Full Episode | Let’s Make America Smart Again, with Fareed Zakaria

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this is Startalk this is Startalk radio welcome to the first installment in a series of special edition cosmic queries that we have dubbed make America smart again I'm your host and personal astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and joining me today is my co-host is someone who is no stranger to star talk radio professional comedian Chuck nice job hey know how I like I like the fact you put professional on the end of this are very very kind of it might be the first time I've done that as that will finally pay your rent or income really clearly I am up paying my mortgage from comedy now somehow you got that infrared very pleased to hear that today we're talking about immigration policy specifically the contributions that immigrants and descendants of immigrants have made to science technology engineering and math in this country now you know I'm not going to do that alone I'd hardly do any of this alone so to help us out we brought in special guest the one the only for Reid Zakaria yeah animation point that's right you do you have an exclamation point like born with your name well I was deserved one I was hoping to be called professional something or I guess I'm just Fareed Zakaria I feel like I'm a professional but okay something for the next for the next 40 minutes for our professional I enough so a freed is an Indian American journalist and author and he's also host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS right I assume that my fan I like the the the you know the Ankur yes we gotta go that's something that deserves to be said in stereo so you good Rick gbes yeah also writes a weekly column for The Washington Post so for read thanks for joining us and we've been friends for a while so I didn't just pick you up off mystery yeah right right right so so I I did some homework on you and you have an extraordinary academic pedigree to be doing what you do so many pundits out there they're kind of self-made they're you know they did a little bit of their own reading and they they have strong opinions and people love hearing you know vociferously voiced opinions and you always have this sort of calm voice and you have all this academic substrate there so it always the case though it always a guy who has an extensive and impressive academic pedigree you don't have to screen your dreams other guys that are just like okay so you feel that way hunters will help tip for you like those are the guys always the guy who doesn't know anything that's just like I'm told you now this is the way it is like yeah I think of myself as a lapsed academic maybe a little bit like you I don't know if you can still consider yourself a practicing in my mind I am whether or not in practice I management profession would regard you as such as if I look for tonight give all this up and just go back to the lab and then you'll never find me again so I want to just explore this I what I bring to the table for you to react to is the fact that science in the United States which really came of age in the 20th century with the there are many drivers but let's take for example the formation of the National Science Foundation but there were earlier indications go back to Abraham Lincoln who in 1963 when he clearly had other priorities he signed into law that created the National Academy of Sciences recognizing what role science was playing in Europe and how important it was saying that we get me some of that for our country and he also created the land-grant College System so he had tremendous foresight into the role of Science and Technology as a fundamental driver of everything the United States would become so now I look at I'm closer to physics than I am biology of course so I look at things like the Manhattan Project so crucial to what became 20th century politics and science and it landed us where we became where we were for the entire second half of the 20th century and most of those scientists were foreign-born nationals and and so wit wit from Europe from your worldview how could you just explain how this works just you know it's fascinating you're absolutely right to focus on the beginnings because we think that America was always the most scientifically innovative country in the world you know we look at the Nobel Prizes and we take it for granted 5% of the world's population we get about 75% of the world's prizes and that doesn't even count Obama's Peace Prize which I regard as kind of a weird one - first year office one it's like a Lifetime Achievement Award at age 25 25 well you didn't really earn this but we got to give it to you just because we like exactly but if you look at the early 20th century 1910 1914 I'd forget the exact date Germany had won more prizes in science Nobel Prize and science then Britain and the United States put together so the u.s. becomes a powerhouse in science basically for three big reasons the first is the destruction of Europe basically world war one world war two Great Depression the place gets flattened all the universities shall be the last man standing with the last man standing and particularly Germany gets destroyed if Germany was the scientific superpower second we take in all these immigrants people forget even in the 30s with all the restrictions a hundred thousand Jews came in from Europe many of them scientists as you say many of them worked on the Manhattan Project after that of course the door opens even wider and the third is massive government funding so let's think about it Europe been destroyed any more government funding is down to half what it used to be our only hope frankly is that we keep taking in the best and brightest in the world otherwise you already see the world catching up you already see that you know Japanese scientists win Nobel Prizes routinely that you now have the Chinese getting in on the action so we have to recognize hearing there we're five percent of the world we want to make sure that we're not winning just five percent of the Nobel prizes Wow that well that's that's that that very fact then is enabled only if you then not only have access to but mutual interest in coming to the world's greatest talent and the world's greatest talent isn't always in your country because everybody's human and innovation is not but he has a monopoly on innovation it's just a matter of opportunity to express it and and you know what I noticed something new if you probably know I was for a while a trustee of the college I went to Yale and there was a lot there are a lot of government from there you see the way he did that but listen there before you know what I like about the way the foreach is did I dropped anyways he was like a it was like a subject night I mean wall college in your head no like a little afterthought you know right and the color said I went to Yale yeah so here's the point Yale is private of course a lot of government cuts to public university some of the great public universities in America and we noticed that we were had access to better and better scientists who were well very favorite what biggest University of Arizona is cutting funding in Michigan State is cutting funding so Berkeley you know now but I actually have been blessed Berkeley than anywhere else but what I was struck by me being in New York or being in the world that you and I are and Neil I thought we wouldn't have to offer these guys more money no the scientists only cared about what they have good labs and good colleagues right because they wanted to be around other smart scientists they wanted to be able to have graduate students who are good so it makes me I mean the point you're making people will come to where other smart people are that's the magnet that attracts you you know what's funny is that what you just said is just a fact of human nature when you want to do well when you want to win when you want to be the best then your own personal gain tends to take a backseat to the accomplishment of a greater goal for instance sports stars will take a salary cut so that really good players can stay on their team or they'll give up being the number one guy on a team to go beat in a team effort where they're pretty much guaranteed a championship this is part of the way we think so I'm going to tell your agent that you voluntarily agreed to take a pay cut it should be at the right comedy club so things are going to have to happen one you don't have to tell my agent to get me paid first and then you can tell them I'm willing to take that big card so freed I hadn't fully that was like a missing piece of my total worldview of this that it's not just simply come here because you're being persecuted there it's come here because there are other really smart people here and then the the resonance of this intellectual community will not only benefit you but will benefit all of science and any good scientist is will tell you I want to see science grow even if I'm not part of it because there's a curiosity that we all carry to this frontier and whoever can move it that's great exactly I mean you find that one of the things that Chinese were having difficulty they've been trying to recruit back some of the best and brightest have we trained here reach that the United States trained here and they will find they would say to them we'll build you the biggest lab we'll give you unlimited research funds what the a lot of Chinese professors were saying is we don't have the best graduate students we want to work with the best graduate students and those people are at Berkeley or Harvard or now let's change now Beijing University and Chang one in particular have superb graduate students and so that you're beginning to see all many of the best and brightest go back to China so when I go back to again the Manhattan Project I go back to the Apollo project each of those had sort of military motivations I mean we don't like remembering Apollo as military but NASA was in response of course to Sputnik and the threat that that that we perceived by that but you look at you look at there was of course Einstein came over like you said this whole flux of Jewish scientists then after the Second World War we build our space program on the back of Wernher von Braun for example and now you have all these people Enrico Fermi about labs named after this guy Fermilab's okay he's Italian his wife is Jewish and all of this is going on this is America that's exactly right it's not even being fine-tooth picked for for what that is it's just of course and and of course to just emphasize one piece of this massive government funding people don't like to point this out when you talk about the all governments is bad you know then you say oh the government shouldn't pick winners or losers so look at the microchip industry that the beating heart of the computer revolution is the microchip right Texas Instruments in basically invents it and then the US government through the the Air Force buys something like 60 to 70% of all microchips produced the cost initially is 1,000 per microchip it goes down to $30 per microchip because the government keeps buying it you know it basically allows for scale which then drops the price exactly the same thing the people that people are trying to do in the solar industry or the wind industry are the people in the government who are doing this they have this foresight are you telling me this we have normally actually that much credit to government officials I think we have if you look at DARPA which is the agency in the Defense Department that does this this actually recently interviewed another DARPA we are talk it was really good fence advanced projects research agency agency and then and it there was a ARPANET which is the precursor that the internet was in fact you know came up the Defense Department effect invents it GPS eyes is as part of the Defense Department right I think I think that the main thing we have to realize is you have to throw a lot of resources at the science is expensive basic research is the most important but you also need the development of technologies of course you're going to miss a lot of course some companies like Solyndra will go bankrupt but you know if you think about it the same time the government made a loan to Solyndra for about six hundred million dollars it made a loan to Tesla for 600 million dollars now what happened Solyndra went bankrupt Tesla has got has gone up first 10,000 percent right guess who made all that money the private sector the shareholders and ms Elon Musk so when the government loses the money we the taxpayers take the blame but we don't get the upside that's just the nature of it but it doesn't mean that it doesn't work for us would you get the upside in the sense that if the government births an industry in the industry has tax base that comes back to the government exactly and then each scientific invention produces and known at what price you know yes and just for the record star talk was birthed by the government on a National Science Foundation grant they believe that in what we were trying to do that so that was a little more like the Solyndra one yeah so I thought we were doing okay I don't know you know you go I just I'm looking our notes for this that apparently you know of course Benjamin Franklin let's go back to him when are the first great scientists of the United States he I mean I he will books on research and electricity so he's Polly he might even be been a better scientist and founding father I mean if you look at him what his record is and what he salutes covered in a the books that he had published but regardless he he his parents fled England because of religious persecution and he's here and so he's basically an immigrant his immigrant lineage which would be an easy back then again it's pretty good that see it the thing is though doesn't really count when you you're not brown oh that's that anything like just word let's get to that they're all that they're a rule let's get to this so we have these I could decide all the famous scientists of the 20th century that shaped modern you know we have Wernher von Braun from Germany who burst the he he basically designed the Saturn 5 rocket to goddess to the moon because he had that knowledge and and and awareness from his from developing the v2 rocket and that's basically the first ballistic missile and left Earth's atmosphere found his target fell on the target right that's that's a ballistic missile v2 being the Rockets that the Germans developed and and written and rained on London in 1940 correct correct all the rain would be a little too delicate a word for what these things did it so they they fall out of this guy's supersonically see it's not it it's not like not a whistle no you do not just you're walking and then the block explodes okay that's how that my dad was a graduate student in London in 1945 and was having coffee with a bunch of his friends in a cafe he was and they said him stay for a while he said no I got to get back I got to get some work done he walks out and he turns his back and v2 rocket hit the cafe everyone there every friend of his died if he had just stayed when they told him just have one more cup of coffee he would have been dead yeah then we wouldn't eat me ham is really having this conversation right no I think of it the other way that's how many others might I've been having conversation not him I am great I would have had to tackle eight and any of it and you ever use that as a motivator fashion the factor to get you to do your work let me tell you something I would go yeah you know what I got back to work and I'm alive no different we will a different my dad's had we had a tough upbringing user self self-made man and he always said I went through stuff I don't want you to have to go through with his attitude let me just complete this list Steve Jobs as we know he is his family lineage is traceable Syria for I remember this is actual father was there was a Syrian immigrants Emory and Elon Musk a South African but via Internet and Sergey Brin Google is in Google right all of this all of this and so so not to mention all the real I mean the scientist these are all we're talking we're trying to the entrepreneur right we're just on with the entre NORs if you register now find this devil's advocate this is a list of people any country would want so do you say yes you can immigrate if you have these kinds of ambitions or if you're going to if you're going to well we'll let you in if you go get a degree in engineering I mean is that is that the devil's advocate posture here that has not yet been resolved in this conversation so there's no question we should take any of those kinds of people I mean there's I think Michael Bloomberg had the idea if you get a PhD and in science you should have a green card stapled to your degree when you get it that makes a lot of sense sense there's no question which is also also Newt Gingrich with a very very strong posture on that and I and I think that you know that seems to me a no brain one of the parts of immigration reform one hopes eventually we'll get to the harder question as you says we take in lots of people who are not like that that's called a family unification policy I think we probably take in too many that way into few who are skilled and brain-based but you know there's also something to be said for the sheer drive that that low-skill immigrants bring obviously in the right numbers and in a way that can they can be integrated but the biggest problem for rich country is you lose that drive you lose that hunger I mean you know we all have children and the more fortunate the parent circumstance that kids are going to be great for and lazy sake and hey can have the same Drive right right but my night Arab Emirates has a similar problem it's a very wealthy country but who's going to clean the laundry and I was going to but but some guy who comes from you know Mexico or Guatemala hunger induce who's willing to risk everything abandoned you know home culture come there come here to wash dishes just to explain hours a day that's a good surrender Drive and energy and by the way that person might end up doing something remarkable his children that end up doing something remelting you have to keep in the mind is the children of those people tend to be the ones who had that same Drive but they are also educated here in America which gives them a distinct advantage when it comes to a bigger Drive than American with the same American education it goes so they're out older and what we're doing is we're creating better Americans let's do it we got to go to break when we come back more of our conversation on a special edition of cosmic queries let's make America smart again with my special guest for read Zakaria when we come back welcome back to star talk radio we've been talking about the impact of immigration on science and technology in America and we've got Chuck nice to help me out here sir deep thinking dude yeah you know it's all good comics art by the way this is true I was going to say I try to keep that I try to lower expectations as much as possible Neal how that works and we've got our in-studio guest journalist author and longtime actual friend of mine to read Zakaria Fareed the great to have you on the show I just want to just get back in just real quickly so so would you so when when if there's a policy that says we'll stop all immigration evaluated and say okay here is the proscenium through which you'll walk if we judge that you will be the right person for this is there risk of that abuse with that kind of happened 100 years ago didn't it listen Northern Europeans not the southern Europeans there's a lot of judgment being placed on who was worthy and who was not I think the big danger is that we think we can fit we can identify talent and drive and ambition and creativity and those are complicated things so yes we should do more skill-based we should probably do a little bit less family unification we should get the balance right we should it'll be the immediate family you mean extend it exactly you can basically and we were told but by the way I mean again in the old days in the 19th century one person from a village in Sicily would come and then bring the whole village leader here right right row it's we have we have done that and we've managed to absorb it and that is partly what is given this country the kind of diversity and and and richness it has but you know in terms of balancing the numbers maybe more skill-based maybe less of this as you say extended family unification but I really think it's important to remember we don't know when we take in a ten year old kid what that kid is going to be whether they may he or she may be a poor Guatemalan that doesn't mean that you know talent is sprinkled evenly throughout the planet and you might be getting amazing people even though they look like they're poor peasants from you know places that are not doing well in the world so one other question to the queries where's your solicitor these from we have a queries from all over the internet and so Encarnacion where you can find Startalk so for read that there's the flipside of its that no one in America talks about if we are so great that everyone wants to come to us that's a brain drain for other countries we're getting the best of other countries sort of druids sucking their intellectual capital into our borders if we get a stronger world will be less capable to do that even if we want it to so the way I think about this Niall it's a very good question as you can imagine we haven't grown up in India and come here I would hear this often people would say why are you leaving India you know that your country needs you but here's the truth I actually do think talent is sprinkled throughout there are millions and millions of talented Indians I'm not that special that what's special is the environment that this country has created we're smart and talented people can flourish there's another way of putting this there was a member of parliament an opposition member of parliament to stir up one day the indian parliament and after then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi he said madam Prime Minister can you explain to me one question I noticed when I look around the world Indians seem to do really well everywhere except in India what does that tell you about how you run this country all right yeah there's no answer there's no good it's all about creating an ecosystem where talent can flourish it's the problem in India or China or Africa is not that there aren't talented people if you haven't created the ecosystem that lets some fun about the Einstein project in in Africa and looking for the next Einstein black Einstein basically oh really oh yeah yeah it's in Africa and Africa right it's very cool I have no doubt in my mind that there is somebody as talented with you know in terms of raw intelligence he or she exists yeah the question is can you create the ecosystem that led Einstein do what he did in Germany and and very large atomic they never see this is Einstein playing basketball right right and it's an Einstein had a promising career as a basketball player until an ankle injury to the book in a book so what do you have Chuck oh we got our cosmic queries so let's just jump right into it since we already set up the fact of where we get these the first one that we always take is from a patreon patron because they support us financially and I'm going to put them to the top of Lisbon right at the top of the list they paid they go right to the top of the list kind of like not even ashamed to say well I'm not okay like Congress and lobbying okay now you get lobbyists for the show you've got their lobbyists for the seat give me 328 porters you're all lobbyists a drain the swamp let's yeah let's just hear from the free lotion in the galaxy we're going to drain the galaxy all right here we go here's our first from Renee Douglas and says Renee's from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania says why is it important to you that the United States lead the world in science she's speaking with you directly Neal hmm are you just rooting for your own team so to speak or is there a better reason so what she is and the reason I picked that as first question is because we just finished talking about the fact that there's a brain drain on other righty-right so it fits perfectly into that so okay what is wrong with uh with in other countries I mean are we just do we just root for America or is it possible that if we were to spread the wealth a little bit maybe science would flourish even more maybe we would see even greater you say if you added all the rags I always but I always add everything to these people's questions because I'm like I want you to get a little more deeply I got a little bit I put it I got I got you so so I think it's natural to root for the home team yeah and you don't to do that to the point of waging war I think that's my opinion in that regard but you move for the home team and I grew up in the United States in the second half of the 20th century cat which had a lot of problems of its own you know a hot war cold war civil rights movement campus unrest but in there we were going to the moon and we all knew that that required innovations in science and technology we knew this and so I would be upset if that that sense of inventing a future were no longer happening on the soil in which I was born I would be upset however I'd be even more upset if it didn't happen anywhere else in the world right so yeah I wanted to have been the one who discovered the Higgs boson in a Texas super collider got its budget cut in 1993 having judged well what's the value of this because I my view is piece had just broken out in 1989 and when piece breaks out who needs physicists as far as anybody thinks so the Higgs boson gets discovered in in the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland at European collaboration we're part of that collaboration but we're not the leader not the major leader not a quarterback right without the quarterback on the team on the team we're on the team with oh that is very unamerican to not be the quarterback you know we supposed to be the quarter that were supposed to be the quarterback so as a scientist were all delighted but as an American all right so that's just I'm just being honest with my feelings there but if it has long as it happens somewhere if the whole world closed down then we're all moving back into the cave decades but by the way it does matter to American economics you know basically the way you get economic growth is two things how many people do you have and how much productivity do you have in other words it's the number of people who in the work force labor and its productivity what what is how productive ie is each of their each of those people and productivity arises only through technology technological innovation in science yes exactly just to be clear you can the this is a slightly controversial statement but I want to be very frank about it the times when the arts grows economically in almost every case I've seen it's because they have been touched by technology and so as it enables it to occur and I think there's also a way and there's a mutually reinforcing thing the arts feed creativity which allows free Mendozas wonderful stories about Einstein when he would get stuck on a physics problem which stop and you go and start playing his violin he said that it would unlock something in his head in his mind that he couldn't understand so ideally you have a kind of you know into symbiosis and creativity right right well I'm just going to add all that Rene you've heard for Reed and Neil us and they were very very diplomatic I'm going to say yeah I wanted to be here in America because I live here and this is my country and it's like inviting somebody to your house one guy you could just have live with you the other guy says you know what I'm gonna build an addition and that's a guy I want to live with a man I love this Chrissy Borden says this what does the scientific community think or hope is the next big discovery on the horizon that would be really wonderful if it happened here in the United States gosh there's so many things happening that are extraordinary I mean I think that if you look at some of the most dramatic new frontiers I think are in biology so you might my eight-year-old daughter is here because she's a huge fan of Neil's she's sitting outside in curry school I might have she's cutting school for this discounters school counselor school after school all right well she was talking about the brain episode that she was watching about that Neil did one Nova ScienceNOW no sorry sir and if you think about how mapping the brain is going to transform our understanding of the brain what happens you know from medicine and just to knowledge David via this is actually in a weird way it's uncharted territory oh yeah John's beginning to wonder the frontiers are just that well then you have Harry but but even more exciting you marry it to the revolution in Big Data where the brain is going to produce the volume of data is going to be so large there's only the new super computer brain invented big data yes it is exactly so it seems to me that's the one but there's so many I mean Isaac's yeah yeah I agree for III the brain so neuroscience as a frontier also of course AI yes is related related can will we have autonomous robots they can think for themselves without having to just solve a problem that you hand it so that's a their own problem I'm well you saw this problem solver John Day himself self-determining I'm sentient now Neil they now say that AI is getting good enough that computers can do many of the things that you means to do having computers go do editing trailers of movies so my question is when do you think you can get a computer who could tell better jokes than you you nothing with that sauce not going to happen no let me tell you what's working on that it's one of the uniquely mystery unique mysteries of the world for eaglet and I'm going to keep it that way wouldn't it be sad if all kinds of people went out of work but that you maintained yeah okay that's the one thing computers can do is make us laugh I don't know only profession left I don't see any sadness in that at all my favorite computer joke ever this one can told me this I think was controlled by him it was a robot you know wandering a party I think there was a human somewhere with it but I pretended it wasn't so they said well I asked where did you learn your your knowledge of the world oh I went to solid state university yeah I don't think that did you have a PhD in physics together not that one no knows a solid-state means anymore it means no tubes no vacuums right yeah no that's a solid state yes all right you got let's go too you know I got to do this meal because I've seen quite a few of these questions come across and so I'm reading Ben Knuffle camps question as a representative to for all of you who have written this type of question not only for this show but another show that I co-hosted with Bill Nye on a similar type of subject meal why does Startalk have episodes that either have nothing to do or vaguely encompass astronomy physics or other science if I want it liberal politics you'll like this part for read but I just turn on CNN okay so the reason I the reason I read that question is because this is not political what we are talking about well we'll talk about just the world as a better place whatever and however you slice and dice that politically right that's people's own motives but there's some fundamental reality that has to matter here before that conversation even happens right but but I can address that I can say I could enter this world naively as a scientist and think oh yeah sorry let's just do science but but then you wake up and realize that any science that happens is embedded in a political system correct I'm not an island right and I have to beat much some of my colleagues over the head who cry foul when NASA spends money on something they don't think they should spend money on the space station or on-demand program which has always been a controversial passive spending relative to pure research and I go to my colleagues and I say you are treating NASA as though it's your private funding agency when it was born in a cold war environment and there are there are their geopolitical mission statements that NASA fulfills and you are not the only one in town that it serves and in fact the science budget of NASA historically has never been maxed out at about 35% and the long-term average is around 1/4 and all the rest goes to Geo politically driven decisions for what NASA does in this world and and if you think about that you know the point we were making earlier if if American science of the reason we're the forefront of global science is you know the three things I talked about Europe got destroyed to two world wars we took in lots of immigrants and then we spend lots of government money on it those are political issues and so if you want to create great science yes you have to have great scientists but you've got to figure out how do you get them how do you create an environment where they flourish how do the ideas get all of that is embedded in a political system that's got to recognize that in order to make wise decisions right regarding it going forward that's all that's it's not more complicated but the drivers of it are simple and it's not more political than that and by the way this used to be totally bipartisan it was Eisenhower who set the spending maxi Eisenhower spending 3 percent of GDP on basic science Reagan increased the spending it is recently that we have gotten into a situation where everything is political it's uselessly blind Republican this used to be bipartisan not only that of course under President Nixon we formed the Environmental Protection Agency right and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA 1 right so you're right 3 when I look historically there's a lot of commingling of political platforms that are in the service of science and historically even the National Science Foundation has been bipartisan although the motives were little you know so and many would complain at the Rd spending on the regen a lot of that went to Star Wars which which many in my sights of a community objected to but at the end of the day even if the motors are different science gets done so science is political but we are not politicizing it so that that's the we're not coming down on one side or another we're coming down on the side of science one could if there's a plea at the side that doesn't like science if it's anti sign you can tell you the consequences of what it is to be a hard science that's all we got to take a quick break and we'll be back soon with Chuck nice and my special guest today reads Acharya welcome back to star talk radio cosmic queries in a special installment called make America smart again I've got Fareed Zakaria as my special guest and you know this man I mean he's a he's a geopolitical genius and he's got a special feature coming out on CNN with a special it's a special primetime documentary one-hour on the most powerful man in the world President United States who we say is Vladimir Putin Oh throw down so I'm should love that will make the case you judge okay yeah you're sweet I'm going to hit one thing just to bring some closure to it when I was in graduate school at least half of everyone in the sciences and engineering were foreign nationals and at that time they would come get their PhDs their masters and stay as the rest of the world rises up and as America fades we become less of a carrot for those very same graduate students and I've seen many of them go back to their home country to China to India will there be a point when they won't even come here as graduate students because those fully trained phd's now train their own graduate students and then we have this reverse flux of the intellectual capital of the world it's a great question my own sense is it will be a long time before that happens because the one thing that the United States still absolutely dominates is higher education if you look at the lists of the top 20 universities in the world 18 are American top 50 in the world 36 or American and it's hard to design a really superb world-class university because there's a lot that goes into it do that overnight you can't do that overnight Harvard and Yale and Princeton have huge advantages of 100 in the 17th century yes you have lots of money they contain a car endowment they can see you did I tell you the roots I'll tell you one piece of it that I wonder about when you look at a place like China at the heart of Western science has been the ability to question authority for the graduate student to tell the professor you're full of it you're raw your ideas are wrong I remember readings are outdated or I got a better idea niels bohr used to begin his lectures as great physicist uh from the turn of the century used to begin his lectures in copenhagen Litella students I want you to I want to start by telling you you must approach this lecture by assuming everything that I say might be untrue my beam might be falsifiable in other words that sense of really being willing to challenge authority that is not yet true in in a place like China and I wonder if there's a cultural barrier which will mean that it takes even longer for that day I've thought a lot about this and accept I came to it from a less noble angle and when I see little children in malls if there's a toddler just steps out of a stroller and the parent says get back in the truck now is an American kid it's also something else that you talked about we had a conversation long time ago about the fact that in other cultures you may not see the aspirations to do things that we that we take for granted in this culture that's when I grow up I'm going to be an astronaut right right what do you want to be when you eat whatever I want to be when you grow up in it and in other countries unreachable goals are actually tamp down right where's here so I always make that cue go ahead right but I but I would do want to emphasize it's important to remember these are not god-given advantages the United States has I can lose them very easily if we don't create maintain the culture of openness and creativity why God shed His grace on me what were you I do think that means when they need to be a greater focus on science you'll like this either one of the my favorite lines from one of Tom Friedman's books the New York Times columnist it was in China and he was noticing you know Bill Gates was happened to be there and people were going crazy over gates because he was this computer whiz I mean yes he was also very rich but the combination and he said I guess I realized the probability the difference between China and India's in China Bill Gates as Britney Spears in America Britney Spears is British yeah we we venerate pop icons they turned a geeky computer scientist into pop icons it looks you've done it again Fareed okay don't give me another one here here we go speaking with what free just said here's Bob Longmire from Facebook who says this given the current political climate how do you suggest we help advance scientific literacy with people who view science throw a negative political lens very very good query what is your solution here if I'm trying to get people to understand what science is and how and why it works and they're swept up into a worldview that does not allow that in that's what do you do in the world of politics what has the world done in the history of this exercise you know it's very frustrating because it's not just an assault on science it's an assault on expertise it's an it's an assault at some fundamental level on knowledge and I think there's there is a tendency to say that all this knowledge is either biased or opinion 8 or you have your facts I have my facts no you can't have alternate facts you can you can disagree you can draw your own conclusions on the basis of those five how much of that isn't fed it's fed by the fact that in politics and in religion people are there is there isn't that absolute right or wrong and so people are accustomed to arguing what they want to be true now you've ads science to the mix and they feel like they can have the conversation in the same way you know I think it's coming at a populist moment where people think that all the experts get everything wrong and I was reading the New York Times recently there's an article about Steve Bannon Donald Trump's chief strategist who's having everybody read a book called the best and the brightest this is a book about how the smart Kennedy advisors got America into Vietnam and the the moral of the book is meant to be or the way he'd sees it all these experts were wrong with disastrously answer to this in sac if you read the book what's interesting is actually what it points out is all the political advisers were overconfident arrogant they were not listening to the real expertise of the historians the people who understood Vietnam who understood China cultures and cultures I it was actually a story about expertise that was ignored because people had a political lens which was anti communism which they filtered everything through right Wow Chuck what else you get all right let's move on shall we to Anne a cold way and and says love Startalk do you foresee the future of international collaborations changing as a result of the new frankly barbaric policies that have been put in place now that this is maybe when this comes out this will have changed but as of now there is still a recording so-called as of this recording there still a so-called immigration ban that was in place and then a federal judge said no and that's where we are at this juncture well I'll make a statement and I want for Reid to react okay scientifically when we collaborate internationally we do so at international conferences they don't happen to be in your department or in your country your you can still collaborate because you get to get there we create these occasions and where there's an intellectual discourse and their workshops their international conferences and the like you guys have your own like science date it's article data May and it's like you got your own thing I don't that and so I've been on multiple papers where there are international collaborations with it and so so I can say that I don't require there to be immigration yeah you just still collaborate the internet enables that writes international conferences enable it okay so so for Reid what do you say if all the world is this fertile landscape of communication then who needs immigrants at that point there's no question that you can do more electronically than you ever have been able to before but you know again comes back to do we want the United States to be the center the place where people meet I remember after 9/11 there was a period where there was similar kinds of you know pauses and immigration slowed down and increased vetting within qualities you know all the things going on a lot of scientific conferences were cancelled that we're going to be held in the United States and they held them in Europe they held them in China now if we you know if we keep doing this kind of thing you know it's not the end of the world but it certainly will mean that the inner master cylinder of mass will shift and frankly the Europeans are more than happy to pick this up there's a French presidential candidate just read about this he said you know I just want everybody to know anyone who finds that there having difficulty doing science in America come to France we will give you will roll out the red carpet for you and that's the French let me tell you something and that alone that's a way to play a huge wake-up call to everyone in this country that is like Ryan Gosling talking to your wife at a cocktail party and says listen if this eighth or whatever if you have a good tired of this jackass over here hi I'm Ryan Gosling you're more than welcome to come over and have coffee I had to tell you something you're going to start treating your woman a little differently I had a similar earlier thought when I was really read this news article about this attempt to get ready for the next asteroid so we can deflect it out of the sky and by the time I got to the bottom it was Russia organizing it asking who's with them to make this happen that's it and I felt like wait a minute I was just so expecting that would be us inviting others to participate right and I realized that this if when you fade it's not a cliff you just sort of slowly desire and everyone else rises up and they and they have conversations at their table exactly whether or not you're invited right and you know I love the fact that you said when you fade it's not a cliff it is indeed a slippery slope and when people use that metaphor they need to take in mind exactly what the visual is it is a 45-degree angle where you are slowly sliding jazz either they're flying but it's not getting me traction you just slide in the way so that's what it is out of you out of you you have to have one quick one if you got a quick one okay here's here's a quick one and this is for for read as terrible things as things are could better relations with Russia improve science and space exploration yeah sure look we should have good relations with Russia we should have good relations with China we should have good relations with all these countries now the problem is you know we have our nation ambition when Russia invades another its neighbor when it NX's parts of another country you know something that basically hasn't happened for decades and decades and it contravenes international order you've got to do something about it so there's got to be a way and we by the way we manage students even during the Cold War to cooperate but also certain rules of the road that matter but I think that we must write their work so I don't want you to go quickly past that while we were still in cold war with Russia we had the apollo-soyuz joint space program and this was like the early signs that maybe we can be friends so just because there's transgressive behavior in the world from one country to another should that that should not have to stop what might be science or space collaborations I think I think it's like it's all the more reason to do it because you know you want to build as many bonds as you can between countries we don't work better in isolation there's this wonderful book by Matt Ridley about the height of human beings manage just extraordinary rise for you know from being just just animals and the most important thing points out is whenever we encountered diversity we flourish you know just even scientifically but as human beings we the more we can encounter the other the more we can collaborate with people who think differently look differently study differently the end product is better was who's the the wit of a hundred years ago who said there's no greater pain to the human spirit than the prospect of coming up with a new idea I haven't heard that one so I think we're going to save this Neil aggress so what you say is I think can be clearly demonstrated but there's the the soul speaks differently about who you want to hang out with we want to create the the homogeneous bubble but that's why you want to get past your comfort zone and into that into that area hard tightly edited it's hard it's against it seems to be against human nature to welcome in the people who look different from you and sound different from you and think differently from you and have a different religion or political idea we've been part of the same tribes for thousands and thousands you think about it for most of human existence we grew up we grew old and died one mile from where we were born and now we're saying all these people who come and in that and grace the world as your tribe and and even though those tribes are not sending you their best they're sending you criminals that are sending you rapists oh fuck it's time to end I think that's we're out of time jack talk about the tribe thanks Chuck for co-hosting today and thank you to our special guest CNN what do they call you guys the anchors anchor CNN anchor for Reid Zakaria you all know is show GPS and adult miss it I try to catch it every weekend when I don't I catch it on CNN go so so four reads thanks for joining us on this special edition of Startalk which is the inaugural version of cosmic queries where we're trying to make America great again I'm not trying to make America smart again now we're trying to make America smart again thank you that we're trying to make America great again by making America smart again all that this has been Neil deGrasse Tyson on Startalk and we're going to try to keep making America smart again and until next time keep looking up this is Startalk [Music] you [Music]

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Channel: StarTalk

Views: 219,165

Rating: 4.8276386 out of 5

Keywords: Neil Tyson, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, Fareed Zakaria, StarTalk, Star Talk, LMASA, immigration, immigrants, science, United States, America, V2, Cold War, Apollo-Soyuz, Higgs boson, Superconducting Super Collider, Fareed Zakaria GPS, CNN

Id: 76_1zr7Rprw

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Length: 49min 42sec (2982 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 10 2017

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