April 8, 2024 • 30 mins
On this podcast-only episode of The Middle, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson joins us to answer listener questions about boosting the sciences, exploring the unknown and answering some of the cosmos' biggest mysteries.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to a special bonus episode of The Middle Podcast.
I'm Jeremy Hobson along here with Tolliver.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey Tolliver, how you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Jam?
Speaker 4 (00:11):
All right?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
So we knew all of our listeners wanted more Neil
de grass Tyson after our latest show, So here he
is again, but this time without the constraints of the FCC.
If you want to swear Neil de grass Tyson, you
can do that.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
You can do that now.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
He's the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American
Museum of Natural History and author of many books, including
Starry Messenger Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization. Neil de grass Tyson,
thank you so much again for joining us.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
Thanks for having me. I'd love the concept to the show.
We need more of this.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Thank you so much. And I now get to ask
you the real question, which is, has intelligent life ever
made contact with Earth? Can you tell us the real
truth there?
Speaker 4 (00:47):
There's no evidence of that, Okay. I can't say yes
or no. I can just say there's no evidence, all right.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I spent a day embedded with folks who believe in
UFOs out in Los Angeles, and we spend a day
looking for these things. And every single time we had
a telephone lens was a balloon. So I'm just asking
people please hold on to your balloons because you're driving
people crazy out here, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
All right, I mean it could have been a Chinese
bi balloon too. Right, Let's go to the phones because
we've got a lot of calls here, and Jesse is
joining us from Maine. Jesse, welcome to the middle. Go
ahead with Neil de grass Tyson.
Speaker 5 (01:22):
Hi.
Speaker 6 (01:22):
Thanks, Yes, I can also confirm that this guy's near
Vinalhaven are still beautiful. I'm a lobsterman out of Booth
Bay Harbor and we're frequently out there.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (01:33):
And my question for science is we as fishermen are
commonly referred to as science deniers, and we wanted denial,
no windmills, no this, no, that the other thing. But
I think I'd like to point out that we're really
science demanders. You know, we get these data sets that
then go to governance and go into our regulations. But
(01:54):
the problem we have is in science denial where we
need to demand more of it. So how do we
create an open platform science and especially make it mandatory
if it's going to go towards regulation and laws.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
So in a democracy, if that's in fact what we
live in, you would need to elect people who have
a deeper care of the science that goes into the regulations.
So if there's a mismatch between who's doing the regulating
and you who are in the trenches, if I can
call it that you're out there with the fish, not
swimming with the fish, that'd be a different fate. If
(02:30):
they're out there with the fish, then there's a disconnect.
So you vote someone in who has not has the knowledge.
That's necessary because at some point it's an elect if
they're an official somewhere in there, somebody got elected. Okay,
So I know that sounds simpler than it often is,
but that's really the solution. And by electing people who
(02:51):
care about science, that completely transforms how decisions are made
with regard to laws and legislation. And it's not based
on someone's religion or their cultural background or the history.
Is based on objective truths found by methods and tools
of science, and objective truths apply to everyone, unlike your
personal truths that could be like I said, religious or
(03:13):
cultural or otherwise. You also had a comment about the
enterprise of science. It's always been true the publisher parish.
But publisher perish is not as bad as it sounds.
Let me reword that you ready work or lose your job.
Okay this you know I could say this to any
(03:34):
of you in your job. Are you going to work today?
Well no, well then you're not. Then you're fired. So
this publisher parish, that's your job. Your job is to do.
If you're a research scientist, that's your job to be
on the frontier. If you're not on the frontier, then
go home and make room for someone else who needs
to be or wants to be, or who already is.
(03:57):
And so now this is a concern that you pay
to play. But there's some phrase you use there. Journals
are now going into open model is a term for it,
open source journals where no longer do you pay to
have your article in a journal, that the journals are free,
(04:17):
that libraries pay to subscribe to them, and then that
that pays for their production costs and the like and
some of so much of it is just digital these
days rather than paper costs. So that's been removed. The
bigger problem in science is the verification problem. If you
come up with a result and people like the result,
(04:38):
and then the journalists get a hold of it and
say this is true, and no one has verified it.
It's not true yet scientifically. And what's odd is on
the internet, you know what's irresistible. You're surfing the internet
and there's a YouTube that comes up and a person says,
the establishment thinks this is true. Well, atablishment will change.
(05:01):
But I have the answer that they're trying to suppress.
Speaker 5 (05:04):
Bump.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
You're all in. It doesn't matter what the topic is,
because this has sort of given mainstream science a bad name.
The whole point of mainstream science that stuff has been verified.
If you're a lone wolf and you're saying you've got
an answer that no one else has, the chances are
you're wrong.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I think that that Jesse got quite the answer there
from you, Neil de gress Tyson.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Let's see, I didn't get all emotional about it. Sorry,
I just.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
No, no, no. I mean I can see why he
would be emotional about it too, as a as a
lobsterman who his business depends on on the science, and
and also I can see why you'd be emotional about
it as well. Let's let's see, I just.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
Made the connection. It's Maine and he's got lobsters. Yeah,
I just got it was a little bit slow on
the uptake there.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
All right, let's let's let's go to Hannah, who's in
ann Arbor, Michigan. Hannah, welcome to the middle.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Go ahead.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
Hi.
Speaker 7 (05:53):
I'm a big fan, and I know you've had a
really great career in academia and research, but also as
a public figure. So I was wondering if you think
that scientists can or should also kind of spread awareness
about their fields through public awareness, kind of like you have.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Yeah, it's so I can tell you there's a lot
of nuances here and let me sort of compress it
so we can get even more questions in the short
time that we have together. That in when you're formally
trained as a scientist, nowhere in there is there any
training to communicate, not verbally writing. Yes, you have to
(06:32):
be able to write, but that's most people can do that.
Not only that, there's some percent of my colleagues who
we now now that we have neurodiverse vocabulary, some percentage
are on the autism spectrum. And we might have said
asperger is in a day, but I think that's been
merged to the to the autism umbrella. And if that's
(06:54):
what you are, you're perfectly happy in the lab and
you don't want to talk to anybody, so you shouldn't
be forced to. So there's enough of us who have
energy to do so that do do. So. I'm visible
because I have like big platforms, but if you.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Dig it, well, you're also visible because you are. I mean,
I am the stepchild of two physicists, and both of
them have talked about you as a as a communicator.
That is very unusual in the scientific community. The scientists
have scientists brains and you have both.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Yeah, so, and I'm saying it's not there's no force
to nurture it on the route to the PhD, which
is the entry gate to to research science. So not
only is it not nurtured, you can be a great
scientist and have no social skills at all. Right, right,
So so that means that this task it would be
(07:49):
unrealistic to require it of everyone. But I can tell
you if you go, if you search for science popularizers
on YouTube, the list is growing. And I'm very happy
to see that because one day I'm going to like
step out the back door when there's enough everyone else
on the landscape, and then you won't even miss me
because everybody else is doing that, and it'll be the
(08:10):
natural course of what you'd expect in all of the professions,
if not by all the scientists, many of them.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Let's go to Isaac, who's in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Isaac,
Welcome to the middle. Go ahead with Neil de grasse Tyson.
Speaker 8 (08:23):
Hi, thank you for having me. Kind of have an
interesting question for you. So, if you could solve one
cosmic mystery with the snap of your fingers, which mystery
would it be? And why would you choose it so basically?
And also how would this resolution basically impact the understanding
of the universe.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
I love when people ask if you could solve one
thing with the snap of your fingers. So, yes, go ahead.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Okay, So I have a cop out answer. I don't
know if the caller will be happy with this answer,
but it's the answer I'm giving you. You ready, Yeah,
I remembered questions growing up, not growing up in graduate school.
If I only had the answer to this question, then
everything would be solved. Then I realized when the answer
to that question arrived, it led to other questions It
(09:13):
put me on a new vista where I could see
farther than I could see before, and new questions than
became important to me. So because of this life experience,
no longer do I say I just need the answer
to this, that's all. I don't think that way because
for me, it is the eternal arrival of questions after
(09:38):
every new question that's answered, That is the lifeblood of science.
Now there are questions I do have and I don't
know their answer. For example, are we smart enough to
answer the questions that we've posed? Or deeper still, are
we smart enough to even know what questions to ask?
(10:01):
I lay awake wondering whether the human mind, as proud
of it as we are, is sufficient to completely understand
the universe itself. So so the questions are we smart
enough to understand the universe? If I get that answer
and the answer and the answer is yes, then I'll
(10:23):
go back like Gangbusters and be fearless of the frontier,
which I sort of already am. But I carry this
suspicion that maybe something could be too hard for the
limited brain wiring contained within humans. It might need some alien,
which is who's one hundred times smarter than us to
figure it all out.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Or a robot.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
What about a robot, Well, if it's a robot that
we built, if it's AI, here's the problem with AI.
We we humans build telescopes. AI doesn't build telescopes, all right.
A human will pose a question, devise an experiment to solve,
(11:05):
build the experiment and do it. So unless we have
robots that can build apparatus, we don't really have them
who can do that. Maybe that'll happen one day, but
the actual moving of the frontier I don't see that
happening with either AI or robots in the foreseeable future.
AI is very good at aping what we've already done
and coming up with possibly new ways to do what
(11:29):
we do, But to have a completely new thought, I don't.
I don't know. For example, if you go up to
AI and said and say, write me a play, you
can say in the style of Shakespeare, but about my family, okay,
and your feed it stuff. So it'll might do that,
all right. But if you say write me a play
in the style of someone who has never been born,
(11:50):
and it'll like, what what? Because there's no there's no data,
there's no place to mine on the internet to get
information of someone who never existed. So I still think
humans have some value in the world.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I agree. I agree with that. Let's go to Jackson,
who's in Tallahassee, Florida. Jackson, welcome to the middle. Go
ahead with Neilda grass Tyson.
Speaker 5 (12:14):
Hey, it's a huge honor to be talking to you.
My question was, what's your opinion on the naming of
things like telescopes, or reactions or different phenomenon in terms
of how those names are tied to their namesakes, like
political or cultural beliefs, and how that like progresses with
(12:37):
as culture and society changes.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Are you talking about telescopes specifically or more broadly things
in our society more more broadly? Okay, So there's an
entire section of my book Starry Messenger Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization.
There's an entire section in there on the naming of things.
It's in particular statues. Right after the George Floyd murder,
(13:00):
there was a removal of many statues that at one
time were revered and then not right. So, my daughter
has offered her opinion on this, and I kind of agree.
I just don't know how you would invoke it in practice.
She said, don't name anything after anybody. Why would you
ever have to do that? Come up with some other
(13:22):
clever name, especially in modern times where we know everything
about everybody, Okay, And so the concept of a hero,
which is only the most perfect ethereal elements of a
human being in an era before the internet, that was
possible host in an internet world where all your all
(13:45):
your pictures, all your your pictures when you were drunk
at the party, that's online, and now you're running for office.
Not that that would be discounting today, but there was
a day when that would have been damning. Not anymore so.
Social cultural mora shift, yes, but our access to information
about a person is so thorough that no longer I
(14:07):
don't think can we just revere people the way we
once did and build statues to them?
Speaker 1 (14:12):
What about planets, because don't they name like these far
off planets after people too?
Speaker 4 (14:17):
Okay, planet, So let's get astronomical. So the planets are
named after Roman gods, and their moons are named after
Greek characters in the life of the Greek counterpart to
that Roman god. So that's the Greek and Roman sort
of tracking of our philosophies and our science. Two thirds
of all stars in the night sky that have names
(14:40):
have Arabic names, and these come from the Arabic culture
from a thousand years ago, the Golden Age of Islam.
So now we have the Islamic cultures, the Arabic culture.
What was not represented there is Asian cultures, so India, China,
nor Aboriginal Australia, nor first People's in the Americas. Those
(15:01):
are not represented in the official naming of things, and
that has to do with influence over who had the
power to name things. So, but most of that is mythical,
magical things. And so you're not going to later find
out that Zeus did something bad and you want to
rename Jupiter right that that's not going to happen. We're
not headed in that direction. The interloper to the Solar
(15:23):
System the first of its kind. It was a comic
object that came from interstellar space. It was named oh
Mua Mua, which is Hawaiian for first scout. That object
was discovered using telescopes in Hawaii, so they figured, let's
name that and keep in the culture of the region.
We've always done that, even if imperfectly, and I've been
(15:46):
proud of my field for at least attempting that.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
But by the way, you know, you're talking about different ethnicities,
different places around the world, different kinds of people, and
things getting named after them. You bring up something really
interesting in your book that I hadn't thought very much
about out. But it's that you know, when you go
up to somebody and you say where are you from?
And they say, well, I'm from Brooklyn, and it's like, well,
where are your parents from? And they're from Italy? And
(16:10):
you say, you know, we like to pick the place
that that that makes the most sense for us, that
we like the most to say where we're.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
From arbitrary right from the place. Yeah, let me just
resay what you just said, because you mixed two of them.
I did a bad job. Say so only in America.
You say what are you? Right? So you say what
are you? I'm Italian? They said, well, where were you
born at Brooklyn? Where are your parents born Brooklyn? Where
were their parents born? Italy? So I'm Italian? Right? That's
(16:39):
kind of what Why doesn't he just say American? But
he doesn't. He goes back to a point where he
wants to establish in the flag plant and establish a
bit of pride another person I did the same exercise.
They said, we're Swedish. They said, where were you born
in New York City? Well, where are your parents born
in Minnesota? Where are their parents born Minnesota? Where were
(17:00):
their parents born Sweden? So I'm Swedish. Okay. So they
went to the point where they wanted to display this
for the person asking the question, and I say, well,
why stop there? Why don't you just keep going back?
Speaker 5 (17:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (17:13):
And by the way, if you did that, you know
where you land. Africa. So on that level, we're all African.
And what who you're declaring is your family is an
arbitrary cutoff point in your ancestral tree to the point
where you have a sense of comfort and pride in
(17:35):
where you have pitched your planted your flag. But you
should be self aware that it's arbitrary.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
We'll be right back with more of your calls coming
up on the Middle. This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
If you're just tuning, in the Middle is a national
call and show. We're focused on elevating voices from the
middle geographically, politically and philosophically, or maybe you just want
to meet in the middle. Two more calls I want
to get to one is Tyler and Saint Lewis Tyler
go ahead with Neil de Grasse Tyson.
Speaker 9 (18:03):
Hey, Neil just wanted to ask where does the energy
come from to make virtual particles? And as a bonus question,
is that still the current knowledge for Hawking radiation and
why black Wolf gets smaller?
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Yes, that's to the second question, the first question. In
the vacuum of space, we learned from quantum physics that
there's no such thing as zero energy, that fluctuations, quantum
fluctuations will always manifest as a tiny amount of energy
(18:36):
in the vacuum. We call it vacuum energy. There's its
own entry in the wiki page the vacuum energy. It's
out of that energy that virtual particles come into and
out of existence. And my favorite new understanding of virtual particles,
and I got this from I had lunch with Brian Green,
a friend and colleague up at Columbia, a physicist strength
(18:57):
theorist wrote the best selling book The Elegant Universe. He
alerted me that recent research on virtual particles, these are
particles that pop into existence and then they find each
other again and disappear, So they have these loops in
time and if one of these virtual particles forms outside
(19:18):
the boundary of a black hole, you could possibly lose
one inside the black hole and the other goes the
other direction, and the black hole effectively evaporates this way,
all right, So these two particles are entangled, they're quantum entangled.
And he was suggesting, through the work of others that
(19:39):
that entanglement might be many wormholes that connect the virtual particles,
that connect any two virtual particles, but the vacuum of
space is teeming with them, and it might be that
these wormholes between virtual particles is the actual thread of
the fabric of space time. And that blew my mind.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Tyler, does that answer your question?
Speaker 9 (20:01):
Oh? Totally, thank you.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
I got a bunch of door Yeah, definitely, go for it.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Thank you, Tyler. And let's go to Sam who's in Minnesota. Sam,
Welcome to the middle. Go ahead with Neil de grasse Tyson.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Holy holy, holy h how continue on the grass type
and that's insane. My question is I'm a social scientist,
I say, the sociology and psychology here at the University
of Minnesota, and how can we integrate, how can we
work together? How can we the heart sciences and the
social sciences work for the betterment of our society. More
than once. When I tell people I'm a psychologist and
(20:35):
I do research, or I'm a scientist, people says like, well,
what do you know about math? Well, what do you
know a chemistry? And where's your lab coat? And it's
always hard to for people to get the idea that
both are, at least my understanding, they're both linked together.
There so importantly more than once, I have to use
my sociological brain and say I understand that this particular
(20:59):
psychology experiment gave this results. But you also have to
take into accoun the societal background of the individual. Like
IQ tests. Yeah, the math might be okay, and a
particular sector of the population gets always a good test. Great,
but you also have to know that background of why
this particular sector of the population has that's better grade.
(21:21):
So how can we work together?
Speaker 4 (21:24):
By the way, I have deep respect for sociologists. My
father was a sociologist who's active in the civil rights movement.
Worked under Mayor Lindsay in New York City, so he
was a practical sociologist. He applied his formal knowledge to
try to solve urban problems in the nineteen sixties and
nineteen seventies, so I think deeply about sociology. I would.
(21:45):
In fact, my book that is the intermittent subject of
this conversation is dedicated to my father, and because so
much of the book is sociologically infused. So I invite you,
by proxy, through my father's influence on me, to you
to have a look at the ways I have blended
(22:09):
the methods and tools of the physical sciences as well
as a cosmic perspective onto social cultural problems that we
confront And some of them are again or not simply
are you right or wrong? It's have you really thought
it through? I give a very fast example. It's not
sociology as much as this will appear in a different chapter,
(22:30):
but it's it's related. You get a person who's a
vegetarian because they don't want to kill animals. So let's
take that person for an example, and they might have
a humane mouse trap in their basement. Okay, and so
they trap the mouse. You got to check on it
often because they'll dry up real fast. If you know,
you know, you got them, like okay, so there they are,
(22:51):
and then you'll release them into the wild and you'll
feel good about yourself because you don't want to kill
an animal. I don't have a problem with that, but
I want you to understand completely what's going going on there.
What's going on is you took a mouse from your
basement and put it into the wild where it's life
expectancy is between six months a year. Half of all
those mice are eaten within a year that make tasty
(23:13):
snacks for owls and hawks. And if you if you
were living a home that mice get in, there are
these things that eat mice that are out there in
the wild wilds of your backyards. So so whereas if
you really care about the life of the mouse, you
should leave it in your basement. There it could live
four or five six years.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
And so if so in your basement scared of ice.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
So so I don't mind you saying you care about
animal life, but don't now turn around and commit the
life of a mouse to the belly of an owl
when you could have actually cared for the mouse and
have it live it and die a natural death rather
than being eaten and a death of old age. That
is so, that's just an example of I want people
(24:00):
to just fully think things through, and when you do
typically it softens the strength with which you held a view.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Since we're thinking things through, I just finally want to
ask you, Neil Degrassez, and because I'm sure our listeners
will be very interested in hearing this, and I know
you've been thinking about it, is predictions for the year
twenty fifty. What are a couple What are a couple
of predictions that you have.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
Whole there's a whole chapter where I chronicle advances in
civilization brought about by science and technology in thirty year
increments from eighteen seventy up through twenty twenty. And I
assert and defend in the text that at the end
(24:43):
of each of those thirty year periods they're unrecognizable to
anyone from thirty years earlier, basically unrecognizable. For example, nineteen
hundred to nineteen thirty. Well, in nineteen hundred everyone was
getting around on horses. In nineteen thirty you couldn't give
away a horse. We had fought an entire world war
and had a pandemic that killed fifty million people. And
(25:06):
I also have famous bad predictions that people make. They
have no capacity to make the giant conceptual leaps that
are required, and a good example, let's go back to
nineteen nineties. That's thirty years ago from the twenty twenties.
In nineteen ninety three, eight and T had a TV
ad where they're talking about the future, and they got
(25:27):
a lot, right, have you ever da da da da da,
Well you will and AT and T will bring it
to you.
Speaker 5 (25:31):
Well.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
One of them was they had someone doing something that
I've never dreamt of doing. Never did you, never.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Want to do, never will do.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Okay, there's someone on a beach chair and he's got
a tablet and he's typing away on the tablet and
he hits the tablet and he said, have you ever
wanted to send a fax from the beach? Well, you
will in eight and T will bring it. So they
had no idea that thirty years from nineteen ninety three,
no one is sending faxes. We tend to think linearly.
(26:01):
So we've now asked if I want to go thirty
years into the future. I thought I should put out
my own predictions because I was making fun of other
people's predictions. So I should have predictions so that other
people can make fun of mine when the year twenty
fifty comes. So one of them is psychology will be
rendered obsolete by advances in neuroscience, where we understand the
(26:21):
mind so well, you just go in there and niptuck
and change the chemistry and whatever is the thing that
you spent one hundred hours on a psychologist's couch to
get resolved gets done in one office visit. And by
the way, you can then treat everyone in the mental hospitals.
This way, they would be treated and back to what
we call normal. But you have to be careful what
(26:42):
normal is. All right, maybe someone is different and that's
cool as long as they're not harming someonech So that's
one prediction I have. And another one is all cars
will be autonomous, self driving by twenty fifty. And that's
not even stretch to make that prediction, because, like I said,
we went from nineteen hundred where everybody had horses, to
(27:02):
forget nineteen thirty nineteen fifteen, where you couldn't give away
a horse. The only horses left were pulling tractors in farms.
In cities, you couldn't find horses anymore. We built civilization
on the literal and figurative backs of horses for thousands
of years, and within one ten year span, fifteen year span,
(27:23):
they were gone, replaced by automobiles. And so if we
can replace horses with automobiles, then we can replace automobiles
with automobiles ones that you drive versus one that's driven
by a computer, that is never drunk, that is never
too sleepy, that doesn't need a cup of coffee, and
in fact, if it wanted to, it could probably text
and drive at the same time. They can go ninety
(27:44):
miles an hour two car lengths behind the car in
front of it. They can have way better reflexes than
you do. They can stop on a dime, they can
talk to other cars when they want to change lanes,
those cars will separate, give them room to get in,
and automobile deaths in the country will drop from thirty
five thousand to zero. I predict that in the year
twenty fifty. And if you really want to drive a car,
(28:05):
there'll be car parks, Okay, like today, if you want
to ride a horse, you go to a stables and
you can ride a horse. So we'll have these tracks
where you can physically drive a car bumper car, which oh.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yeah, right, actually no, I'm just going to say, you know,
speaking of bumper cars, that as you're talking about how
things change every thirty years. Have you ever I don't know.
Have you ever been to Disney World, But there's a
ride there that I went. I've been one time, and
I went on something called the Carousel of Progress, which
was created by Walt Disney, and it's like a it's
a long running animatronic stage show where they show you
(28:38):
thirty years now, thirty years later, thirty years look a moving.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
Right right right from Diorama to Diorama. Right, yes, right,
right right right yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Well, Neil deGrasse Tyson, thank you so much for joining
us for this special podcast extra of the Middle.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
I'm glad we could take those few extra questions. Thanks
for keeping me on for.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
That, me too, and Tolliver. What is on tapped for
next week?
Speaker 4 (29:01):
On the show?
Speaker 2 (29:01):
For next week's show, it's all about the money, specifically,
are you saving money for your future? No, you can
call us at eight four.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
Four four Middle.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
That's eight four four four six four three three five
three are right in at Listen to the Middle dot com.
And while you're there, sign up for our weekly newsletter.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
And by the way, I said next week, it's actually
not next week anymore because this is a special podcast bonus.
It's only in just a few days from now that'll
be there.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
The Middle is.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Brought to you by Long Nook Media, distributed by Illinois
Public Media and or Bana, Illinois, and produced by Joeann Jennings,
Harrison Patino, John Barth, and Danny Alexander. Our technical director
this week is Steve mork. Thanks to Nashville Public Radio, iHeartMedia,
and the more than four hundred public radio stations making
it possible for people across the country to listen to
the Middle. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Jeremy Hobson and
I'll talk to you soon.
Welcome to a special bonus episode of The Middle Podcast.
I'm Jeremy Hobson along here with Tolliver.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey Tolliver, how you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Jam?
Speaker 4 (00:11):
All right?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
So we knew all of our listeners wanted more Neil
de grass Tyson after our latest show, So here he
is again, but this time without the constraints of the FCC.
If you want to swear Neil de grass Tyson, you
can do that.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
You can do that now.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
He's the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American
Museum of Natural History and author of many books, including
Starry Messenger Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization. Neil de grass Tyson,
thank you so much again for joining us.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
Thanks for having me. I'd love the concept to the show.
We need more of this.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Thank you so much. And I now get to ask
you the real question, which is, has intelligent life ever
made contact with Earth? Can you tell us the real
truth there?
Speaker 4 (00:47):
There's no evidence of that, Okay. I can't say yes
or no. I can just say there's no evidence, all right.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I spent a day embedded with folks who believe in
UFOs out in Los Angeles, and we spend a day
looking for these things. And every single time we had
a telephone lens was a balloon. So I'm just asking
people please hold on to your balloons because you're driving
people crazy out here, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
All right, I mean it could have been a Chinese
bi balloon too. Right, Let's go to the phones because
we've got a lot of calls here, and Jesse is
joining us from Maine. Jesse, welcome to the middle. Go
ahead with Neil de grass Tyson.
Speaker 5 (01:22):
Hi.
Speaker 6 (01:22):
Thanks, Yes, I can also confirm that this guy's near
Vinalhaven are still beautiful. I'm a lobsterman out of Booth
Bay Harbor and we're frequently out there.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (01:33):
And my question for science is we as fishermen are
commonly referred to as science deniers, and we wanted denial,
no windmills, no this, no, that the other thing. But
I think I'd like to point out that we're really
science demanders. You know, we get these data sets that
then go to governance and go into our regulations. But
(01:54):
the problem we have is in science denial where we
need to demand more of it. So how do we
create an open platform science and especially make it mandatory
if it's going to go towards regulation and laws.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
So in a democracy, if that's in fact what we
live in, you would need to elect people who have
a deeper care of the science that goes into the regulations.
So if there's a mismatch between who's doing the regulating
and you who are in the trenches, if I can
call it that you're out there with the fish, not
swimming with the fish, that'd be a different fate. If
(02:30):
they're out there with the fish, then there's a disconnect.
So you vote someone in who has not has the knowledge.
That's necessary because at some point it's an elect if
they're an official somewhere in there, somebody got elected. Okay,
So I know that sounds simpler than it often is,
but that's really the solution. And by electing people who
(02:51):
care about science, that completely transforms how decisions are made
with regard to laws and legislation. And it's not based
on someone's religion or their cultural background or the history.
Is based on objective truths found by methods and tools
of science, and objective truths apply to everyone, unlike your
personal truths that could be like I said, religious or
(03:13):
cultural or otherwise. You also had a comment about the
enterprise of science. It's always been true the publisher parish.
But publisher perish is not as bad as it sounds.
Let me reword that you ready work or lose your job.
Okay this you know I could say this to any
(03:34):
of you in your job. Are you going to work today?
Well no, well then you're not. Then you're fired. So
this publisher parish, that's your job. Your job is to do.
If you're a research scientist, that's your job to be
on the frontier. If you're not on the frontier, then
go home and make room for someone else who needs
to be or wants to be, or who already is.
(03:57):
And so now this is a concern that you pay
to play. But there's some phrase you use there. Journals
are now going into open model is a term for it,
open source journals where no longer do you pay to
have your article in a journal, that the journals are free,
(04:17):
that libraries pay to subscribe to them, and then that
that pays for their production costs and the like and
some of so much of it is just digital these
days rather than paper costs. So that's been removed. The
bigger problem in science is the verification problem. If you
come up with a result and people like the result,
(04:38):
and then the journalists get a hold of it and
say this is true, and no one has verified it.
It's not true yet scientifically. And what's odd is on
the internet, you know what's irresistible. You're surfing the internet
and there's a YouTube that comes up and a person says,
the establishment thinks this is true. Well, atablishment will change.
(05:01):
But I have the answer that they're trying to suppress.
Speaker 5 (05:04):
Bump.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
You're all in. It doesn't matter what the topic is,
because this has sort of given mainstream science a bad name.
The whole point of mainstream science that stuff has been verified.
If you're a lone wolf and you're saying you've got
an answer that no one else has, the chances are
you're wrong.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I think that that Jesse got quite the answer there
from you, Neil de gress Tyson.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Let's see, I didn't get all emotional about it. Sorry,
I just.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
No, no, no. I mean I can see why he
would be emotional about it too, as a as a
lobsterman who his business depends on on the science, and
and also I can see why you'd be emotional about
it as well. Let's let's see, I just.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
Made the connection. It's Maine and he's got lobsters. Yeah,
I just got it was a little bit slow on
the uptake there.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
All right, let's let's let's go to Hannah, who's in
ann Arbor, Michigan. Hannah, welcome to the middle.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Go ahead.
Speaker 5 (05:53):
Hi.
Speaker 7 (05:53):
I'm a big fan, and I know you've had a
really great career in academia and research, but also as
a public figure. So I was wondering if you think
that scientists can or should also kind of spread awareness
about their fields through public awareness, kind of like you have.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Yeah, it's so I can tell you there's a lot
of nuances here and let me sort of compress it
so we can get even more questions in the short
time that we have together. That in when you're formally
trained as a scientist, nowhere in there is there any
training to communicate, not verbally writing. Yes, you have to
(06:32):
be able to write, but that's most people can do that.
Not only that, there's some percent of my colleagues who
we now now that we have neurodiverse vocabulary, some percentage
are on the autism spectrum. And we might have said
asperger is in a day, but I think that's been
merged to the to the autism umbrella. And if that's
(06:54):
what you are, you're perfectly happy in the lab and
you don't want to talk to anybody, so you shouldn't
be forced to. So there's enough of us who have
energy to do so that do do. So. I'm visible
because I have like big platforms, but if you.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Dig it, well, you're also visible because you are. I mean,
I am the stepchild of two physicists, and both of
them have talked about you as a as a communicator.
That is very unusual in the scientific community. The scientists
have scientists brains and you have both.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Yeah, so, and I'm saying it's not there's no force
to nurture it on the route to the PhD, which
is the entry gate to to research science. So not
only is it not nurtured, you can be a great
scientist and have no social skills at all. Right, right,
So so that means that this task it would be
(07:49):
unrealistic to require it of everyone. But I can tell
you if you go, if you search for science popularizers
on YouTube, the list is growing. And I'm very happy
to see that because one day I'm going to like
step out the back door when there's enough everyone else
on the landscape, and then you won't even miss me
because everybody else is doing that, and it'll be the
(08:10):
natural course of what you'd expect in all of the professions,
if not by all the scientists, many of them.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Let's go to Isaac, who's in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Isaac,
Welcome to the middle. Go ahead with Neil de grasse Tyson.
Speaker 8 (08:23):
Hi, thank you for having me. Kind of have an
interesting question for you. So, if you could solve one
cosmic mystery with the snap of your fingers, which mystery
would it be? And why would you choose it so basically?
And also how would this resolution basically impact the understanding
of the universe.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
I love when people ask if you could solve one
thing with the snap of your fingers. So, yes, go ahead.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Okay, So I have a cop out answer. I don't
know if the caller will be happy with this answer,
but it's the answer I'm giving you. You ready, Yeah,
I remembered questions growing up, not growing up in graduate school.
If I only had the answer to this question, then
everything would be solved. Then I realized when the answer
to that question arrived, it led to other questions It
(09:13):
put me on a new vista where I could see
farther than I could see before, and new questions than
became important to me. So because of this life experience,
no longer do I say I just need the answer
to this, that's all. I don't think that way because
for me, it is the eternal arrival of questions after
(09:38):
every new question that's answered, That is the lifeblood of science.
Now there are questions I do have and I don't
know their answer. For example, are we smart enough to
answer the questions that we've posed? Or deeper still, are
we smart enough to even know what questions to ask?
(10:01):
I lay awake wondering whether the human mind, as proud
of it as we are, is sufficient to completely understand
the universe itself. So so the questions are we smart
enough to understand the universe? If I get that answer
and the answer and the answer is yes, then I'll
(10:23):
go back like Gangbusters and be fearless of the frontier,
which I sort of already am. But I carry this
suspicion that maybe something could be too hard for the
limited brain wiring contained within humans. It might need some alien,
which is who's one hundred times smarter than us to
figure it all out.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Or a robot.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
What about a robot, Well, if it's a robot that
we built, if it's AI, here's the problem with AI.
We we humans build telescopes. AI doesn't build telescopes, all right.
A human will pose a question, devise an experiment to solve,
(11:05):
build the experiment and do it. So unless we have
robots that can build apparatus, we don't really have them
who can do that. Maybe that'll happen one day, but
the actual moving of the frontier I don't see that
happening with either AI or robots in the foreseeable future.
AI is very good at aping what we've already done
and coming up with possibly new ways to do what
(11:29):
we do, But to have a completely new thought, I don't.
I don't know. For example, if you go up to
AI and said and say, write me a play, you
can say in the style of Shakespeare, but about my family, okay,
and your feed it stuff. So it'll might do that,
all right. But if you say write me a play
in the style of someone who has never been born,
(11:50):
and it'll like, what what? Because there's no there's no data,
there's no place to mine on the internet to get
information of someone who never existed. So I still think
humans have some value in the world.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I agree. I agree with that. Let's go to Jackson,
who's in Tallahassee, Florida. Jackson, welcome to the middle. Go
ahead with Neilda grass Tyson.
Speaker 5 (12:14):
Hey, it's a huge honor to be talking to you.
My question was, what's your opinion on the naming of
things like telescopes, or reactions or different phenomenon in terms
of how those names are tied to their namesakes, like
political or cultural beliefs, and how that like progresses with
(12:37):
as culture and society changes.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Are you talking about telescopes specifically or more broadly things
in our society more more broadly? Okay, So there's an
entire section of my book Starry Messenger Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization.
There's an entire section in there on the naming of things.
It's in particular statues. Right after the George Floyd murder,
(13:00):
there was a removal of many statues that at one
time were revered and then not right. So, my daughter
has offered her opinion on this, and I kind of agree.
I just don't know how you would invoke it in practice.
She said, don't name anything after anybody. Why would you
ever have to do that? Come up with some other
(13:22):
clever name, especially in modern times where we know everything
about everybody, Okay, And so the concept of a hero,
which is only the most perfect ethereal elements of a
human being in an era before the internet, that was
possible host in an internet world where all your all
(13:45):
your pictures, all your your pictures when you were drunk
at the party, that's online, and now you're running for office.
Not that that would be discounting today, but there was
a day when that would have been damning. Not anymore so.
Social cultural mora shift, yes, but our access to information
about a person is so thorough that no longer I
(14:07):
don't think can we just revere people the way we
once did and build statues to them?
Speaker 1 (14:12):
What about planets, because don't they name like these far
off planets after people too?
Speaker 4 (14:17):
Okay, planet, So let's get astronomical. So the planets are
named after Roman gods, and their moons are named after
Greek characters in the life of the Greek counterpart to
that Roman god. So that's the Greek and Roman sort
of tracking of our philosophies and our science. Two thirds
of all stars in the night sky that have names
(14:40):
have Arabic names, and these come from the Arabic culture
from a thousand years ago, the Golden Age of Islam.
So now we have the Islamic cultures, the Arabic culture.
What was not represented there is Asian cultures, so India, China,
nor Aboriginal Australia, nor first People's in the Americas. Those
(15:01):
are not represented in the official naming of things, and
that has to do with influence over who had the
power to name things. So, but most of that is mythical,
magical things. And so you're not going to later find
out that Zeus did something bad and you want to
rename Jupiter right that that's not going to happen. We're
not headed in that direction. The interloper to the Solar
(15:23):
System the first of its kind. It was a comic
object that came from interstellar space. It was named oh
Mua Mua, which is Hawaiian for first scout. That object
was discovered using telescopes in Hawaii, so they figured, let's
name that and keep in the culture of the region.
We've always done that, even if imperfectly, and I've been
(15:46):
proud of my field for at least attempting that.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
But by the way, you know, you're talking about different ethnicities,
different places around the world, different kinds of people, and
things getting named after them. You bring up something really
interesting in your book that I hadn't thought very much
about out. But it's that you know, when you go
up to somebody and you say where are you from?
And they say, well, I'm from Brooklyn, and it's like, well,
where are your parents from? And they're from Italy? And
(16:10):
you say, you know, we like to pick the place
that that that makes the most sense for us, that
we like the most to say where we're.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
From arbitrary right from the place. Yeah, let me just
resay what you just said, because you mixed two of them.
I did a bad job. Say so only in America.
You say what are you? Right? So you say what
are you? I'm Italian? They said, well, where were you
born at Brooklyn? Where are your parents born Brooklyn? Where
were their parents born? Italy? So I'm Italian? Right? That's
(16:39):
kind of what Why doesn't he just say American? But
he doesn't. He goes back to a point where he
wants to establish in the flag plant and establish a
bit of pride another person I did the same exercise.
They said, we're Swedish. They said, where were you born
in New York City? Well, where are your parents born
in Minnesota? Where are their parents born Minnesota? Where were
(17:00):
their parents born Sweden? So I'm Swedish. Okay. So they
went to the point where they wanted to display this
for the person asking the question, and I say, well,
why stop there? Why don't you just keep going back?
Speaker 5 (17:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (17:13):
And by the way, if you did that, you know
where you land. Africa. So on that level, we're all African.
And what who you're declaring is your family is an
arbitrary cutoff point in your ancestral tree to the point
where you have a sense of comfort and pride in
(17:35):
where you have pitched your planted your flag. But you
should be self aware that it's arbitrary.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
We'll be right back with more of your calls coming
up on the Middle. This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
If you're just tuning, in the Middle is a national
call and show. We're focused on elevating voices from the
middle geographically, politically and philosophically, or maybe you just want
to meet in the middle. Two more calls I want
to get to one is Tyler and Saint Lewis Tyler
go ahead with Neil de Grasse Tyson.
Speaker 9 (18:03):
Hey, Neil just wanted to ask where does the energy
come from to make virtual particles? And as a bonus question,
is that still the current knowledge for Hawking radiation and
why black Wolf gets smaller?
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Yes, that's to the second question, the first question. In
the vacuum of space, we learned from quantum physics that
there's no such thing as zero energy, that fluctuations, quantum
fluctuations will always manifest as a tiny amount of energy
(18:36):
in the vacuum. We call it vacuum energy. There's its
own entry in the wiki page the vacuum energy. It's
out of that energy that virtual particles come into and
out of existence. And my favorite new understanding of virtual particles,
and I got this from I had lunch with Brian Green,
a friend and colleague up at Columbia, a physicist strength
(18:57):
theorist wrote the best selling book The Elegant Universe. He
alerted me that recent research on virtual particles, these are
particles that pop into existence and then they find each
other again and disappear, So they have these loops in
time and if one of these virtual particles forms outside
(19:18):
the boundary of a black hole, you could possibly lose
one inside the black hole and the other goes the
other direction, and the black hole effectively evaporates this way,
all right, So these two particles are entangled, they're quantum entangled.
And he was suggesting, through the work of others that
(19:39):
that entanglement might be many wormholes that connect the virtual particles,
that connect any two virtual particles, but the vacuum of
space is teeming with them, and it might be that
these wormholes between virtual particles is the actual thread of
the fabric of space time. And that blew my mind.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Tyler, does that answer your question?
Speaker 9 (20:01):
Oh? Totally, thank you.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
I got a bunch of door Yeah, definitely, go for it.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Thank you, Tyler. And let's go to Sam who's in Minnesota. Sam,
Welcome to the middle. Go ahead with Neil de grasse Tyson.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Holy holy, holy h how continue on the grass type
and that's insane. My question is I'm a social scientist,
I say, the sociology and psychology here at the University
of Minnesota, and how can we integrate, how can we
work together? How can we the heart sciences and the
social sciences work for the betterment of our society. More
than once. When I tell people I'm a psychologist and
(20:35):
I do research, or I'm a scientist, people says like, well,
what do you know about math? Well, what do you
know a chemistry? And where's your lab coat? And it's
always hard to for people to get the idea that
both are, at least my understanding, they're both linked together.
There so importantly more than once, I have to use
my sociological brain and say I understand that this particular
(20:59):
psychology experiment gave this results. But you also have to
take into accoun the societal background of the individual. Like
IQ tests. Yeah, the math might be okay, and a
particular sector of the population gets always a good test. Great,
but you also have to know that background of why
this particular sector of the population has that's better grade.
(21:21):
So how can we work together?
Speaker 4 (21:24):
By the way, I have deep respect for sociologists. My
father was a sociologist who's active in the civil rights movement.
Worked under Mayor Lindsay in New York City, so he
was a practical sociologist. He applied his formal knowledge to
try to solve urban problems in the nineteen sixties and
nineteen seventies, so I think deeply about sociology. I would.
(21:45):
In fact, my book that is the intermittent subject of
this conversation is dedicated to my father, and because so
much of the book is sociologically infused. So I invite you,
by proxy, through my father's influence on me, to you
to have a look at the ways I have blended
(22:09):
the methods and tools of the physical sciences as well
as a cosmic perspective onto social cultural problems that we
confront And some of them are again or not simply
are you right or wrong? It's have you really thought
it through? I give a very fast example. It's not
sociology as much as this will appear in a different chapter,
(22:30):
but it's it's related. You get a person who's a
vegetarian because they don't want to kill animals. So let's
take that person for an example, and they might have
a humane mouse trap in their basement. Okay, and so
they trap the mouse. You got to check on it
often because they'll dry up real fast. If you know,
you know, you got them, like okay, so there they are,
(22:51):
and then you'll release them into the wild and you'll
feel good about yourself because you don't want to kill
an animal. I don't have a problem with that, but
I want you to understand completely what's going going on there.
What's going on is you took a mouse from your
basement and put it into the wild where it's life
expectancy is between six months a year. Half of all
those mice are eaten within a year that make tasty
(23:13):
snacks for owls and hawks. And if you if you
were living a home that mice get in, there are
these things that eat mice that are out there in
the wild wilds of your backyards. So so whereas if
you really care about the life of the mouse, you
should leave it in your basement. There it could live
four or five six years.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
And so if so in your basement scared of ice.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
So so I don't mind you saying you care about
animal life, but don't now turn around and commit the
life of a mouse to the belly of an owl
when you could have actually cared for the mouse and
have it live it and die a natural death rather
than being eaten and a death of old age. That
is so, that's just an example of I want people
(24:00):
to just fully think things through, and when you do
typically it softens the strength with which you held a view.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Since we're thinking things through, I just finally want to
ask you, Neil Degrassez, and because I'm sure our listeners
will be very interested in hearing this, and I know
you've been thinking about it, is predictions for the year
twenty fifty. What are a couple What are a couple
of predictions that you have.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
Whole there's a whole chapter where I chronicle advances in
civilization brought about by science and technology in thirty year
increments from eighteen seventy up through twenty twenty. And I
assert and defend in the text that at the end
(24:43):
of each of those thirty year periods they're unrecognizable to
anyone from thirty years earlier, basically unrecognizable. For example, nineteen
hundred to nineteen thirty. Well, in nineteen hundred everyone was
getting around on horses. In nineteen thirty you couldn't give
away a horse. We had fought an entire world war
and had a pandemic that killed fifty million people. And
(25:06):
I also have famous bad predictions that people make. They
have no capacity to make the giant conceptual leaps that
are required, and a good example, let's go back to
nineteen nineties. That's thirty years ago from the twenty twenties.
In nineteen ninety three, eight and T had a TV
ad where they're talking about the future, and they got
(25:27):
a lot, right, have you ever da da da da da,
Well you will and AT and T will bring it
to you.
Speaker 5 (25:31):
Well.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
One of them was they had someone doing something that
I've never dreamt of doing. Never did you, never.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Want to do, never will do.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Okay, there's someone on a beach chair and he's got
a tablet and he's typing away on the tablet and
he hits the tablet and he said, have you ever
wanted to send a fax from the beach? Well, you
will in eight and T will bring it. So they
had no idea that thirty years from nineteen ninety three,
no one is sending faxes. We tend to think linearly.
(26:01):
So we've now asked if I want to go thirty
years into the future. I thought I should put out
my own predictions because I was making fun of other
people's predictions. So I should have predictions so that other
people can make fun of mine when the year twenty
fifty comes. So one of them is psychology will be
rendered obsolete by advances in neuroscience, where we understand the
(26:21):
mind so well, you just go in there and niptuck
and change the chemistry and whatever is the thing that
you spent one hundred hours on a psychologist's couch to
get resolved gets done in one office visit. And by
the way, you can then treat everyone in the mental hospitals.
This way, they would be treated and back to what
we call normal. But you have to be careful what
(26:42):
normal is. All right, maybe someone is different and that's
cool as long as they're not harming someonech So that's
one prediction I have. And another one is all cars
will be autonomous, self driving by twenty fifty. And that's
not even stretch to make that prediction, because, like I said,
we went from nineteen hundred where everybody had horses, to
(27:02):
forget nineteen thirty nineteen fifteen, where you couldn't give away
a horse. The only horses left were pulling tractors in farms.
In cities, you couldn't find horses anymore. We built civilization
on the literal and figurative backs of horses for thousands
of years, and within one ten year span, fifteen year span,
(27:23):
they were gone, replaced by automobiles. And so if we
can replace horses with automobiles, then we can replace automobiles
with automobiles ones that you drive versus one that's driven
by a computer, that is never drunk, that is never
too sleepy, that doesn't need a cup of coffee, and
in fact, if it wanted to, it could probably text
and drive at the same time. They can go ninety
(27:44):
miles an hour two car lengths behind the car in
front of it. They can have way better reflexes than
you do. They can stop on a dime, they can
talk to other cars when they want to change lanes,
those cars will separate, give them room to get in,
and automobile deaths in the country will drop from thirty
five thousand to zero. I predict that in the year
twenty fifty. And if you really want to drive a car,
(28:05):
there'll be car parks, Okay, like today, if you want
to ride a horse, you go to a stables and
you can ride a horse. So we'll have these tracks
where you can physically drive a car bumper car, which oh.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yeah, right, actually no, I'm just going to say, you know,
speaking of bumper cars, that as you're talking about how
things change every thirty years. Have you ever I don't know.
Have you ever been to Disney World, But there's a
ride there that I went. I've been one time, and
I went on something called the Carousel of Progress, which
was created by Walt Disney, and it's like a it's
a long running animatronic stage show where they show you
(28:38):
thirty years now, thirty years later, thirty years look a moving.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
Right right right from Diorama to Diorama. Right, yes, right,
right right right yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Well, Neil deGrasse Tyson, thank you so much for joining
us for this special podcast extra of the Middle.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
I'm glad we could take those few extra questions. Thanks
for keeping me on for.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
That, me too, and Tolliver. What is on tapped for
next week?
Speaker 4 (29:01):
On the show?
Speaker 2 (29:01):
For next week's show, it's all about the money, specifically,
are you saving money for your future? No, you can
call us at eight four.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
Four four Middle.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
That's eight four four four six four three three five
three are right in at Listen to the Middle dot com.
And while you're there, sign up for our weekly newsletter.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
And by the way, I said next week, it's actually
not next week anymore because this is a special podcast bonus.
It's only in just a few days from now that'll
be there.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
The Middle is.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Brought to you by Long Nook Media, distributed by Illinois
Public Media and or Bana, Illinois, and produced by Joeann Jennings,
Harrison Patino, John Barth, and Danny Alexander. Our technical director
this week is Steve mork. Thanks to Nashville Public Radio, iHeartMedia,
and the more than four hundred public radio stations making
it possible for people across the country to listen to
the Middle. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Jeremy Hobson and
I'll talk to you soon.
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