Neil deGrasse Tyson On Aliens, Simulation Theory, and What Happens Inside A Black Hole

0:00 You had Obama make those comments about the subject of aliens. They're real b but I haven't seen'em and they're not being kept in Area fifty one unless they hit it from the president of the United States. No, no, no, no, no, no. Obama is scientifically literate. But if you have the aliens and you don't want the president to know, the president's not gonna know. So do you believe there's intelligent life in the universe? Well we have whistleblowers saying we have actual aliens. People testified we have aliens, that we have alien crash parts, so I don't see why they wouldn't be given the size of the universe. And what is the most pressing questions that people are asking right now about the universe? And the first thing I wanted to ask is Why are people so interested in going to the moon? It's geopolitical. China says they're going to the moon fifty years after we go to the moon and we all of a sudden decide we want to go to the moon? Is there an economic upside to it? No. No, no. I already answered you. I said we don't want them to go to the moon without us going to the moon. There's no laws up there, is there? Space law is a is a wild west at this point. It's like you owns the moon. Maybe. Well they're trying to figure that out. But don't delude yourself into thinking we ever went to the moon for science. Then or now.

1:03 Okay, next. Do you believe that we're in a simulation? I'm whiny about that, and I'll tell you why. And then can you explain what a black hole is like if you get sucked in. Okay. So you'll see the entire future history of the universe unfold. And then the difference in gravity between your feet and your head. gets greater and greater and greater. Eventually you'll snap into two pieces, likely separated at the base of your spine. And that's not even the worst part. And we'll get to that. And then just how small are we? Is there a most compelling UFO sighting that you can recall? Has your view of religion changed through all that you've learned about the universe? And what is the point of life? Wow. You have a good question.

1:41 So, let's get into this. Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins. The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on this show The most shared episodes, the most rated episodes. I would love you to know. And the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button. But also it's the simple easy free thing that you can do to help us make this show better. And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this one right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so so much. Uh

2:20 People come to you to try and understand the universe. What is the most pressing question people are asking you? Right now about the universe. Are we alone in the universe?

2:32 And that's influenced. By pop culture. Yeah. I'll give you an example. When the movie Ghost came out. Polls showed that more people believed in ghosts after that movie than before the movie.

2:44 So pop culture has a huge Is a huge force. Of influence. On our thoughts and feelings and attitudes and what we believe. Is or is not true.

2:54 So When you say what is the most pressing question Are we alone in the universe? Then they say, have we been visited and Uh how will it all end? That's another one. Usually God shows up in there. Is there God?

3:07 Uh there's an assumption. I think it's a naive assumption, but an interesting one nonetheless. That people who study the universe Might stumble upon God because we're Told.

3:18 Or at least in our artwork. Yeah. Gods live in the sky. So people then study this guy. When the Apollo astronauts came back, people said, Did you see God? Did you see heaven?

3:28 What is the essence of why people are so curious about these subjects? My best speculation. This is a wild speculation and I you know. My ego is not based on whether this is true. Fascinating for me to think about the fact.

3:41 We are completely comfortable. Sleeping on our backs. Ask yourself how many other animals Do that. Mm.

3:49 At all. Does a beetle say, I'm gonna turn over and go on my back and go Do spiders just go on their back? Think about it, that's quite vulnerable. You're asleep. And your belly is exposed, right? We sleep at night.

4:04 Typically. Okay. If you're outdoors Us sleep on your back. At night.

4:11 And you wake up. What's the first thing you see? The universe. The sky. You'll see, you know

4:20 Comets and meteors and the moon and and brighter stars, which we call planets. Eventually. And From night to night. Wait a minute, the moon had one shape and now it's a different shape and it's a different part of the sky. And these lights are moving and How could we not be curious?

4:39 When In the middle of the night you wake up And the universe presents itself to you. So I

4:47 Think. That's In our DNA. The curiosity. About the night sky.

4:56 I didn't make people interested in the universe. Jack when I was a kid. My first encounter with the night sky was a planetarium, the Hayden planetarium, here in New York City. I said, Wow, I wanna study the universe. But the universe is so interesting. Everybody's gonna want to study the universe. There'll be no room for me. And as I as I got older, I realized there are other things people are interested in.

5:17 Not everybody wants to study the universe professionally. However Whatever you choose as a profession. It doesn't change the fact that somewhere in you you're gonna look up and say

5:30 What does that replace in the universe? I thought you were gonna say when you talked about sleeping on their backs that We are now so comfortable being sort of Apex predator. And actually if But we're we won' we we're so interested in aliens because it's the only thing that would threaten our place is being able to sleep on our backs is the Apex Predator. Oh yeah, I'm I don't

5:51 Know that Ancient people were dreaming of aliens. It's just just the night sky itself. Well, all right. Uh let's not use the term alien. Let's just use the term gods. Mm. Where are most people's gods. They're in the sky. Yeah.

6:04 Uh even in ancient Greece. They're Mount Olympus. Not in the sky, but they're In high places. Look at posters with religioings. On them.

6:16 Typically it's a sunbeams coming through clouds and a beautiful landscape. You're looking at the sky. And by the way, what are our images Of deity.

6:28 Many of them could pass for aliens. Mm-hmm. Like the Gorgons, for example. Look at look at Medusa. Snakes for hair medusa. That's as alien as anything you would ever conjure. What else images of Jesus. He's floating he's got beams coming out of him. If he's not floating, he's walking on water. These are

6:46 These are things that go beyond anything that's earthly. So now People imagine aliens with all these same powers and weirdnesses. So I don't know that Alien is something specific. That's in our DNA to think about.

7:02 But to imagine things beyond ourselves. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And and so I would lump them together in that respect. One of the things that made me, I guess, more curious about aliens and meaning and purpose and gods and all these things was watching Cosmos, which was your series around the universe. And specifically it was Carl Sagan did it first. Carl Sagan. Well I watched both. A series I happen to host. Yeah. And they're b they both had the same impact on me, which was

7:28 They made me feel insignificant in the grand scheme of The cosmos. I think when you realize how insignificant we are, or small we are, should I say, in this grand scheme of even this Milky Way galaxy that's on the table in front of us. The Delta.

7:45 In the size of me and my world Versus all of this. Is mystery. And I and I I almost feel called to fill it with something. There's it Parkinson's law where you like you you You fill the space provided.

7:58 Uh it's it's the same thing with the universe. Just how small are we? No. In the grand scheme of the universe. Yeah. If you don't think in terms of

8:07 Metric. Size. How big are you? Are you this big, this big, this big. If you think in terms of powers of ten. Okay. So the thing's ten times bigger than us.

8:18 Ten times bigger than that. Ten times bigger than that. Just keep doing that. We're small compared with the universe. But we're huge. Compared with atoms.

8:30 And molecules. Now instead of going ten times bigger, go ten times smaller. One tenth. To be precise. What's one tenth our size? Well that's

8:38 This big. One tenth that is that big. One tenth that. You keep going down. You enter the realm of molecules and then atoms and then particles. So they're things much smaller. Then we are.

8:51 In fact, I addressed some of that. Mm. Right. I wrote an alien book recently. uh take me to your leader. There's a lot in there about

9:00 Changing your perspective. on what you might expect. Life forms to be like Out there. So you can ask the question. Are the life forms the size of a galaxy?

9:11 Or the life forms the size of atoms. Are we just biased by what our senses can Drink in from our own size scale. Mm. And that's an interesting fact. And so you know who would feel small if you were a life form this size of Molecules. Then then you're feeling small.

9:28 They're not much smaller than you if you're Molecular size life. Now we don't know how you would make that. Because life by our own understandings and definitions It has a metabolism. There's things that happen. You ask a biologist what is life, they'll give you a list of criteria. Which are hard if not impossible.

9:47 To be fulfilled. Bye. Life that's extremely small. And they still debate whether viruses are alive. Right. Based on some.

9:56 Right. But Some had speculated that life could be the size of nucleons. So a nucleon is the size of the particles in the nucleus of an atom.

10:07 S Things happen very quickly on that scale. So they might wonder how is it that we live so slowly? So So inverting

10:18 Your expectations is a Time honored exercise. And keeping you honest. Keeping your ego in check. You can go the other way, right? We this whole universe could be Something in a

10:28 Uh another life form's gut microbiome. Yeah, okay. So that was briefly addressed in the In the film. Um Men in black. Okay.

10:39 What I can say Is The Laws of physics manifest Differently on different scales.

10:48 So you can't just scale everything up. Which is why You don't have human sized insects. their legs would break under their own weight. It's why heavy animals have thick, chunky legs.

11:02 Yeah. It's why If you fell off the roof, you're dead. But an ant can just land and keep walking. Okay. Forces don't

11:11 Interact. In the same way. Depending on your scale. One of my favorite scenes. In the film.

11:19 A bug's life. I think that was a Pixar film. Pixar They must have a room full of scientists working for'em. There's a mosquito at a bar. So Mosquito orders a drink, so what drink does he order? Uh

11:32 Me too, I don't know. Mm-hmm. A bloody Mary. It's Okay.

11:39 Uh how big is a mosquito? It's this big. It's a bar. It's a like an insect bar. And so the bartender Brings over the bloody married. It just puts a blob

11:49 Of the liquid in front of it. It's not in a glass. Not in a jug. It's just there it is. Because surface tension.

11:59 is something that manifests in ways that Insects care about greatly. And we don't. Unless you're waxing your car. And then this water gets on and it beads up.

12:10 Mm. Okay. Surface tension is a property of fluid, liquids. Where The outer surface.

12:18 The molecules are a little more tightly Gathered. Because they don't have forces above them. to pull them into the solution that is the liquid. So transitioning from the liquid itself into air creates a kind of a film. All right.

12:33 And It holds the liquid in place. Mm. Unless it's too much liquid, then gravity becomes stronger. than the surface tension.

12:44 Exactly. But below a certain amount, the surface tension is greater than the gravity. Mm. And it beads up. So they knew this in that Movie. Mm-hmm. And I thought that was brilliant. My only point of this

12:56 Is to communicate. That You can't just scale things up. And expect everything to be happening in exactly the same way. But I want to get back to your point when you said you felt small. After you saw Cosmos.

13:09 You only felt small because you went in there with an ego that was unjustifiably too large to begin with. I'm accusing you of that. Probably. Yeah. However.

13:20 I go in there with no such ego. Okay. I look up at the stars. And I learn from modern astrophysics.

13:28 That The elements in our body We're forged in stars. That exploded the the elements, the the the the oxygen, the the carbon, the nitrogen, the the iron that courses through our blood. was forged in stars.

13:44 That at the end of their lives exploded. Scattering that enrichment into the galaxy out of which the next generations of stars are formed. early in the universe, we didn't have these ingredients. We could not exist as in our current form.

14:00 So When I look at I don't feel small. I feel large. Because I'm

14:08 Connected. To the cosmos. Chemically. And That

14:15 Connectivity. Let's let's make it a little more poetic. Not only Are we alive in this universe? The universe is alive within us.

14:27 And that fact Borders. On the spiritual. There's a astrophysical fact. That

14:36 gives you a pathway of relevance. To the universe. We are part of this great unfolding. Cosmic story. The fact that we are made of elements. Forged in the stars.

14:49 Next time you go out and look up, I want you to feel large. Not small. Because We are. Not only made

14:57 What stars have produced. We are solar powered. What do I mean by that? Okay, if you're If you're omnivorous. You maybe you had a steak last night?

15:11 Okay, that you're getting calories from the food you eat. And stake. Was once a cow. Okay. Uh what the cow eat? Cow eat plants. What do plants eat? Well they don't eat, they just sit there and receive sunlight.

15:24 So a cow. I said this once on the internet and freaked people out. Uh you know, I I should not shy away from speaking truth just'cause it freaks you out. A cow is a machine that we invented. 'Cause cows don't exist in the wild.

15:36 It's domesticated. A cow's a machine that we invented To turn grass. Into stake. So

15:46 Because at the end of that chain. Is grass that That's photosynthesis. Essentially a hundred percent of our Caloric.

15:56 Value. It's traceable to the To star specifically. The sun. So

16:05 You are solar powered and the universe is alive within you. So don't ever sit across from me again and say I feel small in the universe. Sorry. A lower pitched voice than that.

16:17 It's strange, isn't it, this idea of like significance as a concept, like I try to understand one's significance. And I think religion often gives us a sense of significance. Well it does. Yes, of course. Hence its its value to people. And it's persistence. Mm-hmm.

16:33 Uh throughout time and across cultures. Has your view of religion not change through all that you've learned about the universe in any way since you were this I've got this photos of you as a young man. What's that? You did some homework there? What you doing? Oh my hair was like this when I was that age. So Uh yeah, so this one Was my first telescope.

16:57 And that's my father helping me. Put it together. Y if I think about this young man here and and what he thought about religion. Um be more religious, less religious. If so why?

17:09 So You know, by the time I was Eight. It was nothing was making sense. That

17:16 People were telling me. About religion. What I didn't know is that belief systems Don't have to make sense. That's why the belief systems if they were made complete sense.

17:26 It would just be objectively true. If it's a belief system. Then It it's beyond Critical analysis.

17:36 It's just a belief system. Okay. So when I say beyond critical analysis, what I mean is If something in your belief system lends itself to be tested. We can test it.

17:47 And if what we test shows That what you believe is false. Are you gonna stop believing? Generally not. Because it's a belief system. Okay.

17:55 Most people want to engage. Yeah. Ultimately. with some kind of spiritual religious conversation I have found, especially given my access to the universe. And

18:08 In the early days There were easy answers. It was like This is this is religion. You know, go ahead. I'm doing science here. Then I thought

18:16 I owe people who are religious. A more informed and nuanced Engagement. Because of the Power that religion.

18:27 Has exercised. on the history of the world. It's not just cultural, it's political it's Yeah.

18:34 Economic it's So I started reading religious tract. And Now when I'm engaged in a conversation I have a full up conversation with people.

18:46 On Their beliefs. Whatever intersection. Yeah. Any

18:53 With the objective universe. And what those beliefs do for the person who holds them. And There are many places on the internet that claim me as an atheist.

19:07 And It's like I've never Embrace that title. So you're not an atheist. Only is I am as a scientist.

19:15 Okay. The start there. Now titles are lazy. I'll tell you why. Once you hand a title to someone

19:22 That gives you license to not have to think anymore. About who and what that person is. Regarding that subject. And that has never ended well. In my experience.

19:33 So First it's odd that Such a word as atheist exists at all. Think about it. It's a word that says what you're not.

19:43 Is there a word for non-golfers? Is is there a word for not Uh. Ask yourself. How many things do we have words for

19:52 For which you're not. Very few. And so This exercise I'm saying you're either with us or you're against us. And if you're against us, I have this word for you that says you're not this.

20:04 Like I said, that never ends well. It ends in war. And bloodshed. Typically. leading atheists today. Who write books on this.

20:14 Okay. Richard Dawkins is among them. Uh he wrote a book called The God Delusion. That's fighting words if there ever was one. These are people who Reject God, reject It's

20:25 Influence. on politics and society and lives and uh and we'd just as soon see a world without it. I'm not that guy. I have behavior. that would be rejected by any modern atheist thinker.

20:42 So what am I? Do we pick the next word. Would be agnostic. Okay. Okay, so let's pick that next word, which I also relate to. I would consider myself to be agnostic as well. Agnostic.

20:52 Um I kinda I just don't know. What's your leading view of where all of this stuff came from? Observations and experiment. The Big Bang. The Big Bang. Oh, it is so thoroughly supported, as fantastical as it is. Explain the Big Bang to me like I'm f fifteen. I'll explain to you like you're twelve. Okay, please. Even better. So Approximately thirteen point eight.

21:16 billion years ago. Everything. That you see. And interact with in this universe. Began.

21:26 In An infinitesimal. Point. That is the birth.

21:33 Of our universe. We have been expanding. Ever since. Now, how does something that big ever become that small? Well It's not matter trying to occupy the same space as itself. Energy.

21:46 Can be Essentially any size. Compacted. And then you can measure what's there by What the temperature is.

21:54 And so it was very hot. Fireball, basically. And as it expands, it cools, and the cooling energy makes matter. It's equals M C squared. Energy on one side. mass on the other side, this C squared is just the speed of light. Just a constant. But Einstein came up with this in nineteen oh five.

22:11 And it m made so much to the universe make sense at that point. And so Uh and it would take a while, do we expand? The we cool enough to make stars and galaxies and we're still expanding to this day. There are mysterious forces operating. That we don't yet understand.

22:29 What we call dark energy. That's a Pressure in the vacuum of space. Making us expand faster than What would be allowed by the collective gravity of all the galaxies?

22:43 That's a frontier question. That is not yet. Yeah. Then there's sources of gravity. that we don't know what's causing it. We call that dark matter.

22:55 If you add up dark matter and dark energy, it's ninety five percent. Of what's driving the universe. So everything you and I know and love. But the biology, chemistry, physics, astrophysics, forces. Food, calories, molecules, at solids, liquids, gas.

23:11 It's five percent of what's going on in the universe. That's Amazing. And This is why

23:20 When I began I said to you Sometimes I wonder whether we are smart enough. To figure out. the entirety of the universe.

23:29 Would we just figure out our little Or a little fraction of it. And and live happily ever after. Within it. Now that scenario

23:38 You have Full rights to ask. What was around before that? So ask me that. We have no idea. We have suspicions. There might have been a a multiverse. Which has come out of latter day

23:53 Mathematics. related to quantum physics and Einstein's relativity. What comes out of those equations is a multiverse. What's a multiverse? I'm just it's it's this medium that is pumping out universes. We are just one of them.

24:07 What caused the multiverse? We don't know. Eventually they're it's a frontier. There's no crime in asking the question at the frontier of our knowledge. There are people who have to have answers. They don't make good scientists.

24:22 The urge to have an answer is Can be influenced by their bias, by their culture. By their I just take a look at All around the world.

24:32 The origin stories. The origin stories flow out of the cultures from which they emanated. What are your untested Unverified. untestable ideas about

24:45 Where all of this universe stuff might have gone'cause I know you must sit at home sometimes and just mull. You do a lot of mulling about the origins of the the big bang and those things. Well we all do. I just So when you when you confront the unknown You Write the recipe for more data.

25:03 That's all it is. And what are those recipes that you've written? We need a telescope. We have telescope. I haven't written that. I mean my field has written them. We have telescopes specifically designed right now. to get a better understanding of dark energy. And it's a manifestation throughout time in the history of the universe. Explain dark energy to me, not kind of. No, it's just it's a it's something in the vacuum of space. That's making the universe Accelerate in its expansion.

25:29 Okay. From that original explosion we have all the galaxies, all the matter, all the gravity. You expect the expansion to be slowing down. At some rate. Based on the gravity.

25:40 Oh, but it's speeding up. It's like tossing something in the air. Gravity of Earth slows it down and actually makes it reverse. So we expect that. We went to make that measurement and we got the opposite answer. The universe is accelerating.

25:53 That won a Nobel Prize. Nineteen ninety eight Nobel Prize. It's a term in Einstein's equation that he rejected. So there can't be a negative gravity. What the value in this equation must equal zero. And so let's move on.

26:07 Then we discover it. We we come up with a term for it. I think it's a bad term. Yeah, because it's It leaves the witness. We don't know what it is at all.

26:17 So don't call it dark and don't call it energy. Call it Fred. Something. And dark matter, we don't know what that is either. Okay. Let's call that Wilma.

26:28 We got Fred and Wilmot. We don't know what it is. There should be a button just down below here. And if it says subscribed, you're already subscribed. If it says subscribe but, that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button. It helps the show more than you know. And according to the algorithm, you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button. Thank you so much. So th the key question I think that people are talking about at this moment in time, because you had Obama make those comments in that interview saying But he he was joking I think he was joking when he said there are aliens he's just never seen. No.

27:03 First A. Obama is scientifically literate. It's A. B. He said Because he's scientifically literate, he said

27:11 What is scientifically defensible. that they're probably aliens in the universe. Anyone who studied that problem will arrive at that conclusion. They're real b but I haven't seen'em and and and uh they're not being kept in uh What is it?

27:29 Uh facility. Unless there's this enormous conspiracy. And they They hid it from the president of the United States. That's what he said.

27:39 But as former president of the United States And we have sort of alien adjacent culture. It was oh, that must mean there are aliens in the basement of the White House. Or somewhere in In in government.

27:53 Custody. They took his statement that sure there are aliens out there. And turned it on to The US government. And when I heard his comments, I that that's exactly what any scientifically literate person would say.

28:08 What people did with that information. He he then had to come back and explain. I didn't even think that was necessary, but apparently it was. And then Trump responded. Trump responded. Okay. Mm-hmm. On Air Force One in an interview and said Well he gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing the No aliens are real.

28:26 Well I don't know if they're real or not. I can tell you he gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that. You took it out of classified information. Trump seemed to stoke The idea. And then from that.

28:43 Shortly after we had the UFO files announcement. Sure, great. Bring'mo. But they were gonna release the UFF R and now we find ourselves at a place where the general public is again really, really curious about the subject of aliens. And you see it on the Google Trend data, which I've got in front of me here. You see the up, the down, the up, the down, based on what people are talking about. So my question to you is about is the central question, which is Do you believe there's intelligent life in the universe?

29:07 In part. was because there were files released that week. By the Pentagon. And dare I suggest. My book was released in May.

29:16 On May twelfth. Good timing. Uh yeah, it just turned out that way. I decided to jump into the ring. I'll jump in. Put a foot into the ring. More accurately.

29:26 When I saw these These high ranking Whistleblowers come forward. In con in Congress. Swarn testimony. Uh Whistleblowers, former intelligence officers, former

29:40 Uh military folk. And I said all right, I have to It's time to jump in. Because no longer can you discount

29:51 The testimony. The way you might have done so before With the farmer. In the back forty. You know, who saw something and is talking about it.

30:01 But didn't take a picture of it. All right. All these testimonies. That have existed in the past. And accounts of UFOs.

30:08 Now when official government people are doing it. Then all right. It's time to Take it up a notch. And what is what do I mean by that?

30:19 Bring out the alien. If you're saying you got an alien in the shed? In the back forty and Just bring it out. And the moment you do that

30:29 No one will ever have to ask again. Do you believe in aliens? That's the question I've been asked. Do I believe in A No one has ever asked me Do I believe in elephants? Why?

30:43 Because we've shown elephants. Okay. We have elephants. We've seen elephants. So do you think there's intelligent life in the universe?

30:54 I don't see why they wouldn't be given the size of the universe and the age of the universe and the ingredients of the universe. I mean think about it. The early earth. Life got underway within a hundred million years. Others as early as it possibly could have.

31:10 That sounds like a long time and it is, but That's small compared with the timeline of Earth itself. of life on earth. It's like five percent. Of the Time line of the earth.

31:21 Almost as fast as it could possibly happen. The basic ingredients on earth which match the basic ingredients of the universe. Went from organic molecules to self replicating life. Whatever our challenges in the lab. Earth didn't seem to have a

31:37 problem accomplishing it. And so look how quickly that happened. Yes, it would take a long time. Much longer. To generate what we're calling intelligent life.

31:47 But Given How many planets? Or likely in the galaxy. Our catalogs now have six thousand

31:55 Exoplanets. In them. And that's just in a tiny little area. That being a little circle. You know.

32:03 If if the sun is here. Do a little B circle around it. Where we've searched for exoplanets. And we have six thousand just in that little What's an exoplanet? Exoplanet. Planet orbiting another star.

32:15 Oh, the six thousand in a little bit. We've cataloged six thousand. Uh in in nineteen ninety five, what year were you born? Ninety two. Ninety two. So you were Three years old. When we discovered our first exoplanet.

32:29 Really? Yeah. Yeah, now we're we're rising through six thousand. It was bader headlines back then, not today. But If life

32:38 Happen on earth. As swiftly as it did. No one of a among us who've studied the problem or given reason to Doubt That it couldn't happen.

32:48 Frequently elsewhere. In our galaxy or in the trillion other galaxies in the universe. This is just the Milky Way Galaxy. If you could step out of our Milky Way it would resemble this Greatly.

33:02 This is one galaxy, right? One galaxy. Containing hundreds of billions of stars. This Cloudy. Thing you cannot resolve the cloud into the individual stars. Galileo did this.

33:14 He said, I wonder what that Milky Way is. Is that just a cloud? took his telescope, put it on the Milky Way, he saw individual stars. And how many galaxies are there in the universe? Hundred billion stars in a galaxy, at least a hundred billion galaxies in the universe. Is the answer that we just don't know how many there are? Let's quantify what it is to not know.

33:32 In the universe. Uh things range over such a huge scale. That If you're off by a factor of two. Which sounds significant.

33:44 In most everyday life? But if things range Over factors of trillions? Then if you can get an answer within a factor of two, you're doing really well. You have a

33:57 Basic understanding of structure space. And time. And so Our galaxy has Several hundred billion stars in it.

34:07 No, we don't have an exact count. But That's a very good estimate. Because we know the total mass of the galaxy. And we know how much mass a star occupies. We know how much dark matter there is.

34:18 So we can Calculate. the likely number of stars there are in the galaxy. Planets? So now given our data on planets that we've

34:27 Obtained. We have many star systems with multiple planets. And that's just in our neighborhood. So if that's representative, then you just scale that up. So if you looked in that little zone everywhere and just

34:41 Up the number. You end up with millions of planets. Possibly billions. Across the galaxy. That's how you would.

34:49 Estimate that. So it's not knowing the exact answer is not the same thing as having no clue. And there might be hundreds. Of billions of galaxies. Yes. Not just might be.

35:01 There's at least that many. In the observable universe. The actual universe goes beyond our horizon in the same way For a ship at sea? You have a horizon.

35:12 Are you saying to yourself, Oh, that's the edge of the earth or that's the edge of the ocean? No. You keep sailing. And more ocean comes in view. Is it infinite? It might be, we don't know.

35:23 You asking all good questions. And you're going right to the edge of what we don't know. Is it possible for something to be infinite? I'm not gonna put a prerequisite on the universe that it's not.

35:38 Just because infinity is kinda hard for the human brain to wrap your head around. Doesn't mean Can't or shouldn't you Be it.

35:47 We've made assumptions about the universe just to be consistent with our own philosophies that just turn out to be flat wrong. Copernicus, a religious man, The sun is in the center of the known universe and not Earth. So we go from geocentric to heliocentric.

36:07 All right. Well, if you do that, then we don't have epicycles. Alright. Then we just have orbits. Simple orbits around the sun. Well he did that. You know, it didn't match the observations as well as the epicycles did.

36:22 So do you throw out the whole idea? No. We would learn later, fifty years later. The orbits are not perfect circles. He made them perfect circles because it's the universe. God created the universe. God is perfect. The circle is a perfect geometric shape. Clearly, anything moving in the universe is gonna be in a perfect circle. That was an assumption placed on the universe derived from our own.

36:46 Philosophical proclivities. In that case, a religiously philosophical Proclivity. Mm-hmm. So given this exercise, this failed exercise in the history of science

36:57 of which there are many examples one can give. I will not say The universe can't be infinite. What's in the middle of the galaxy?'Cause it looks like a a light there's a black hole. In this picture. the density of stars is way higher.

37:12 In the middle of the galaxy than out here. With Figuring that out. We think in the formation scenario of the galaxy. Then most of the mass is near the center. And it gets thinner as it comes out.

37:24 And so we're gonna have the most stars. We're the most masses that you start with. So it's not it's not a surprise. That the middle of these things Have the most Stars because they have the most mass. And in the exact middle in the center.

37:37 Is a supermassive black hole. Which we've measured to be there. In fact, a Nobel Prize was given for that measurement. Can you explain what a black hole is like I'm twelve? Oh yeah.

37:49 You know, it first you gotta respect black holes. Different. Don't ever Dis a black hole. Because you will lose.

37:57 Yeah. We're here on earth. And Uh the old adage what goes up must come down, you've heard that. I would learn by the time I was nine that that's just false. No, by the time I was

38:10 Ten. Because I was ten years old'cause that's how old I am. We Walked on the moon. And then we left

38:18 par you know, rocket parts on the moon. Those are never coming back to Earth. So there are things that went up that never came back. Okay. All right. Well. What started the adage, though?

38:31 Well, if you take something and toss it It actually slows down, comes to a stop, and then Speeds up and comes down again. It's captured by Earth's gravity. Turns out there is a speed with which I can throw this

38:47 So that it never comes back. Let's get there. If I throw this a little faster, with more energy, it goes higher it comes back, right? How about even faster? Even faster.

39:00 Gets higher and higher and higher and higher and higher. You can calculate using physics and gravity equations. There's a speed with which this will go so high up it'll reach infinity. If it reaches infinity, it's not coming back. That's called the escape velocity for Earth.

39:19 How fast is that? It's really fast. Really fast. Uh seven miles. Per second. Hm.

39:26 If I throw this at seven miles, it'll reach the edge of the universe and never come back to Earth. Suppose Earth had more gravity. Than it currently does. Does it make sense that that's the same thing. Escape velocity would be

39:39 Greater. Than seven miles per second. Mm-hmm. If Earth's gravity were stronger, it might be ten miles per second. A hundred miles per second. Keep up this exercise.

39:51 You'll reach a point. Well your object has an escape velocity that equals the speed of light. The moment it achieves that Light cannot escape.

40:04 It's not moving fast enough. And if light can't get out. It's black. If you fall in You are never coming out because you can't ever reach the speed of light.

40:19 There's no greater definition of a whole Than that. Hence Black. Oh.

40:30 By the way, Einstein could have predicted them, but he was it was too weird for him to go there. with with his equations. We would learn about black holes mathematically in the nineteen sixties, make our first discovery of one In the nineteen seventies. A famous uh source of X ray energy called Cygnus X one.

40:48 And and then now there's They're common and we've even discovered them in the centers of galaxies. Super Like a million times the mass of the sun. Monstrous black holes. Dining on anything that comes close.

41:02 Just things that come close. Yeah. It's not gonna reach out. So if the sun were to become a black hole No. It must reach out and grab us and suck us in.

41:12 It'll have the same gravity. As a black hole as it does as a s as a star. But it's if you go close. Yeah, if you get now you can get really close to it and then you're not coming out. Is there a certain distance where It turns out there is. There's a distance around every black hole.

41:27 I th I think it's called the ergosphere. It's got a it's got a a a name. Where there are no stable orbits. Around it. You get closer than that, you're

41:40 You will Fallen no matter what. Whereas beyond it, you can maintain a stable orbit. And look at black holes from a distance. Where'd you go if you get sucked in? Well, you crushed or you

41:51 Well, it depends how big the black hole is. Small black holes. Just That's all she wrote. Okay. This one. Oh, that one you just you'll fall in.

42:00 And then where do I go? I'm just gonna collapsed. Well there are Books. I have one on my shelf. And I've even read it.

42:08 Uh it's a graduate textbook that describes the mathematics Of space and time on the other side of a black hole. And it Shows. that a whole new space time opens up in front of you.

42:22 What? Inside the black hole. The math shows that. Given The general theory of relativity, which gives us black holes in the first place. If you follow the math.

42:33 You get a whole space time that opens up inside the black hole. And as you fall in Your time changes. So time ticks more slowly for you. relative to the universe. It's called time dilation. And so as you look out in the universe, the universe will unfold faster and faster and faster.

42:50 And you will see the entire future history of the universe unfold. As you descend. Into the black hole. When you say descend'cause I I thought of it as like, you know, if you go close to a black hole, you're gonna be crushed into a small mass. Well, I didn't get to that part yet. I'm describing What happens to space and time.

43:09 As you descend. Through what's called the event horizon. That's the region out of which you don't escape. That's the functional size we give to black holes. How big is its event horizon. You cross over Within that volume, that's where the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light.

43:26 And you're not coming in. So it has taken the fabric of space and time and folded it back on itself. So there's no pathway you can take. To get out of a black hole. You're in there forever. And for the small black holes.

43:40 Here's an interesting fact. Uh you don't think about this, but it's true. When you stand Your feet are closer to Earth Center than your head is. Good.

43:51 Mm-hmm. You can calculate what The force of Earth's gravity is at your feet. And the force of Earth's gravity is at your head and there's you'll get two different numbers. They're very close to each other, so we don't think about this.

44:05 It doesn't matter to us. But as you descend a black hole. The difference in gravity between your feet and the your head gets greater and greater and greater. They're called tidal forces, and they end up stretching you.

44:20 Head to toe. And initially it it probably feels good, right? You just sort of stretch. And then you realize, Oh my gosh, this is unrelenting and it's getting stronger. Eventually you'll snap into two pieces.

44:33 Likely separated at the base of your spine. If you sort of look at the structural integrity of human physiology. And then You're s you're still falling, and now those same title forces will operate on your torso and on your lower half.

44:47 They'll stretch and they'll snap into two pieces. One. To two to four to eight. To sixteen.

44:55 And you'll bifurcate. In pieces all the way down to the center of the black hole. The worst part is Well maybe equally as worse is

45:04 You are occupying a narrower and narrower volume of space time. As you go down to the Singularity. That is the center of the black hole. So not only you get stretched head to toe.

45:17 You're getting Extruded. Through the fabric of space. Like toothpaste through a tube. Have a nice day. So yeah, you don't want to test

45:32 Yeah. We don't we don't know. So here's a problem. general relativity that gives us the black hole in the first place.

45:45 If you follow the equations, the center of the black hole is infinitely dense. If And infinitely small. How does that even happen? We don't know. Maybe something

45:55 Prevents that. But that is the limit of Einstein's general theory of relativity. One of the things you've heard me talk about quite a lot over the last couple of years, and this is something that's true in business and content, but also with everything in life, is that consistency is the thing that really, really compounds. The same is true in sales. When your team is small, consistency happens naturally. The team knows of every deal, so nothing gets missed. But as I've experienced, when you grow, This starts to break down and deals start to slip, follow ups don't happen, leads go cold that shouldn't have. And when this happens, a lot of leaders look at it and think they have a people problem. When actually it's a systems problem. The businesses that have watched scale well commercially,

46:34 all have a system their team uses every single day. And for my team, that system has been our sponsor Pipe Drive. It's an easy to use intelligent CRM tool for growing sales teams that gives you visibility of every deal in your sales pipeline at every single stage. And it shows you what needs to happen for that deal to move forward all in real time. It's what keeps our commercial operation consistent when we're a team of five. Or when our commercial team was a team of fifty. Over a hundred thousand companies are already running their sales on it. So if you'd like to join them, sign up at pipedrive.com slash CEO, where you'll get an exclusive 30 day free trial instead of the usual 14 days, and there's no credit card needed at all. Head to pipedrive.com slash CEO. Ciao mun cakbang.

47:18 I don't speak Vietnamese, but this show can because of AI video technology from our sponsor, Hey Jen. I get messages every single week from those of you listening to the Direver CO all around the world and you express how much impact that's had on you and your life. And if that's true, then those conversations shouldn't only reach people in English. Ken can take one recording of me and deliver it in any language while keeping my voice, timing and expressions. intact. But you don't need a studio like this to make it work for you. Record fifteen seconds of yourself and get an AI avatar that delivers studio quality video in over a hundred and seventy five languages. We're up to twenty languages now and we're not the only ones using it. Hey Jan is already used by thirty million people, including eighty five percent of the Fortune one hundred. Whether you're building an audience on social media, launching an online course, or rolling out training across your team, check out Heygen now. Your first three videos are totally free at hn.com slash D O A C. That's H E Y G E N dot com slash D O A C

48:17 See that? So Aliens. Um In our galaxy, is that possible that there's intelligent life in our galaxy? Really?

48:28 You think it's on a balance of probability you think it's It's more probable than not. Oh yeah. Just given the size like I said, given the age, the size, the ingredients The Uh how quickly life got underway. By the way.

48:41 When you say intelligent Um There's intelligent life on earth. Like Do you know where we are in brain size?

48:52 relative to other animals. Yeah. Uh we're not the top. Yeah, we're definitely not to that. I have no idea. Yeah, we're like fourth. Okay. There's the whale. Mm-hmm. And then the dolphin.

49:03 And then the or the porpoise the and then the The elephant? And then us. So if aliens came to Earth. And they knew the brains are important.

49:13 We'd be like fourth on their list. For who they want to Talk to. Just Chew on that for a moment.

49:20 Second What we were told in school. Oh, but If you take the ratio of the size of your brain to your body weight We're at the top.

49:31 Well That's our ego speaking there. When we we didn't have the biggest brain. But we want to believe that we're smart. And so we is there some math magic we can perform on brain size to put us back at the top of that list. Yes.

49:46 Ratio the size of your brain to the to the the mass of your brain to the mass of your body, then we're at the top. However, what they didn't say Is that No, we're not at the top of that list.

49:58 We're only at the top of that list among mammals. They're mid sized birds. Like the Magpie and uh Parrots?

50:07 Where The ratio of their brain size to their body weight is greater than that of humans. So Look at the efforts we put in to just distinguish ourselves from all these other animals. And it's quite

50:21 The exercise. In ego stoking. W you want to think you're special in the Tree of life. There they're birds that fly and we can't fly.

50:34 Notes. Can regenerate. Their limbs. And we can't do that. And so badly do we want to. Especially with with military veterans.

50:45 Right. Mm-hmm. Uh with missing limbs and things. You want to regenerate that. We can't do Newt can do that.

50:52 crustaceans can do that. We can't do that. So Might an alien consider whales to be intelligent. Probably.

51:02 But we add new extra Elements to this. Do you have technology? The whale is not building telescopes. But we are.

51:13 The whale doesn't You know Of art. But we do. Right. So we are a thing. We have what we call civilization.

51:21 So if you want to ask, are there intelligent aliens that have civilization? That's yet another layer of that question, is there intelligent life in the universe? Then you can ask. Is there intelligent life that has civilization? That has technology.

51:38 Because the Roman Empire They didn't know anything about electricity or computers or AI or anything. And if aliens were sending them radio signals They're not sending radio signals back.

51:50 So the operational definition of intelligence might include your ability to communicate across space, or your ability to build a spaceship. To move. The Romans were not building spaceships. So would they count?

52:03 as intelligence. If that was an alien species somewhere else in the galaxy. But is it plausible that there is intelligent life in this universe? The hasn't got the capability of visiting us. Yeah, sure, why not? Sure.

52:16 That's probably The standard. How far can we have we gone? That's a great question. The fastest

52:23 spaceship ever launched. The New Horizons mission to Pluto. And one thing in space exploration There's an unwritten rule. However you design the spacecraft?

52:36 Make sure it gets to your destination before you get old and die. Mm-hmm. Okay. So this spacecraft that went to Pluto was on the most powerful rockets available.

52:47 And they made the payload as light as possible. So it h you could accelerate. And so it got to Pluto. Quickly. If you instead Took that and directed it to the nearest star. The office and sures system.

53:02 At those speeds. Did you make the newest star? Take you. Fifty thousand years to get there.

53:09 To us. Yes. To the sun. And how many stars did you say there was again? Well, a hundred billion, hundreds of billions. And the nearest one to would take fifty thousand years. Fifty thousand years to reach. Gosh. Because space is empty. Right. So

53:21 Maybe there are intelligent aliens out there, but space travel's too hard. So they haven't come to visit us. This is one of the Um Hypotheses. Because if aliens are everywhere, well then where are they?

53:35 I think they came to Earth and they saw all of our debris. Orbiting. The earth is a lot of space debris? And they said I'm not coming down. How could I risk my life?

53:45 They just passed us by, looking for another planet. I've wondered about this space debris thing because it seems that every nation It's worse than you think. But but I I what I was gonna say is every nation now seems to be racing to throw Tens of thousands of pieces of metal satellites into our orbit. Is it a problem?

54:04 Well There's no laws, is there? No you have you have to ask. Who is it a problem for? Is it a problem? Yes. Who's it a problem for? Not the people who want

54:15 high speed internet. In the middle of the ocean or in the Arctic. We're in the middle of the desert. Because these satellite the space X Starlink satellites.

54:25 Are providing that. in these remote places of the world. So it's not a problem for them. It's a blessing. It's a problem if you're just trying to observe the night sky the way we've done as astronomers.

54:37 Since time immemorial. And I'm trying to get images of the night sky and I see satellites crossing Back and forth. This amounts to visual noise. In my data.

54:49 And if I'm trying to track an asteroid that might be headed our way. And have thousands of other streaks of light. In my image. There's a chance I might miss the asteroid. Also

55:02 Uh If there's some object of interest and a satellite passes right in front of it, that will contaminate the data that I seek. I don't know if this is reversible. But what it tells me is that the future of telescopes are gonna have to be space born telescopes. Which they

55:18 We we've already made that transition. And or The moon. Town scope on the moon. Mm.

55:27 They've launched five roughly five thousand satellites objects into orbit in twenty twenty five, were on track to launch even more than that this year. That's correct. We probably already launched that by now. Where where this We're being recorded.

55:40 Mid year twenty twenty six. I I we're already High up there. I so So the last number I saw SpaceX had Ten thousand

55:51 Five hundred and Ten satellites. There'll be a hundred thousand active at satellites in orbit by twenty forty. P uh probably more. This is the utility of space.

56:03 Not only for reconnaissance for Surveillance. Military security. But also

56:11 Commerce. There is no Uber without GPS. So it's not the value of the satellites themselves. that matters here is the value of the economy

56:22 The economies that they enable. And that's why we have a space force now. The space force which had been percolating for decades, uh Trump in Trump One decided let's make this official. And so he did. So now we have a space force and people So is that mean there's gonna be like Star Wars and everything?

56:38 There already was a space force. They didn't call it that. It was called the Air Force Space Command. It was a sector within the air force. And so you pull that out. Now the

56:50 The mission is a little more pure. about what its goals are and what it needs to accomplish. Have you heard about Kessler syndrome? Oh yeah, of course. Could you explain Kessler syndrome? Nineteen.

57:02 Seventy eight? I I don't remember he was a physicist or a mathematician named Kessler. who saw the increase in satellite launches that had been going on and he Did a calculation and he said, Hm. There must be some

57:19 Threshold. Of satellites. Orbiting the earth. Where If one of them gets destroyed by any means.

57:27 Maybe two collide with each other, or one is Intentionally. Taken out? By a missile? Which has been happened three times now, three or four times.

57:37 Uh China's done, India's done it, Russia's done, and we've done it four times. We've done it to our own satellites. Which means what? Think about it. If you can do it to your own satellite.

57:49 You can do it to anybody else's satellite. It's a demonstration. of your sovereignty, in a way. Of your Powers

57:57 Over what You might Perceive as an aggressor. Anyhow. If you destroy a satellite

58:04 Let's say it breaks into ten pieces. Each going orbital speed. Order speed is Is seventeen thousand Miles an hour.

58:16 That's way faster than a rifle bullet. So little pieces of satellite. Can be far more devastating than a high powered rifle. Bullet shot into Another satellite.

58:27 So these pieces scatter. If any one of them hits another satellite, Breaking it into ten pieces. You go from one to ten to a hundred. To a thousand

58:40 Within just a few orbits. One hundred percent of the satellite can be taken out. If you have enough satellites For that thresholding to take place. So in other words, if space is most if low earth orbit space is mostly empty and you destroy a satellite

58:57 The particles are not gonna take out another satellite. Th they'll orbit harmlessly or fall to earth harmlessly. But if you have another satellite in that path Then that destruction's gonna take out other satellites. So he warned us. of these thresholds. I don't think we're there yet.

59:16 But we need to keep it on our radar. And the movie Gravity. It portrays exactly that scenario. Objects in orbit travel at blistering speeds. Seventeen thousand five hundred miles per per hour. Correct. And at that point Just five miles per second. At that speed even a

59:31 Flack of paint carries the destructive power of a bullet or rifle bullet. Or a exploding grenade. Correct. Correct. A f a fleck of paint. Yes. Yeah, that makes sense. So if if there's one collision and there's lots of them up there. It's like shrapnel.

59:49 Yeah, it's Ravner's the is the is the best. Analog to that. And it damages other things beyond The target. Yeah.

59:57 Was intended. And there's no laws up there, is there? Well, they're trying to you know space law is a is a wild west at this point. Forget orbit. It's like you go to the moon. Who owns the moon? Who owns

1:00:10 The plot of land on Mars. Well they're trying to Figure that out. Really. If I go to an asteroid And I wanna mine it for its minerals. Who owns those minerals?

1:00:20 So they're trying to figure out who owns the moon. Well owns anything in space. Anything in space. Isn't it just who gets there first. Yes, mate. That's what I mean by the Wild West. At the moment it seems like there's a race to go to m the moon. lot of companies are interested in that. We've got this Artemis programme happen. The US seem interested. Why are people so interested in going to the moon? And is there merit in their motivations?

1:00:42 Well, we could have stayed on the moon in nineteen seventy two. But we didn't. Could have gone in nineteen eighty. But we didn't. Nineteen ninety?

1:00:51 We didn't. Two thousand? No. Two thousand ten? No. Well what happened in the twenty teens? Oh, I know what happened. We learn that China Wants to put astronauts.

1:01:00 On the moon. Tychonauts, they call them. We then say, Hey, wouldn't it be good if we went back to the moon? That's an interesting idea. Let's do that. Happened under the first Trump administration. So the Artemis mission gets birthed. Artemis. Do you remember who Artemis was in in Greek mythology? Artemis

1:01:19 Is the twin sister of Apollo. That's good. He's gonna name him. Program. That's good. Twin sister of Apollo. So

1:01:28 We say we're gonna go back to the moon. My read of that landscape. Is that China put a flame under our ass. Mm-hmm.

1:01:38 No Different really from when Russia First launch. The satellite. Spatnik.

1:01:46 Put a flame under our ass. Within a year we created an asset. By the way It may take just such a thing. To bring Congress together. For a unified

1:01:55 Uh project. Do you remember when we had the testimonies in Congress? Of the whistleblowers. We had Republicans sitting right next to it, Democrats. Asking questions about aliens. And I so there's everyone paying attention to the aliens.

1:02:10 I I said, wow. Republicans and democrats are agreed On some Process. In Washington.

1:02:19 I thought that was That was a beautiful fact. So w what what are our motivations now to go to mean? Is there an economic upside to it? No. It's geopolitical. China says they're going to the moon. Fifty years after we go to the moon and we all of a sudden decide we want to go to the moon? Let's be real about that. And while that came out under Trump.

1:02:37 Biden f comes in, we keep the program. Biden could have said, Oh, this is a Trumpist thing, I don't wanna do you know, he could have done that and what would have anyone said, but he didn't. Because NASA Has

1:02:49 is a geopolitically responsive Organization. So what if China get there first? Why does that matter? They're Geopolitical egos. Just ego. Yeah. I mean d did you see the

1:03:05 the hearings in Congress with the head of NA when they're asking, Why did China land on the far side of the moon? What do they know that's there that we don't? Okay. This is the competitive Urges. Yeah.

1:03:18 We have. And Don't delude yourself into thinking we ever went to the moon for science. Then or now? What about resources? Is there resources

1:03:29 We're looking for'em Ness has an entire branch of itself. Called in situ resource utilization. I S R U. You go there, we think there's water at the South Pole. So you go get the water. Maybe if you get a three D printer.

1:03:44 You can take you know, the silicates from the Mar from the moon surface, dumping in on top and make tools. Whatever. That would be interesting. Um there's a whole piece of space exploration that concerns itself.

1:03:57 with that. You can't take everything with you. Is it cold on the moon? Or hot. It depends on if you're facing the sun or not. Because We we say is it

1:04:07 Cold, you're generally referring to the temperature of the air around you? That's what you mean. Well, fix the thermostat, change the air temperature. Where there is no air. Your temperature comes from Any source of or absence of a source of energy. So if you face the sun,

1:04:24 This side of you will burn up and the side of you on the other side will freeze. So what we really need are rotisseries. Or a highly insulated space suit. Do you think in my lifetime we'll t it's three days away, isn't it, the Moon? Yeah, but so you can get there quicker.

1:04:40 But to The minimum energy to do so will take you three days. Don't you think that would be a great tourist destination. Of course. Completely. Three days. I I would save up multiple years of vacation money to go to the moon. Yes.

1:04:53 Completely. If you can bring the price of that down. Make the moon our backyard. So so w what I I wanted to be clear. earlier when you say is there economic reason to go to the moon, not initially. Until you set up

1:05:05 bases and Hotels and restaurants and this sort of thing. And i if you have restaurants, that'd be really weird food that they would serve, right? They can Moon gravity.

1:05:16 I travel all the time. I made a rule in my life that I'll only travel with a cabin bag. The problem with it is not much space, and here's the solution. It is called An extra 1% travel pack. And I teamed up with Extra to make this. Typically, I can only bring some of my black shirts, and it's a trade-off of which black shirt shall I bring? How many of these do you think I can get in here? So let's try

1:05:37 One, two, three. Mm. Five, six, seven. Eight Nine Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Let's try fifteen.

1:05:47 Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, twenty four For Okay, so that's twenty-four black t shirts. Here's where the magic comes in. Zip it up, make sure it's nice and sealed, and then you use this little contraption. Stick on that. I can now take more than twenty black shirts with me, which will last me three

1:06:07 Weeks. So if you travel frequently and you want to get one of these so you can save more space and be away for longer, go to Xster.com and use code DOAC for ten percent off our collection. The UFO files. I'm presuming you've seen all the footage that's been released. There was there's a redundancy after a certain point. I mean it's it's this kind of stuff where they're show objects flying through space. Typically it's monochromatic and very low resolution as this is, that's correct. Was any of it compelling to you? No, it's something that we don't

1:06:36 No what it is. It's Let's back up. Even UFO enthusiasts Of the most severe kind.

1:06:44 Would agree. that most sightings of what we call UFOs have natural explanations. That you just didn't know what you were looking at and then you figure it out later. Is it uh The cloud formation, is it lightning, is it Twilight conditions. Sure. But then there's some that

1:07:02 No one knows how to explain. I I don't have a problem with that. There's some that are sort of Interesting I like the tic tac. Tic tac is fun.

1:07:11 Oh yeah the Tic Tac. The famous Tic Tac. What's interesting about that? Well,'cause I don't know what it is. I'm a scientist. We are attracted to things with that we don't know or understand.

1:07:21 Attracted to them. It's cool. Yeah, that's it. There it goes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And you can see it move in one of the frames. And

1:07:30 You can see it with sort of gimbal. I in one of the frames. So Let's see, it's coming up in just a second. Yes.

1:07:39 And of course it's combined with the Statements of the pilots. How shocked they are and how surprised there it is. That's kinda fun. It looks like one of the alien spacecraft that

1:07:52 Steven Spielberg showed in Close encounters of the third kind. But that's not what intrigues me. What intrigues me is we have whistleblowers saying we have actual aliens. So Um

1:08:04 Gib give me the actual alien. Do you think if we did, we would tell the public. Uh W People testified we have aliens, that we have alien crash parts, that we have reverse engineered alien technology, that we have no end of movies portraying aliens. Uh

1:08:21 And somebody say, Oh, we're not ready to see an actual alien? Of course we're ready. Hollywood has prepped us For decades. For this day. I think it'll be charming. What would surprise me most?

1:08:35 Is if the alien were humanoid. Hm. Most Hollywood renderings of human of of aliens are humanoid. With a head, two eyes, a nose, mouth, ears. Oh, they're bald. Okay.

1:08:47 Well they have pointy ears or they've got but they're still walking. And they've still got elbows and fingers and knees and and I mean we've got ones like this as well, but So we've got there's a good E T This looks like the Xenomorph.

1:09:03 And this one looks like Predator. Okay. So notice Uh they all have eyes. There's a mouth. There's a you know.

1:09:11 Teeth. Whose teeth are scary. And this is humanoid. Mm. These are human. This is a little more reptilian. I would say it's definitely vertebrate, but it has a tail.

1:09:23 So these these are humanoid characters. I would be most surprised if the alien was humanoid. What would you expect that them to be based on the atmosphere of the universe? I would expect it to just not be humanoid. Most Life on Earth is not humanoid.

1:09:36 And we have DNA in common with all life on earth. And most life is not human. Oak trees, worms, uh lobsters, none of those life forms are humanoid. And so here we are. We have You know, oh by the way, the the xenomorph is not building spaceships.

1:09:53 So if this comes to earth it's'cause we brought it here, not because it flew. Okay. Uh based on It's conduct. It looks like it's just wanna be parasitic.

1:10:03 Like B T has fingers and You know, it looks like B T can build a space. And this is just a hunting hunting mission. With the

1:10:13 Alien. Notice that its eyes are even the same separation of our eyes. And those So this is There's an actor in this costume, and the actor is human. That's really what this comes down to.

1:10:25 Yeah, it's good photos you got here. Oh hey. So in the Book. Stumbled on.

1:10:33 I didn't come up with these. I stumbled on The fact that People who care. About sightings. Uh alien sig not UFO sightings, alien sightings.

1:10:43 People who've said they've seen aliens. By the way. Like I said, that whole exercise didn't reach the fever pitch until you had Whistleblowers saying they've met aliens.

1:10:56 Under m oath in Congress. And not the drunkards coming out of the bar at two AM. Okay. So they divide into

1:11:05 Archetypes. So little green men, that's you know, we had a lot of those back in the fifties and Sixties. And Uh of course the fact that we would even use the

1:11:16 Adjective men. Meant they're humanoid. Okay. Little green men. So that's one variety. Another one. What do we have here? Uh This one is much more common today.

1:11:29 The Grays. Okay, the gray alien. These also tend to be bald. So these are the two most Common.

1:11:38 And then there are others. Arterians they're from the start. Uh Lyrians from the constellation Lyra, the harp in the sky. All right. Aliens from the

1:11:52 Star System uh serious? So the yeah, in my book there's a dozen of them. Oh, the tall whites. Oh insectoids, this is a good one. I love this one. Because We hate insects.

1:12:04 Not I can't speak for everyone. Insects are ugly to most humans, right? So if you have a Creature. That resembles an insect. you don't want to become friends with it. If you listen to people that have done DMT

1:12:16 Um they often they often cite. Seeing or meeting these types of Yeah. And The commonality of that is intriguing. Rather than jump to a conclusion that they're all having some Common

1:12:34 interdimensional experience. It's easier for me to think that They all have human brains. And the chemical is exciting. The same part of each one of their brains.

1:12:44 And thereby sharing in some experience. That And plus people I don't know if they've done this across cultures. The English speaking cultures have

1:12:56 reported many more alien sightings than other Cultures. Vastly more sightings. Which is a little weird. So either Yeah, it's just like visiting English speaking countries.

1:13:06 Or we just know better how to report. But you go to other countries, they don't have this alien fixation. Have you ever done psychedelics? Never. Are you curious about it?

1:13:19 Not really. Mm. Uh because The human brain Barely works.

1:13:28 As it is. Mm. Barely. Just open up any any book of Optical illusions?

1:13:36 Turn to any page. Oh, is it bigger, is it smaller, is the line in the page, out of the page I can't figure simple drawings. Confound Your perceptions. Of reality.

1:13:48 But does that mean that reality is fragile? Yes. And so If Stir chemicals into my brain?

1:13:56 As a scientist who values what is objectively true. Since my brain barely works as it is to put in chemicals. It's not clear to me that that gets me closer to any reality at all. And it's reality that I value. So that's why. That's why I haven't done psychedelics. What I think about is if uh if I can inhale something and suddenly My subjective experience of reality is entirely d it's 4K and I'm somewhere else. Does that not then mean that my current

1:14:23 Subjective experience of reality is as fragile as an inhale. Sure. And then it's it's chemicals. So yeah, it it's a reminder that your brain functions Based on electrochemical signals. But does that and to put some other chemicals in there to disrupt it, to rechannel it.

1:14:40 But does that mean that reality itself is just a bunch of chemicals? There are philosophers who like thinking about that and debating it and arguing it. I tend to be Way more practically.

1:14:52 Minded. In that conversation. Okay. In that. I can perform an experiment.

1:15:00 Outside of your five senses. And it will get a result that everyone coming together to look at that result will agree on. That's one of my senses though looking. Sure. But

1:15:10 You're if you don't have that sense, then you can't participate in that exercise. I I'd find some way for you to then be able to identify it. But I can create a measurement of ultraviolet light. You can't see ultraviolet light. But I have a detector that fires. And you can look at the detector firing.

1:15:27 Okay. And so there it is. I've measure ultraviolet light and I didn't need your eyes. You're retina? Or your brain.

1:15:34 to make that measure. So when Einstein said equals M C squared. And that became the foundation of atomic weapons that we then drop. In warfare. Killing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. Oh it's just our imagination. Oh that's just chemical things.

1:15:53 That is a real phenomenon based on real physics. drawn from an objective reality that we established While not doing drugs. And so that's why it took so long. To develop science.

1:16:05 Measurements of an objective reality from the neurochemical synapses of your brain. Isn't it all though observation, isn't that what science is? Yeah, so If I can have a device. That makes a measurement.

1:16:20 And Most people who look at that can agree. If I'm a betting person, I would bet that that is A representation of objective reality.

1:16:31 So we can measure off. They're not gonna know how to and so Do h how do I value their interpretation of the data? Uh and or and is it subjective Are we the crazy ones and is that person the nor the

1:16:47 The normal one. Right. So these are legitimate questions, but they're answerable. Using the methods and tools of science for what is repeatable. In this world and what is not. And this world is a

1:17:00 experience manifested by the chemicals in my brain. So we can we're measuring this reality that we live in. You inhale something and there's a whole other reality. Well, you're right now inhaling oxygen and you have this reality. How many other realities can you visit? Yeah. And which which is the real reality. Oh, I would say is I make mention of it in in the book. People on DMT

1:17:20 have these shariences. So let's do experiments on that. To see if can can one person experience an insectus insectoid. Mm. Glean information from that. That

1:17:34 psychedelic alien that matches someone else's information. That's how you would probe this. Otherwise you say, Oh, it's real and then we'd make start a new religion. I can tell you that if there was A drug?

1:17:48 Mm. That if you Imbibed it, I mean by whatever means? If it Got me closer to an objective reality?

1:17:56 I would do it. An objective reality, yeah. Yes. Like I said, the brain barely works. Now can is there a better objective real I well that's why we have science. I have

1:18:08 tools that measure infrared and ultraviolet and X rays and gamma rays and Yeah. Magnetic anomalies and electrical currents and I can measure all these things. Mm. And and

1:18:20 You Your brain is irrelevant to those measurements. I had a physicist come on and he said that we can only We can only see that which we need to see in order to survive. Mm-hmm. And thus if you look at a bat or another species of animal even here on the earth or a dog. Well evolutionarily. Yeah. Yeah. So there could theoretically there could be spirits in this room now, but because they're inconsequential to my survival, I actually don't even need to be able to see them. I didn't need to develop the senses to be able to know that they were here.

1:18:46 That's why. Science has dozens of senses. We've gone beyond human physiology. In the sciences. So that's why

1:18:55 I don't have to have that conversation. about my reality versus any other alternative reality and which one is real. That's why science exists. We have the microscope that gets us into The realm of w the small, the telescope.

1:19:11 gets to the realm of the large. Your senses have no access to either of those places. The dead sea in the Middle East. was called dead because there were no macroscopic fishes there. Because the salt level is so high. But their microbes doing the backstroke.

1:19:27 Okay? And salt resistant microbe. So they couldn't see those, so his their reality missed something. Yes. Yuri Alley's gonna miss things that

1:19:40 Put your health. At risk. Evolutionarily. But Science.

1:19:46 Change that. Forever. Deal with it. I was gonna say yeah, I mean I mean a lot of it's predicated uh on You know, believing in my

1:19:59 Yeah. Observable experience and You don't have to because like I said We have tools. That's why I can look in the sky and say, Wow, what is that? I don't know what that I pull my binoculars. Tools? Oh my gosh, it's a drone.

1:20:11 And I can see it better with higher resolution and it's brighter. Oh, what is that over there? I don't know what that is on the horizon. Oh, it's uh It's a bear crawling on the side of the thing. It's not some alien. You bring out the tools, supplement your Your senses.

1:20:28 And these are all observational tools. Those that I just mentioned, yes. But there are others that Uh you can test things without Observing them.

1:20:36 You can look at what effect they have on something else, for example. If a couple of chemicals are responsible for this entire experience, like the things that I feel, touch, smell hearing. Yeah.

1:20:54 We are just a bunch of chemicals in a petri dish somewhere. that are creating a subjective experience. And that subjective experience manifests as a universe that I can see, this iPad that I can touch, but actually we are just a chemical reaction in a petri dish. Because if chemicals are my entire subjective experience.

1:21:15 Yeah, I think we probably are a simulation. I think I've concluded. Based on what you just said, it's if we have to B in a petri dish. Well it's more likely that we're simulated by some Snot nosed.

1:21:26 Kid and In its alien parents basement. That was a biological simulation I described. Yes it was. So Uh like I said earlier, the laws of physics are different on different scales. You can't just put us in a petri dish.

1:21:39 And have it behave the way Chemicals. And or and microorganisms would behave like bacteria, that sort of thing, would behave in a petri dish. Petri dish is ideal sized for bacteria, not for Us in some larger petri dish. No.

1:21:55 We function differently with our environment. than microbes do. In in a pre you can't just scale it up. As much as people would want. Two.

1:22:05 That would make everything easier with just nested dolls. Do you believe that we're in a simulation? Do you think it's plausible? I don't wanna believe it. I'm whiny about that.

1:22:18 Yeah. Uh No, I Nobody wants to be a simulation. My best argument

1:22:25 That we're not. Or rather. My best way to improve the odds. That we're not. It's just just to remind you how the simulation argument works.

1:22:35 You have some universe. And then they have computers that are very powerful. They simulate a a world within The computer. And the life forms in that

1:22:44 World. believe they have free will. So there they are. It's like a video game, right? And then they are and then they Say I'm bored, I'm gonna make computers. So they

1:22:55 Invent computers. And then they create a video game inside their computers. And then it's video games all the way down. Okay. Okay.

1:23:04 So If I close my eyes and throw a dart. Which universe am I most likely to hit? The one that started them all or the nine hundred and ninety nine bajillion that followed. Probably one of the ones that were manufactured.

1:23:20 Which argue strongly That we're in a simulation. However. The only universes that could create other World.

1:23:35 Or the ones that have the capacity to create other worlds. Okay. So each one of these in the sequence had the computing power to create a whole other world. That's why it continued the sequence. We

1:23:47 Humans on Earth. Do not Yet have the power. To create an entire other universe. with people in it who have what they believe is free will. We don't have that power yet.

1:24:01 Because of that, we are not one of the ones in the sequence. 'Cause everyone in the sequence has the power to create another universe. And they did. We don't have that power. Which means We are either the very first

1:24:12 universe in that sequence. Or the very last. That has yet to achieve the power. Of simulation. So we go from

1:24:23 You know A hundred bajillion to one likelihood that we are to maybe one and two. And I I like those odds. Does this not assume that the creators of the simulation

1:24:37 Modeled the universe as being a one to one copy of our own. And they wanted us to have No, they can make any kind of universe they want. Who cares? One to one copy. This universe happens to have like planets and stars and people in it. The other one could just be m Mario characters.

1:24:53 Yeah. Probabilistically, I think I've had Elon Musk say that he thinks probabilistically this is a simulation. Which I thought was compelling. And he did reason that, you know, they've got these three potential options. Either s humanity just blows themselves up before they get to this technological advancement. Either this is a simulation

1:25:10 Or either this is base reality. Those are the three plausible outcomes. And one would say, Hm. It being based on reality is highly improbable. Do we blow up. The size and scale of the universe.

1:25:22 And the speed in which we've gone from being like frankly relative speed of cavemen to being able to do large language models of vast intelligence and VR simulations. This that's uh it's like this In the I mean Cosmos taught me this. It's like this Well it's it's actually not. Like that.

1:25:39 It's not. And uh Can I explain why? Sure. Okay. So

1:25:45 It's simply exponential growth. Mm-hmm. That's all it is. Ex So if you plot Earth population.

1:25:54 Very common. encounter with an exponential curve. Okay. So you have a plot. And you have time. Go back I don't care how much time it

1:26:04 You go back and it's like Almost flat line and then it goes up. This is what you're talking about. Yeah. That is the plot of an exponential on linear graph. Okay. Mm-hmm.

1:26:16 Here's what all exponentials have in common. If you truncated it. Somewhere here. Let's say. So go back twenty years, thirty years, fifty years.

1:26:28 And then replotted it? He would do this. Mm-hmm. Go back again, replot it. They would do this. Yeah.

1:26:37 Everybody in an exponential thinks they're living in special times. They think that all the greatest most important discoveries happened recently. Yes, that is true, but it's true for everybody along the exponential. When we invented the car, the automobile. No one is saying, look how backwards we are. They're saying, look how advanced we are. We now have an automobile, and we have railroads that cross the cross the the lands, and we have steam ships that cross the ocean. Look at how advanced we are. Look how far we've come in just decades

1:27:07 If you imagine any rate of improvement at our current trajectory. we get to a point at some at some stage in the future where we can create simulations. Yes. Yes. It's a natural Yeah you get there. But we're not there now. And since we're not there now, we're not one of these middle

1:27:22 Universes. But if you I mean whether it's a hundred years or a thousand years or ten thousand years, we eventually get there. And then if you layer that over with what you said about there being a hundred billion galaxies with a hundred billion stars, um it's conceivable that we are not at the front of that race. And if we're not at the front of that race, that means that someone else Theoretically got there at some point. Um

1:27:43 Therefore we might be their simulation. Yes, of course. Yes. And that seems way more than what I'm saying is Yes, we could be their simulation, but We can't simulate anybody. Within our world yet.

1:27:56 Yeah. Not yet. That's why. We are either the last one in that list. Created by some other civilization. That can't yet create a n the next civilization. Or we're the first one. That's authentic.

1:28:11 So then. It could be a tree, though. It could be like they did one, they did they did five hundred, then this person here did three hundred. Yes. So I'm taking the the very straight line model. Yes. It could be fully branched out. Yeah. And Sure. All I'm saying is

1:28:27 We're nowhere in the middle of that. We have to be at the end because we don't we can't make another universe yet. So that greatly reduces the total number Of universes your dart can hit when you toss it against the wall. You're either the first universe or the last one. And I had it gave it in a line, but it could be the last of any of these. Yeah, it could be the last of a tree. Like I think a family tree you don't have kids. That's fine. So how many is how many would the last be? Five hundred, a thousand? Whatever that is, there's

1:28:54 Countless other ones that came before us leading up to that. Mm. And we could have cousin simulations that went on in. It seem that seems more probable in the balance of I can't think of a singular argument. That's more con convincing that okay, if if humans eventually get to tech loc technological advancement, thus

1:29:12 So that they could create their own simulation. Then it's conceivable that in such a vast universe other other living intelligent life got there first. You agree that there's intelligent life in the universe. Um it's quite I think it's quite arrogant of us to think that we are the most technologically advanced in the universe. Right. No one should be thinking that. So thus it's a simulation, yeah. Unless we are not the simulation and we're the original universe that hasn't started

1:29:38 The ball rolling it. And could you imagine the odds of that? What would the odds of that be? This is my point. The the simplest way is the look the in the line. In the straight line example, which we can spread out in just a moment. Right, the starter universe who hasn't figured out how to make a universe yet. Yes. Or

1:29:55 We're the last in that line. Which have yet to evolve. the capacity to make a universe'cause it doesn't happen instantly. They have to invent computers and they have free will. And so they're doing their thing. Yeah.

1:30:06 So however many The universes are in between. It goes from That number of possible universes we could have been. To a one in two chance that we're real.

1:30:17 One and two. We're the original or the we're this one. Which is simulated. That's a one in two chance. Now you have branches. Fine.

1:30:25 I don't mind branches. Which one Creates ten universes. Fine. You have branches.

1:30:31 Once again, we are either the last one in a branch. We're the first one that started it all. Here's my here's my drawing. Of

1:30:41 So we could be that one? Or we could be that one, that one, that one, that one, that one. That one, that one, that one, that one, that one, that one. W why is that not plausible? It's kinda like a family tree. Some of them have kids. Eva

1:30:54 To make Another universe. This one did here, but also this one did here. Right. That's the only one in that generation that made another universe. Correct? And this up here at the top.

1:31:07 That one made a whole made ten of eight of them. And only one of them made another universe. Yeah. Two of them made another universe. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

1:31:17 That's fine. Okay, so now And one of them made another universe as well. Okay. Correct. So you keep doing that.

1:31:26 If we're early in the game Yeah. then we could be any one of those at the edges of the Line. That's correct.

1:31:34 Okay, we could be any one of those. And we're plodding along. But If all the rest make more universes, we know we're not them. Because we don't have that ability yet.

1:31:46 Mm-hmm. So It and your top row example If one of them continues to not be able to make another universe and the others do Once again.

1:32:00 It in that case is one out of three. chance that we are real. That we're the starter universe. Because you have two other places That

1:32:09 Have yet To make a if in in another drawing. That you could draw. All the rest make new universes, but two don't. In the simulation scenario

1:32:18 Yes, you could do that. But that's not what anyone is thinking about. They're thinking that It's Simulated universes all the way down. And you you just drew a whole crop of universes that are not simulating other universes.

1:32:31 So it's not very fertile. In the simulated universe. Universe. Maybe this is what the multiverse is, maybe this is what infinity is, maybe this was what the big bang was, was a universe creating the next universe. Yeah, well that's what we call it the multiverse, creating universes.

1:32:47 And maybe that's what it is. Maybe the civilization becomes so advanced in their technology that they're able to create one of those big bang moments and Yeah, I mean that would be interesting if they just Summon it up at will. Yeah. That'd be weird. Maybe the point in which we as a civiliz as an advanced civilization can come together with, I don't know, AI and build a a new

1:33:09 Universe. Is the next big bang. There's no Reason. To say it couldn't be that?

1:33:18 All right. Um What what's interesting though is that the laws of physics we measure on Earth apply across the universe and across time. So that's just an interesting maybe that's just the programmers

1:33:30 rules for the universe they just created. So I have no way To the side of that argument.

1:33:40 So do I get a Nobel Prize? What happens now? So the difference is in our big bang, we went through single celled life, then multicellular And then intelligence, then technology. So

1:33:57 If if if the technology Okay. We have technology that enabled all that. And The

1:34:06 In a simulation. So in a simulation, are they starting you from the beginning of the universe? Is there a big bang in the simulation? Well they just People just showing up.

1:34:16 Fully formed. as an intelligent species in the simulation. And maybe they're implanted with a memory that's not real. This is very matrixy. What is them what is the point of life? What is the point of all of this stuff?

1:34:31 You got you got you get to live, I don't know, eighty, ninety, a hundred years, whatever it is. What is the point, Neil? The point. The point of all of this, why are we here? Hm. So

1:34:42 Uh. Question asked by many people. We'll keep Religion in business for a long time. Uh

1:34:50 For many the Okay. And That's a little odd to me.

1:34:59 Because If I created a universe, I would not need people to praise me. That just feels weird. I would just create it and have fun.

1:35:10 You know? Let me work on the next universe now. Personally, I wouldn't feel that need. So it's odd that uh All powerful, all knowing.

1:35:19 Entity Seeks your Submission. And obedience and it's just uh I I've never fully wrapped my head around that.

1:35:31 Yeah. Idea. But The meaning in life. It was really what you're asking. What is meaning?

1:35:39 Uh I derive meaning. From life. I I create meaning. From life. Yeah. When I say when I say I derive it, I create

1:35:48 Meaning. in life. I don't look for meaning. Many people look for meaning. Is it under a rock behind a tree? I'm still in search of the meaning of life. You realize you have the power to create meaning? Create meaning.

1:36:01 We all have the power to do so. Add it to the meaning that you're looking for, but right now you can create meaning. One way is I this might not be The recipe for everyone.

1:36:12 I want to learn something today that I didn't know yesterday. I wanna learn something tomorrow that I didn't know today. Thus growing My Awareness

1:36:23 of the objective realities of the world. That's my first. A as I grow my awareness, I have new uh nuanced, informed perspectives. So you can grow.

1:36:37 In wisdom. Wis uh knowledge, wisdom, and insight. That wouldn't otherwise be possible if you didn't keep learning. Second I want to do something today that lessens the suffering of others.

1:36:51 Why? Because If I have the power To make the world A better place for me having lived in it.

1:37:00 I value that. I value Happiness. Because people Mike

1:37:08 Apparently people like being happy. Unless you're clinically depressed. Uh happiness. Is something that I valued my whole life. It brings joy to being alive and at all.

1:37:22 So That's how I think about it. Uh. And In in my podcast?

1:37:32 The Humor is an important element of the podcast. There's a braid of science, pop culture, and humor. People. Return.

1:37:44 They come back to the podcast because they were They laughed. They smiled. They felt good at the time they learned the thing that they learned and they want to reproduce that feeling. So we should not be surprised that we want to do things that make us feel good.

1:38:00 And again, why does helping another person make me feel good? It's not s I don't do it for me, I do it for the person. Yeah. I I don't help the person across the street.

1:38:12 So that I feel good about myself. I help the person about see so that the person feels good. That they made it across the street. Which in turn makes you feel good. Well, except I I don't wanna be Needlessly semantic.

1:38:27 There are things that I Could do That make me feel good. That I don't do because it doesn't spread the goodness. I can live in my own

1:38:36 This feels good. But when you spread it. then other people can share in your emotions. And So I don't

1:38:48 Do it. So much for myself. I just do it because I think we should spread more joy in the world. Here's here's a way to do that. Again, it's not about you. Right.

1:39:01 I do you a favor. Then you say Thanks. I really needed that. Oh, we pay that favor one day. And I'll say no.

1:39:12 Passive forward. Do that favor for someone else. Ideally a stranger. Okay? A stranger who will never remember your name.

1:39:22 Do it for them. You know what will happen? That favor. And you tell them to pass it forward, that favor will work its way through. Society.

1:39:32 Through cultures, through civilization. Never being closed back. The moment you say, Hey, I'll repay you the favor, that closes it off and make and it's no longer available to anybody. In civilization. If you don't close it, send it forward.

1:39:48 Then there are these tributaries of favors. Working their way through civilization. And everyone is better off. Or Neil, we have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves the question for the next not knowing who they're leaving it for. Oh, sure. And the question left for you

1:40:06 Do they know it was me? Um What is it that you would like us to write on your gravestone if we were the authors of the message? Let me

1:40:17 I don't want I don't need to be able to do it. Anything. That memorializes

1:40:26 My life. 'Cause it's not as an educator, it's not about my life. It's about the life of those Who have touched. It's about their lives. Not about my life.

1:40:37 No statue, no plaques. Nothing. I don't need that. I don't seek it. I've had photographers come up to me and say, Oh, I I've I'm a fashion photographer and I photograph all these famous people. Do you want to be a part of that? No.

1:40:51 It's not about me. I don't need you to look at a picture of me in a book. What I want you to do. Open up a book that I wrote and read what I wrote in the book. And you read that and you will learn from it.

1:41:06 You'll be enlightened. Because As an educator, it's about you, it's not about the educator. So I don't want

1:41:13 Memorials or anything. Nothing. But I know what I want on my tombstone. There's the full quote. Which I will begin with.

1:41:25 But it's the end of the quote. That fits the tombstone. This is by Horace Mann. The educator. American educator or the

1:41:34 Early nineteenth century. Who's a university president, uh school's named after him, Horace Mann School, an educator. for one of his farewell addresses at a university. He said. Ай, бесічю.

1:41:51 to treasure up in your heart. These my parting words. Be ashamed to die. Until you have won some victory.

1:42:04 For humanity. That's what I want on my tombstone. Be ashamed to die. Until you have one. Some victory.

1:42:15 For humanity. And as educator. That's My goal. Humanity's better off for me having been in this world.

1:42:28 That's my goal. 'Cause all too many the too many people were humanity's worse off for them having been in this world. Well not too many. There's a f few key people in the history of the world for whom that's true. And

1:42:41 If we can do our little bit. To improve the world. You've most certainly done that. You've done it for Arguably hundreds of millions of people.

1:42:52 Um, I think if I I was probably thinking then of like what is the net impact you've had on my life from On your life on my life. From you know, All of the content and information and movies and books and documentaries and so on that you've written. And I think for like the net impact, if I crystallised it down to a word. was

1:43:08 About curiosity. And I'd say it's like expanding my mind. Um to what is To wonder. To wonder more.

1:43:19 Unfortunately. That Does not exist in most schools. Hm.

1:43:25 Yeah. The kids are in their class they can't wait until the end of the period. They see the clock. They can't wait till the end of the school day. Can't wait till it's Friday. Can't wait till it's vacation. Can't wait till school's over.

1:43:36 Mm-hmm. Can't wait till graduation. Mm. Or Or

1:43:46 I don't wanna keep learning anymore. It's a chore. I don't enjoy it. I don't like it. Well it's even a rock anthem.

1:43:54 Celebrating that fact. But Alice Cooper. You know it. School's out for the summer. I think this photo and what you said about your hold out forever.

1:44:06 I hate school. I but it's to my point. I don't blame the students. Yeah. I'm blaming the system. where you can't wait to get out of school. Which means they're not

1:44:16 Teaching curiosity. Because if they did. Staying in school would be fulfilling that. And if they did Leaving school would birth you the rest of your life as a curious person, will you continue to learn?

1:44:30 That's what schools should be about, and it's not. And that's what you're doing for others. Expanding the curiosity of the aperture. And allowing them to wander beyond the narrowness of whatever I want people to say, gee, I miss school. I absolutely don't miss school. But do you know what I do miss uh well, I don't miss it, but Th we have to make a distinction between school and education or school and learning. And we kind of conflate the two and think they're the same sort of thing. Well,'cause what school's got a bad name. It's got a bad

1:44:56 Uh It's a place where you go Curiosity fulfilled. Stoked and fulfilled.

1:45:04 That if all schools were that, imagine how different the world would be. We can only imagine. Imagine. I am have your book in front of me here. It's by the way, it's beautiful, and the title is great. It's called Take Me to Your Leader. Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter. If you've ever wondered why there are so many UFO sightings, where the aliens might already be amongst us, Tyson offers an informed perspective that is both factual and fun. Take me to your leader is a tantalizing exploration. The book for anyone who has ever wondered, as we all do now. Oh we

1:45:37 Alone. Thank you so much. I'm gonna link this book below. Um anybody that's into the subject matter of aliens and wants to wonder and have some fun. And and if I can give you just a My favorite example. From the book. uh on the chapter alien to us. There's alien to us and alien to them.

1:45:52 uh the whole chapters, right. Like little things like Let's say you befriend the alien and then you say Uh excuse me. Uh, I have to lay down horizontally and go semi comatose. For one third of Earth's rotation.

1:46:06 They'll look at you say, What Wha what do you you guys don't sleep? What's sleep? I mean it it could be that. If you be be ready, the things we take for granted might not be obvious. To an alien. In another way,

1:46:20 Alien has some Appendage. Right. Don't just reach and grab it and shake it. You don't know what part of the alien that is.

1:46:30 Ma and maybe you don't want to find out to and Shaking hands is not even earthwide. in in Asia shaking hands is not as common as it is in the West. So don't take your own But the One of the biggest lessons there is don't take your own assumptions.

1:46:47 And apply it to the alien. And the in the alien to them? Chapter is a fast one and then we can wrap. I just imagine they landed And

1:46:58 Los Angeles. Okay. And they're in the median of the four oh five. Right. And they're just looking around. I'm certain they would conclude.

1:47:09 That the dominant life form on earth was the automobile. Yeah. There they are just doing things. And then they see like A car hauler go by?

1:47:18 That one's pregnant. They're in sick cars inside. Uh if it if there's an accident. Other c other. Automobiles come up to take it away and repair it.

1:47:29 Uh These automobiles go up to Fast food establishment? And People don't get out of the car to go and they stay in their car.

1:47:39 Wait in line in a slow line to get fast food handed to him through a window and then they eat it in the car. So the aliens would say, Okay, the life form is the car and the squishy things inside, that must be the squishy middle of this life form. What this book tries to do is Re Cast.

1:48:00 All of your assumptions. About what an alien would think of us and about what we would think of an alien. And try try to have fun doing it along the way. So that's all thank you for Bringing it up.

1:48:11 Thank you so much, Neil.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 10 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.