And it was, some parts were like, I don't know if I want to think about that, but it's nice. My one last question for you. What do you got? Sometimes I look up at the sky, right? And I'll look up and I feel like, especially if there's stars out there, I'll feel like, uh, uh, it's kind of like, like something's looking back at me. Does that make any sense to you at all? I, I once tweeted something like that. I said, sometimes I wonder as I gaze into the night sky, whether the stars themselves are gazing back at me. Oh, damn. I didn't realize I sounded so damn high about it. And that's when people said, are you high? And you'll put down the joint. Are you, this is this is a reliable influx of people who are certainly look up. I think there's a, like a thing. I don't know what it is, bro. I don't think it's gay or anything. I think it'll just feel like the space is looking back at me. Well, maybe I'm gay for space, bro. Well, so, we're not likely the only life forms in the universe. There's probably very many, some vastly more intelligent than we are. Here, here we're sitting here looking up into the night sky, countless thousands of stars with binoculars. It rises into the millions of stars with telescopes. It rises into the billions. Oh God, there is surely civilizations there looking up at their night sky, and they see our star, the Sun, as part of some constellation that they identify in their night sky. And there's a Theo Von there looking up, asking, is anyone up there looking down at me? And we get to say, yes, we have your counterparts. We gotta feel fun in this galaxy too. No, no, I'm just saying, uh, it's fun to think about. We being in the night sky of some children's diagram as seen by another place in the galaxy. You got to answer the question. What do you tell me about the individuals? Whatever would you say? Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. I'll take you out with that. Do you know how precious life is? Most people don't. I didn't know. I think because look at the risks we take. Oh, let me jump out of an airplane. You know, and maybe the chute will open. All right. That's a whole kind of person we got out there. Just look at YouTube videos. Oh, yeah. All right. With the GoPro. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. All right. There's been about a hundred billion people who have ever lived. Wow. Really? Yes. And there's only eight billion now. No, about 100 billion if you add it up over all time. Damn. All right. So now, do you know how many people can exist? You take a look at the genes, find out how many combinations of genes can make an authentic human being. And you do that, you can do the math on this, and it is a stupendously larger number than the 100 billion. It is, I, I've given a number in here, but that even that's a low estimate. That could have existed over time, or that could exist total. Same difference. Okay. Okay. So I give a low-end number of a million trillion trillion total possible numbers of plausible human beings that could exist. What it means is, you are alive against stupendous odds. You are breathing air, observing sunsets, gazing into the night sky. Most people who could exist will never experience that. Wow. In fact, as Richard Dawkins has said brilliantly, you get to die. And he said, I don't want to die. I'm die. Most people who could exist will never even be born. And you're going to complain about the life you have? Yes. Not all lives are equally, I get that. Yes. And you could get the wrong hand dealt to you, either birth defects or or your family, whatever it is. Oh my God, that is your, whatever it is, that's what you've got. Yeah. Use it. Develop it. Do all you can within your power, and the power of others who love you, to to maximize what you can be, what you can think, what you can learn, how you can love. All of this, your gift. It's the gift because as you, most people, most people that could exist mathematically will never exist. Wow. So right there, you are a, you, you are a special, a living entity as there ever was. Amen. So, so in the end of this chapter, and, and, and what I do as an epitaph, there's a quote from an educator, Horseman. Uh, you might have heard the name. He was 200 years ago, brilliant guy, head of universities. He gave a commencement speech and he said, I beseech you. Love that word. Nobody uses it anymore. Yeah. You get, I mean, you feel girls hang up immediately. Oh, is that right? Is that right? I, I haven't tested it. I don't know. I'll try to bring it back and maybe it'll stay on with you. I beseech you. Yeah. If you say, I beseech you to go on a date with me, right? That's, that's the end of that call right there. Good day. Um, I beseech you to treasure up in your hearts these my parting words. Be ashamed to die until you've scored some victory for humanity. And if you've got one time on Earth, there it is. There it is. Uh, Neil deGrasse Tyson, thank you so much for your time, man. It really, uh, a delight to meet you. Of course. I know your work and it's, it's as it says, authentically honest. It's, you know, it's unpretentious. You're just feeling it out there on stage, and people, people, people know you're feeling it, and they feel it too. And I think it's some, it's some potent humor, which which gives you some power that, you know, you have power, but it's even more power than that because you can bring people with you. I'm starting to realize that more, you know, I want to be able to be as creative as I can in work, and also I want to be able to question things and think about stuff as much as I can. So I'm really grateful for this conversation right now in my life. And to stay relevant as a comedian, you got to stay on that frontier, right? You can't relax for a minute. Oh, man. Plus, a joke you told last week, you can't tell next week. Yeah. We're scientists. Well, I'll tell a few, but, but you'll hear the groan. The audience reaction evolves, right? Well, part of the groan is deep inside of myself because it knows it's not, I'm not maximizing my potential. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. Um, but thank you so much for your time, man. Uh, dude, thanks for having me. Yeah. You're, you're a value to humanity, and we appreciate you. Thank you. Now I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone. I'll share this piece of my life, and I can feel it in my bones. It's gonna take.