Neil deGrasse Tyson Full Interview - The Chris Cuomo Project

we should think of our politicians not as our leaders but as our follower and so the more educated we are the more enlightened we are that puts a mandate on our quote leaders to do exactly what we say not for them to make statements to require what we do [Music] hey I'm Chris Cuomo welcome to another episode of the Chris Cuomo project this is a big one you're going to want to subscribe and follow because this one is gonna get you the free agent merch I got the ultimate free agent on the show today if you check it out the money that you use to pay for free agent merch that I use to pay for free agent merch is going to help us to do some Cooperative giving to others all right that's why I'm pushing it the way I am now the ultimate free agent Neil deGrasse Tyson physicist Science Guy understands things so well I've known him forever and he is finally doing something that I had always hoped he would he's applying his understanding of critical thinking or science if you want two what's happening around us and the issues that are dividing us very interesting he's not going to tell you what to think but he is showing us how we should think as critical thinkers which is what should matter most it's the one thing we need critical thinkers free agents Neil deGrasse Tyson Starry Messenger is his new book it is such a good read and if this plays like a love letter it's because it is I I believe that we need to put more emphasis on our thinkers our philosophers our scientists our poets our people who create things and think about Who We Are and he is one of our best you know who he is Neil deGrasse Tyson and you know other societies other cultures they look to men like him and women like him thinkers writers philosophers scientists what do they think about the issues of the day what matters what doesn't why wouldn't you want your best put to the test of what matters in the Public Square now here I get it they stay out of it because it's too dangerous it's a brave move by the professor and I was so happy that he came and sat on the couch it's so good the man has a lot to say but most importantly it's so much brain food for us to be better critical thinkers kneel deGrasse Tyson with a must-read book and a must watch and listen conversation [Music] oh got a new sponsor and you know who's gonna love him Greg odd why night sweats what do you do if you're someone who's a sweaty sleeper well you know what you need breathable bedding this is a great holiday gift idea I'm excited about this I went out and went after these folks cozy Earth Oprah's Favorite Things five years in a row that's not why I went after him but that's cool right it's got to be good for the brand Oprah Winfrey yes wow you know why I dig it bamboo I'm big on cozy Earth here's why it's so nice this ghosts highly sustainable bamboo what does it mean that it works that way it is naturally temperature regulated well so what does that mean homie's not so sweaty you see what I'm saying because it 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don't know that you know that's something that we have to question I think it's good I've done the research I think a lot of us take too much stuff we mostly pee it out that's expensive P but a lot of it doesn't combine the way we think it does certain things have to be done in certain ratios certain combinations even sometimes certain different times of the day so athletic greens have done the thinking the r d and figured out what the right way is to do the product okay one scoop 75 high quality vitamins minerals Whole Food Source ingredients probiotics adaptogens okay uh very cool remember we had Greg look up adaptogens he doesn't remember what they were the Cleveland Clinic says they are plants and mushrooms that help your body respond to stress anxiety fatigue and overall well-being you will get a year's supply of vitamin D very important to add especially in the winter months why you're not getting as much sunlight and I know a lot of people question that what do you mean you take it as a pill it's also that's with the sun it's got the sun in it seriously get hooked on science okay vitamin D very important helps you especially this time of year and again you do the athletic greensway you don't have to buy all the things separately okay reclaim your health arm your immune system it's convenient it's daily and it's the nutrition you need just one scoop in a cup of water every day that's it you don't have to think about it again right now it's time to reclaim your health arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition I say it nice so I say it twice one scoop very easy oh I just wish I could get a deal okay to make it easy athletic greens is going to give you free one-year supply of immune supporting vitamin D five free travel packs all you have to do is make a purchase okay go to athleticgreens.com CCP again athleticreens.com CCP take ownership of your health pick up the ultimate daily nutritional Insurance be like me I take it and then I go foreign thank you for being my friend thank you for being here good to see you again now what I have just said in the introduction I will redouble on which is this is a love letter to Neil deGrasse Tyson because for over 20 years I have been saying we need our best and our brightest to talk about what's happening in the Public Square and you are one of our best and brightest in our country and this book which you must read and you know me I don't tell you to read a lot of books this book is so smart if you want to think if you want to care and I know I just said this to you but when you repeat things it helps we have someone who knows how to think thinking about what is going on with our Dynamic on the issues that matter this is what we need yeah I was pregnant with the book the book is actually again forgive the uterine analogy but I've been I've been gestating that book for decades ever since you told me that and even earlier I was observing the world around me and I'm saying no that's not they didn't think this through this whole Community is making a decision and don't they realize that the statistics don't and I kept my distance because I'm an astrophysicist and I'm telling you about the Hubble telescope and all the things you want to hear from me but I'm collecting these observations throughout my life in fact I remember the first moment was I was 14. and certainly scientifically literate I was early science geek all right and there I am there was a comment that was coming by comic kahute oh wait I'm old I'm older than I'm like I got 10 years on you dude uh this is an early 70s and comic kahootek is coming by we discovered it really far away so people said if we discovered it that far out by the time it gets here it's going to be bright and it was going to come around in December like it would be a Christmas comment and like in October before it was visible to the naked eye I saw full-grown adults holding signs saying repent the comet is coming the end of the world is near and I said no and I'm 14 years old and I know that's well and you're in a full-grown adult what's wrong with you how how and it's one thing to just not know I'm an educator we we're attracted to people who don't know stuff because that helps our friendship we we teach that's what we do but if you think you know something and don't that's dangerous now that person was a no societal consequence right they didn't have their own TV show so being pregnant with this um this past year I said it's it's ready to be burst I'm looking for the page in the book so saith the professor um that there is a a rule that one of the aphorisms you have in here is that never thinking something is true if you know it's false oh yeah no no I'm never saying that something is false if you know that it is true well no so it's slightly different from that tell me it is the methods and tools of science have only really one objective all right it's I'm going to restate this scientific method all right typically when you hear it describe well experiment induction deduction no yes but no okay here it is do whatever it takes to ensure that you're not fooled into thinking something is true that is not or that something is not true that is period And if it means your eyewitness testimony is insufficient because you didn't have your coffee this morning or because you have some delusions or because you have some some social emotional pains that filter what you're seeing and Reporting find another way to get the data because these would be forces operating on your bias that puts a gap between what you think or want to be true and what is objectively true in the world and science is all about that that's what that's the back on which civilization has been built that's why planes don't fall out of the sky that's why we couldn't land spacecraft on comets okay that's why we can collide with an asteroid we can park a telescope a million miles from Earth and observe the edge of the universe that's why it's why your smartphone can tell you the shortest route to Grandma's house in traffic without any human intervention that's called science technology engineering first uh footnote Neil deGrasse Tyson does not get heated up about things ordinarily because he's a thinker he's very emotionally sensitive but what we are doing to ourselves is so Preposterous that someone who bases his life on objectivity can't handle it I can't I can't I'm losing it cut to we're finally allowed to go out and eat again at some point during the pandemic I go to a restaurant near where I live Neil's there with some friends I have none so I'm alone and I walk up and I say hello Neil is in the middle of conversation with people where he is clearly what we used to call vexed okay and he says to me I've been watching what you're doing brother this is crazy he says to me he's like this is crazy nobody believes anything that you're saying I said I know there's an attack on science yeah and he said to me he was like no no you can't attack science is knowledge science is wisdom which means we've already done the vetting you have to show people what vetting is and I was like yep and I left and easy to say hard to do what did it mean to you it doesn't matter if it was fouchy or who it was although I did believe you shouldn't have had a scientist making political arguments to people you put him in a bad position because people want certainty they want you to give them hope and aspiration and that's what politicians do they tell you things that are maybe a step or two Beyond but what we know because of what we want to believe that's not what you do I tweeted recently I said politicians lie to us because we want them to it's like don't tell me the truth tell me what I want to hear and I'll vote for you my father once said May rest in peace you'll never hear a politician say you don't like your taxes make more money be more useful to society so that people pay you more so you don't care about having to pay taxes no one's going to tell you that right because it doesn't give you an agency for Uranus Agency for your animus whoa oh you can have it what what SAT do you get 800 on your verbal sat how quickly Agency for your animals quickly my friends are astonished by anything that comes out of my mouth larger than the word mayonnaise I know those two words I just don't use them because I'm trying to actually communicate with people that's why I have you here okay okay I just say because it's alliterative if it Rhymes I feel like I love alliterative yeah and so I think that would be assonance that is assonance rhyming yes thank you yeah there he is so you watch the world and people are saying I refuse to do X because I don't like it and even if you tell me that there is a basis in scientific understanding for this thing I will just accuse you of trying to make me do what I don't want to do there is no objective basis what did it mean to you so what you just did there is an amalgam of different attitudinal postures that are out there so one of them is I don't care what you say I have my freedoms and I declare that my freedoms is I don't want to do anything you tell me on some level that's defensible right it's they're not saying the science is right or wrong they're just saying I don't want to do what you want to tell me to do what I mean by defensible is you cannot use science to argue that person out of that position so what does what do you then do you say well by you doing that or not doing this you're putting someone else in jeopardy so your freedom is now encroaching on the health and security of others so now the person has to if they still feel that way they have to say I don't care about others well that's another kind of conversation and where's the humanity is is this what have we lost in society where you don't care that you could get someone sick who then ends up having their grandparents die right um if you looked at the numbers the the excess deaths from covid are real right they're not just people who would have died anyway the people who would not have died anyway not at least in that year or the year that followed and so there's a real bump we all know people who died of covid personally right so it's not like it's some other thing obscure statistic that affects other people and not you so that's one kind of concern I have the concern that people are losing their sense of caring but people say to them what they asked you to do wouldn't have made it any better may have made it worse lockdowns were a mistake masks aren't necessary people get sick you get your immunity a lot of these people had comorbidities you know look at the popularity that's the Run of arguments that's the Run of arguments where people have cherry-picked the information to satisfy what they already want to be true again I'm an educator so I don't beat people on the head I ask myself why do they think this way why do they think they have this kind of latitude to choose this information and not that information and then I realize that science needs to be taught differently this is almost too easy to give this as an excuse because I people say well is there isn't the answer more complex than that is it it's social cultural budget no I think it's just how did you learn science was it here's a book textbook oh by the way they're words that are bull face better memorize those okay because there's gonna be a test all right and um and you study the chapter take the test and then you move on and then at the end of the class you're done and you move on to something else so you learned a body of knowledge may be retained it probably not many people lose what they learned uh can I give a quick off-ramp I thought he was going to quiz me for a second I was like this is gonna go very badly I was just hoping I could spell science a quick off-ramp do you remember the comedian Father Guido Sarducci oh okay he had one bit okay one bit I just stuck with me my entire life he said uh he's going to start a new University a 10-minute University you can get a degree in 10 minutes he said no you can't how are you going to do that how how okay here's how he will teach you only the things you would have remembered five years later supply and demand buy it sell it for more boom a plus okay Spanish class como esta usted so this was deep to me because I said when I teach classes what does it mean to give this nuanced syllabus with all this detail that yeah in the subject it matters if you're going to be an expert in the subject but if it's your one pass through the content let me teach you things that you're going to want to remember that you will remember so after that Guido Sarducci bit okay I saw that while in high school so I didn't teach until later I shaped my University classes based on what I thought people would remember the most so much of what you're taught in the science class gets regurgitated and forgotten somewhere in there you need to learn you need to be taught science is a way of querying nature it is it is a you want to wait for the siren no no because it this is New York City New York City is every five seconds we keep it real keeping it real I can't tell you how many times over the years doing interviews people have been saying something and a producer has stopped it and been like if we could just wait for sound I was like he's saying why he knew his mother was going to die you really want to go back yeah yeah yeah yeah so don't worry about it it'll all make sense to the people listen so what I think should happen is in every science class some fraction of the syllabus needs to be devoted to what science is and how and why it works and what is it about science that empowers you to have confidence in its results and what about science enables you to say I'm not sure about these results but it's the best available let me keep doing research that was the part that that's missing that's missing I believe people's understanding yes of science it usually doesn't matter I can get a result from a telescope and I say these were the first results this is what we think is happening and a month later we say another telescope found something else and you're kind of fun it's like oh this is like the the bleeding edge of Discovery all cool but if it's a new virus and we'd know this much but not that much about it is it your task to make stuff up or to I mean what I did the entire time is I followed the guidance of medical professionals at any given moment and once you realize that that is science on a moving Frontier you have to say to yourself this could change and if it does change it doesn't mean there was something nefarious about what happened last week or a month ago it doesn't mean that at all it means we have better data to have more nuanced guidance on how you are going to in the case of covid to resist the virus early in the days we were scrubbing everything there's some viruses that transmit that way and so no it wasn't crazy to suggest that we learned more that covet is more um Airborne than on surfaces it does you learn this and then the advice gets updated what the CDC could have done better is been honest about the state of the knowledge at the time it came in so for example uh Paul offit who was one of the visible people interviewed for how we should deal with uh covid was uh interviewed I think it was by and he said look this virus is not going to be bad it'll be contained within a few weeks and maybe a few thousand cases that's it yeah he was wrong very wrong here's the problem here we have a scientist he's a medical professional who's not trained how to communicate to the public all right what should he have said here's what he should have said right now there are measures taken in these countries that have contained the virus in these ways he had presumed the United States would respond as swiftly and as efficiently as these other countries and had we done so it would have been contained but we did not and therefore it wasn't but since he didn't present his information couched that way this is a declaration of a medical professional and then three months later it's wrong and then you say well therefore I will not listen to anything else he says this is bypassing an entire understanding of what's going on and how and why you can and should interact with that information so that's what's unfortunate context that is fine in the classroom in the boardroom um at a conference in politics doubt is death if you are explaining a position you are losing here and hold on hold on that was their mistake was that they fell into that game no no you can't say it's fine in the classroom but not here because if it's fine in the classroom and an entire generation of people is trained this way they won't vote for people who carry on that way but they did no no we don't have this generation yet trained to know what science is and how and why it works the entire first chapter of that book explains what is an objective truth and how you arrive at it and if someone has an answer if someone has a result you know what the Press does I'm going to indict you and your people go ahead okay I'm coming for you too oh I'm right here don't worry about it I'm just letting you go through your ammo all right I think I got some reserves in the back go ahead what about 40 people what do we do what you do is you find some research result that's intriguing or conflicting with prevailing wisdom and you lead with it because you want to be the first to break that story because if it's true it's amazing but most stories like that are not true yes the research result of that one study was what it was but you need it to be it needs to be verified I devote pages in this to try to get people to understand one scientific result is not yet science is a path to truth but one researcher's result is not the truth that has to be skeptically assessed by colleagues doing other experiments to see if their result holds up because they might have been biased they might have used a wall current that was different from what they should have used there might have been a spike in the in the day that anything could happen they could had a disgruntled graduate student who turned the knob the wrong way this happens in science it happens all the time in science we verify you get a confirmation of it then you have a new objective truth in the world but the Press jumps on it and then when you get a different result so is cholesterol good for you this week or is it bad for you this week because you jumped on the early studies that said One Thing versus another remember when was it 15 years ago about the Mediterranean diet and that was going to be the best way keep down on the animal fats do you realize that was a European study had a gazillion people in it great look how big the study is you realize that study European study did not include France France was not part of the data they mainlined duck fat in France okay and you realize their life expectancy is like six months less than Italy okay it's there's no really big difference there it was absent from the study so the the researchers themselves were not biased in their interpretation the foundations of the data were biased and if you don't see that you're going to lead to conclusions that are not true but this is why you need other studies I'm with you I'm with you about it but again we need this type of intelligence and rational thought applied to politics the problem is the rules of the game don't really allow it and that's what happened during the pandemic was yes you didn't have the generation in place who knew how to be objectively skeptical but also in politics it's about certainty if I raise taxes they this will happen if I lower taxes this will happen if I do this this will happen and then I sell you on it and it's messaging and people want to believe that or not and that's where it is what happened with the pandemic and I lived it in real time as part of the problem um in the media was they would come out fouchy anybody in a white coat and say here's what we think one they didn't know it's what they this is what we think right now okay in politics that is weakness okay because people crave certainty from their leaders then what happened was those people clinicians all of them got caught up in the political measurements of what to say and what not to say so that they can be effective yes and they started to shorthand some of the things for instance we were all cleaning our vegetables then it went to being an aerosolized virus they didn't come out and say we were wrong about the cleaning thing stop that uh when I said we didn't need masks is because we thought it was that kind of virus now we know it isn't I was wrong that's we need to do this by the way it's not even the statement that you were wrong because at the time you were right right so it's not about right or wrong is at any given moment what is the best evidence tell you but in politics a change of position and I'm going to tell you weakness we need to breed train whatever word you want to use a generation of people who are not susceptible to that in politicians not only that I'll say it here but I haven't tweeted it yet okay it's maybe in this democracy it's a republic I get it but representative democracy we should think of our politicians not as our leaders but as our followers and so the more educated we are the more enlightened we are that puts a mandate on our quote leaders to do exactly what we say not for them to make statements to require what we do they should really be viewed as our followers people like to be led they like it easy that's they like people they don't like having their choices and then they can criticize there's a I quote Walter badshot in there 19th century essayist where he says there's no greater pain to the human Spirit than the prospect of a new idea so he's indicting so you know you just rather be told what to do and you do it you don't have to think and you get somebody to blame so one step backwards yeah you had been careful about getting involved with things that were political I mean historically yes no no I would say that differently go ahead yes but there's a Nuance that that misses I will say anything that has scientific objectivity to it regardless how of how you then interpret it politically and I had a boatload of these observations some of which I shared most of which are in this book today by the way I don't take sides all right I Do privately I have my own opinions but I don't view my platform if you want to call it that as a platform to impart my opinions on others you should have your own opinions but if you formulate an opinion why not make sure it's as deeply informed as it could possibly be otherwise your opinion is dangling there on some house of cards that has no Foundation to it there's a point where we Wade through the objective truths get to the edge and now we have political differences about what to do about it I have no problems with that so behind closed doors in Congress you should not be arguing about whether humans are warming the earth that is an objectively established scientific truth multiple branches of study many many different scientists over decades all right there's no greater way to establish an objective truth than that once you agree to that now you say what are we going to do about it carbon tax do we subsidize electric cars or or solar panels that's a political conversation I have no problems with that go go argue that go give your best pitch you know some speech on on why carbon tax is or is not good if that's what was going on out there I'd sit back and say you know God Bless America but that's not what's happening and that's what scares me as a scientist who people are arguing something that is objectively known we're not only wasting time in a ticking time bomb in our in our in our climate but we are delaying progress in a country which where I grew up when you grew up mostly in the 20th century we led the world in everything so there's a tweet that people accused of being political when it was objectively true you ready it was and by the way this may have influenced the recent midterms I simply said mid-covet reap Republican voters are currently dying at five times the rate of democratic voters because of the great difference in vaccine hesitancy between these two groups that's what I said deal with it people said unfollow I'd follow you not to have politics I didn't since when are you getting political the fact that people even viewed that as a political tweet and not a statement of facts and I thought naive that I was that the Republicans say you know we should get more vaccines so we have more voters for the midterms coming up I thought this would be a call to action for Republicans but no people criticized it for being political and the fact that person would think of it that way deeply concern me because they could not distinguish between an objective truth and something they thought had political leanings also they're playing a game where saying you're being political takes away the objective relevancy of what you said I can just cast you as being a lefty and it's over the problem on global warming and change and what to do about it is time you are asking people to do something today about something that is not real to them today I try to address that in one of the chapters here where there's a chapter risk and reward where you're smoking a cigarette why oh well I like smoking and maybe I won't die okay fine well what what is your chance of dying all right we know the numbers uh what percent of heavy smokers will will die of lung cancer and other heart disease related illnesses all right we know that number they have the correct number in the book so I said let's recast that let's say next Tuesday all chain smokers in the first cigarette they light up they walk out into the street light a cigarette 10 of them their head will explode in a pile of goo and they'll fall down bloody on the pavement the rest of everyone can smoke cigarettes for the rest of their lives and with no concern okay now this is like gratuitously gory as an example but there's some interesting facts about it first in that example they died instantly so there isn't a burden to the Health Care system of trying to keep you alive when you first got diagnosed with lung cancer with a lung transplant or a lung removal or or all of the rehab or all of this is a cost to the system your head explodes it's clean you just sweep it up and move on would you take that chance I'm thinking not one in 10 chance your head will explode just by lighting up puffing that first pup puff on this cigarette and the chapter risk and reward is a total exploration on how our sense of probability and statistics is Warped and I think I know why it's not taught in school did you take probability before you graduated high school no it wasn't there at all and here's something else did you but surely in your life you have found the occasion to take an average of numbers have you ever done that of course you have we all have right you add them up divide by the number there's an average it's obvious what it means and do you know the first time anyone ever took an average in the history of civilization it was 50 years after calculus was invented after trigonometry after logarithms after algebra and and geometry in 1753 somebody said on the benefits of taking the mean which is the average of that of a series of astronomical observations on the benefits and there's like oh my God that's a pretty good idea why don't we all do that and I said to myself it must not be natural for our brain to think statistically field beats fact professor field beats fact so one fact is this is red or blue another fact is the statistics on this tell you a b or c but politics about how you feel about that how you feel [Music] so all I'm saying is given that we surely have neurological gaps that prevent us from thinking statistically and probabilistically about this world I'm not surprised that we live in a world where your feelings matter more than data there's an entire industry that exists to exploit that neurological weakness within us it's called casinos you go in and there's a roulette table somebody's betting on seven and you say why you bet nothing well it's due how do you know what to do oh look at the previous roles because they show you the previous rolls on the room that table it hasn't shown up in like 20 minutes and I say no it's not to who it's the same likelihood of every single role no I feel it this is our this is our basal Reptilian Brain overriding the absence of our ability to think probabilistic there are people who have a paradise and they have to roll a a low number so they throw the dysophy or a high number they'll throw it hard why are they doing this what's going on we're simple animals doc completely and casino owners know this oh yeah they know this and they exploit it so here's an interesting fact that's why they keep it cold with lots of oxygen and lots of free drinks the free drinks especially come out if you're winning that's okay because let's stir in some extra chemicals in this brain that already only barely works to to help you separate you from your money so you know this uh the state lottery do you know where most if not all of that tax money goes to education education so I think too much so I have this conspiracy theory in my head not real conspiracy but it's like it would be an amazing storyline if someone wants to turn it into a movie plot if the lottery relies on you Tibet with a million to one odds on the likelihood that you're going to win when you wouldn't otherwise bet if you completely understood probability and statistics it's in the Lottery's best interest to never fund probability and statistics in the school so so you went through 12 years of school funded by lottery tickets and nowhere did you learn that you shouldn't play the lottery people will say okay I hear it's a million 100 million to one so you're saying I got a chance and feel beats fact people want to believe you know my father hit me with this one also but I've decided to make it mine the Greeks gave us the word demagogue somebody who creates consensus and followers uh through the persuasion based on fear prejudice self-interest um they gave us no positive opposite there is no positive opposite to the word demagogue and that's because the negative works fear the feeling of what will be good for you the feeling of what justifies I think we can be trained out of that and I have some evidence the American physical society which is my community of physicists or we have a there's an astrophysics group the physics group and I'm I have a foot in both camps not a workout group right so the aps American physical Society uh they have an annual meeting all the physicists of the country show up it must be a blast that's great great that's great I might share one with you I got one for you okay this is like for third graders but it's still a physical what is the chance any of us is going to get this job you're going to totally get through that because it's for third graders okay ready okay never trust Adams because they make up everything you see what I'm saying look out look how much he likes that's that's you gotta admit that's a total G-rated physically certainly it would be better if we're x-rated we don't know anything about jokes all right so they were scheduled to have a meeting 4 000 or so physicist in San Diego and there was a hotel snafu and like what do you do everybody's like primed and ready Vegas stepped up and the MGM Marina now the MGM Grand said we'll take you we're the largest hotel in the world so sure enough physicists went to the MGM Grand and a week later there was a news headline physicists in town lowest Casino take ever the aps was said to never come back to the city they were like disinvited forever so it wasn't that they played blackjack in one it's that they simply didn't play because they know and understand and by the way as a every life in school in school I was trained in some Nuance some aspect of probability and statistics it has to be there all at all times I agree but that is a lousy proof of concept that we can get to about oh here's one if you have to be a member of the physicist no no okay no here it is okay let me give a softer analogy my two kids are totally scientifically literate okay they would sign people in it certified them at age like 13. be a much better story if they weren't by the way if you had a flat earther kid I would be very impressed with your freedom of expression in your family so total my wife is a physicist also but you don't just need you don't need that background for what I'm about to describe uh so my daughter came home this was like in third grade she's in a school that has it was public school but they have Innovative new new math is getting taught the kind of math that the parents don't understand and they say where's the times table you know memorize the time table all right so I was really intrigued by this new math so there's one where they're given Dice and they play a game called racing dice so they set up a chart right two through twelve all right because you can't roll two dice and get a one so it's two through twelve and they each root for one of these numbers okay because every time you throw a dice you put a little box at the number and she comes home and said Daddy Mommy I kept trying to get nines but sevens kept beating it and so I what and so if you lay this out seven is the most common role that's two dice and the least common role is the two and the twelve which is why you lose in crafts because it's the best chance of what happens snake eyes and double sixes are equally as rare to each other so this is a curve like a bell curve and it Peaks at seven she learned this intuitively by Rolling dice on a chart rooting for one number that was losing every time every time she did this experiment essentially sometimes it was six sometimes it was eight but seven was the one I bet that was not sanctioned by the law the state Lottery Commission so just have experiments like that every year of school oh my gosh that would transform civilization and hence my uh proposition of what you must defend in the book here's why I like the book I like to think it is very important for me in trying to understand how to communicate things to people what to tee up for them I have to actually do the work of going through how different permutations have thought in different angles on different stories yeah that's what a good material is because you're trying to communicate so that's you don't want to just lecture you want to and it's harder than me trying to figure out what to tell them that I believe is much easier oh by the way as a man who spent most of his professional career in front of a camera you don't always have instant awareness of how an audience is receiving you that is true but I as Professor I can see right are they glazed over or getting it or they know are they reading reading their phone or I'll tell you which is easier to say Tyson wants us not to worry about X don't trust Tyson it is easier for me to say that and compel an audience and simpler than it is to say look here's what's going on with what he's saying you got to figure it out uh for yourself how you feel about it but here's what it is that's much harder it's much more work uh you're going to be less famous you're going to be less successful in television because that's where we are and here is what you have to defend about the book this is a thinker's book and it justifies why it is worth thinking about things and how we have always thought about things and if you apply a little bit of thought that everyone is capable of to so many of the things and I especially uh encourage people to read uh the book on the chapter identity oh okay um General identity is is a really really uh a good one for the way you're approaches this book but you will lose a campaign 10 times out of ten if you run against me selling what you're selling in this book I will beat you on any issue except name any issue I'll beat you except since I'm not running for office the way that would come out is I don't face you I face the electorate and I tell the electorate I want to empower you to see the world as it is rather than as others tell you it is or even how you think it is there's how it is but I will tell you hold on hold on there's an objective reality and so in an enlightened world you would never Ascend to that platform because you would have to take positions that are counter to objective reality and your voters would know that you can only rise to that position with the posture you declared if you can sway voters to think in ways that are not consistent with what their analysis of reality is so in this book because people know I'm an academic so of course I'd lean left as most academics do but this book is not about leaning left or right this is if you lean right have you thought about it this way if you lean left have you thought about it that way and I'll give an example it's liberal Trope to say uh conservatives are are anti-science okay that you get that any it's okay anti-science all right you can look a little closer at that all right yeah there's some climate denial going on in there and that poses an existential threat that counts as anti-science yes there's some people who feel pretty sure the universe was created in six days six thousand years ago that has nothing to do with science okay and those tend to be deeper in conservative circles the rest is less to point to and in fact you know one of the best measures and you would know this of course of whether a political party supports something or not is how they allocate budget under Republican leadership since the end of the second world war the science budget has increased more than it has under Democrat leadership and in some cases the budgets have dropped under President Clinton for example NASA's budget dropped by 20 over those eight years just as an example so you can accuse conservatives of being anti-science but it's not that simple yes there's some things that are anti-science there are other things they're more supportive of science it has to be simple though right now with the Liberals go back to liberals oh liberals with the OG did you already know OG sure Original Gangster original that's me gangster right uh liberals were the OG vaccine deniers they started that all right they only met on the other side of the fence when the trumpist freedom actually Trump would later say everyone should get vaccinated uh that's underreported in a liberal press that he actually said that later but you had people say I don't want to go directions because I'm American and I'm free so they met on the other side of the fence shaking hands because they had a common cause to not get vaccinated Big Brother started as a lefty here and now it's a righty absolutely right exactly not only that there's an entire portfolio of things that sit squarely in in Liberal left-wing circles where to embrace them requires that you reject some or all mainstream science that applies to it and it includes Crystal healing feather energy Homeopathy the list is long and they're all deep within liberal circles and they involve some level of the rejection of mainstream science so to lob the accusation when in your own what do you call your own circles your own Chorale are all these other things that are anti-science you can't do that so so that's exactly what you do so that's why hypocrisy is so common yes of course so whatever it is they're lobbying they cannot claim the high road in doing so all right I got an app for you that's actually something useful upside heard of it offsets inflated prices by giving you cash back on purchases when where how do you use upside okay it's easy of course there's an app all right question is what are you going to do with your cash back right look this is a great one for the show right now because you know how much I'm dealing with inflation with you guys and getting you to understand it and see if anybody's going to do anything about it and inflation certainly has people trying to find different ways to spend less all right maybe it's driving less maybe it's dining out less or buying less from the grocery store we all agree there's nothing fun about less but if you start using upside using less or what you do use hurts less upside is the real deal as an app you buy gas grocery dining out with this thing you don't have to cut back because you get cash back on every purchase all right these are things that you would have 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something that's worth 10 bucks or more five dollars or more cash back on your first purchase of ten dollars or more using the promo code Chris five times a tough find ways to make it easier upside makes it easier hey my small business brothers and sisters you know what time of year it is right seasonal excitement or dread right gotta get stuff out business is tough you gotta close account you got to get all your correspondences right sling through traffic to the post office inbox is more like a blizzard than a winter wonderland rushing to send cards and gifts to your loyal clients for me that's about two people it's not too late to get your holiday mailing and shipping under control how that's how Greg Ott sounds I sound nothing like that stamps.com do you use it I do use it I use stamps.com to mail things you have a great voice by the way thank you so you have a great Voice sign up now and you'll be printing your own postage in minutes stamps.com is your One Stop Shop for all your shipping and mailing needs now if you were to ask me the same thing I'd say no but my wife does and she runs her own business called the purist your wife has a great voice she absolutely has a great voice except when she's yelling at me but she runs her own company oh she uses stamp stuff I thought we were still I'm still thinking about myself and my voice yes you are known for being intelligent by the way that's what it said on your resume my resume yeah 20 years stamps.com has been doing what it's been doing indispensable one million businesses okay what else do you need to hear it's stress-free it's a solution for every small business you use stamps.com you print your postage wherever you do business all you need is a computer and a printer and if you need package pickup you can schedule it right through stamps.com they have a dashboard there this holiday season you can trade late nights for silent nights get it and get started with stamps.com today got a promo code Chris you think you can remember that for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a free digital scale I wonder what I weigh in digital no long-term commitments or contracts necessary just go to stamps.com Click the microphone at the top of the page and enter the code Chris oh [Music] listen to this quote I shall never claim to have moral standards or beliefs to which my own behavior does not conform I love that as a student of uh stoicism you saw what I call it yes it's called the Hippocratic Oath the hypocritic hippo hypocrite yeah yeah you have a smart audience they go no they're good so I love that but here again and this is why I love that you decided to write the book but also as a friend I was always worried about you exposing yourself to politics is that's exactly what we do is assert moral standards to which people don't conform I got stopped on the street this morning okay and I'm not somebody you're going to just stop on the street I get you may know see me you know who I am but I'm like a big dude I'm not somebody that you're gonna just like run up to and be like hey I got a problem with you so this guy runs up to me says hey I got a problem with you I watched your show last night I was like there's almost no chance that's true I was like you know I was like so there you are you're the person who's watching news nation and he says you told me I and your mother so she he says to me you accused me you said what's going on with the homeless situation in New York City and helping homeless uh that I am a hypocrite because I am a conservative and I am a believer that they are committing all the crime and that not helping them you said is no Christian could sell that and I think that's really rude and really offensive I said okay it's rude it's offensive am I wrong and he said yeah you're wrong because I do care I said you care but that wasn't the question I said yeah but you say you care I I understand I said I don't know what kind of Christian you are but there's a huge cut of Christians who believe that if it's in the book it must be true and he said you're going to be judged by how you treat the least among you that's what he said you watch TV because I said because I know you're a fox guy and I know you're sampling news Nation because you're hoping it's the next one you watch a guy who routinely shows you homeless people as if they were rats and scares you with them as if they were Vermin and use them as proof of why Democrats think and you watch it you were not supposed to be doing that as a Christian you're supposed to be helping them and if you hear about ways to help them you should be embracing it but you don't that's why I said it and I said by the way I am a Christian I said so you may not like my kind you may not you know because I'm not a Protestant I get it but I'm certainly not an Evangelical Italian Catholic that's right but is after all of that conversation and by the way at the end of it he was like you know he kind of like you kind of like we went into the same place to get coffee we engaged him so he said at the end of it you know I still don't agree with you but I said no you don't feel good about it but your arguments are all pathetic you have to know that you are wrong but you feel a certain way and you know what I never get that guy's vote I probably don't get him as a viewer and you would be crazy to do it the way I did it if you want to be elected in politics and that's the problem but it is also the solution and it's proof of concept of what we're trying to do with free agents which is don't be a Democrat don't be a republican be a thinker and be pragmatic and be reasonable and demand decency and demand dynamics that Echo the rest of your life that's who this book is for I quote a line and Sir Joseph Porter's song from HMS pinafore Gilbert and Sullivan this is the person who becomes I think he becomes leader of the Navy the Queen's Navy but before then he says I've always voted at my party's call and I've never thought of thinking for myself at all and I said yep that happens so with free agent why why free agent I like the concept from physical philosophical standpoint I think people will it will resonate because they know it from Sports um and uh I don't like pendant because it has a suggestion of being out for yourself and I believe in interdependence well some people are but yeah but right but I'm trying to encourage something else and on the back of the shirt it says or on whatever you get that goes with free agent it says are you free question mark and the reason I love the question is because everybody's going to say of course I'm free examine it though are you or are you following uh what Ted Cruz says just because he's on your team even though you know he's only saying things that benefit him and his party that he would never say about his own only about the other side are you does that make you free or is it just that you're free to make a bad choice I'm just trying to connect people to an objective reality and without that by the way there's some ways to do this you know I spent a lot of time thinking about how people can be empowered and you were saying well Tyson said this and if if it comes down to that I have failed I don't ever want someone to say I think this because Tyson said so it has to be in the end I think this for these reasons because if I succeed I've empowered you to know and understand what went into what it is you're saying and and if I am never referenced by anyone Evermore I would have succeeded people say how do you want to be remembered I don't need to be remembered that is not a goal I don't want a statue I don't want a monument because if that's the case that means all that that's that's cult building it's like oh he's the bird no ideas matter More Than People ideas transcend life expectancies and people have to participate in the ideas that work the best that are based in some kind of objective reality how do you get people to want to look into why they could be wrong here's one you ready yes okay this is one of many examples in the book this is a clean easy one to give uh people today who eat tuna they'll typically buy line caught tuna it is clearly stated on the label when it is so why would they do this tell me line caught tuna means that it was caught uh in a traditional way of one fish but why do you care it's seen as being more sustainable to the fishery okay that's the least of the reasons true it's the least of the reasons I'm also a tuna fisherman by the way oh what it's worth okay but please continue so what happens is if you catch tuna by net occasionally drag a dolphin yeah you get other stuff in there you get an air breathing dolphin can't Ascend to the top of the net suffocates and dies so you kill a lot of other stuff that you don't mean to just to get the tuna yes but the one people care about most is the dolphin there's no movement to protect the carp that happened to end up they care about dolphins but they swim with them even though they're the only animals that only get to eat when they perform okay so wait so watch so so I'm not here to sway opinions I'm here to just alert you of elements of your decision so here it is so oh you don't want to kill the dolphin but you completely fine killing the tuna what about the tuna where's the lobby to save the tuna oh oh oh though the dolphin is a mammal okay okay so what you've done is you have a carve out in the tree of life where you'll kill this animal but not that animal kill and eat but protect this one because it's a mammal but wait a minute all right you're eating tuna which means you're not a vegetarian you're protecting the Dolphins while you're eating the hamburger last I checked cows pigs lamp are all mammals so it can't be that you don't want to kill mammals that can't be the reason because you're you're eating a hamburger while you're telling me the story olive oil has a big brain the brain so okay so now it's not just where you've carved out a certain branch of animals now you're carving out a subset of those that have a large break because you value brains okay um but why do you value brands well because we have brains so you want to protect things in the tree of life that come closest to us and you don't care about anything else is that your reasoning really okay so let's follow through you like big brains well their brain's bigger than ours all right elephants uh whales brains bigger than ours um so that's interesting oh no no well what are we the top of well all right we don't have the biggest brains we're the same age enough so we would have learned this the same way in school how do we put ourselves at the top we have the biggest brain to body weight ratio okay biggest brain relative to body weight now we're at the top okay there we are I say okay well that's good like I can justify that and fine but wait do you realize it's not the highest brain to body weight among all animals only among mammals do you realize mid-sized birds like magpies crows Eagles Hawks they have a higher brain to body weight ratio than humans do significantly because birds don't weigh much because they fly okay all right you don't you can't be heavy and fly all right so their bones are Hollow so they have a higher brain to body weight ratio than we do so we're not at the top of that scale what else you know who has the highest brain to body of all animals certain species of ants and in retrospect yeah you can see that a whole section of their body is their head that's one of the sections is just head all right ants top out at 15 percent body weight in their brain and ants are pretty complicated under a microscope and they're really busy with with doing what they do we don't know what they're doing but they're talking to each other they're building colonies they're having a whole life and they don't care about you but you'll kill them without a thought you'll step on them without a thought but you're gonna save the dolphin and eat and so all I'm telling you is I don't care if you want to save the dolphin but understand that your reasons are completely arbitrary for doing so and let's let's take another step let's say you don't you don't want to kill any animals at all you're vegetarian for that reason forget the environmental reasons don't forget them those are very real and important reasons why one might choose to be vegetarian so but a subset of vegetarians are so because they don't want to kill animals they might even have a Humane mouse trap in their basement you trap the mouse gotta check on it every few days because they dry out quickly okay so you got to really monitor that can't go away for a week they'll be dead in your in your Humane mouse trap Okay so when you trap it what do you do with it next what do you do you let him go let him go take him take him back out into the woods and let him go where it is guaranteed to be swallowed whole by an owl pecked to death by all manner of Woodland predators between nine months and one and a half years of its life so the best thing you could do for that Mouse let it live in the house let it live in your house okay it'll live up to six years if you really cared leave it in your basement if you cared but apparently you don't not at that level you say not in my basement get eaten by somebody else oh but I love black I love animals okay meanwhile you're Pro if you have a basement you're probably living in a home made from the wood of 50 trees each tree probably would have lived 100 years but it was cut down to make the floorboards the the studs that hold the two by fours the wall the wall panels the the sightings the the structural members tree this 50 of them went alive was producing 15 times the mass of that Mouse in breathable oxygen every day each tree was home to birds and insects and fungus and squirrels who do you think nature cares more about your one ounce chubby Mouse or the tree that you cut down to build your home what does nature care more about oh well the Mouse has a beating heart the tree does not but wait a minute if you cloak a tree does it not suffocate if you cut a tree does it not bleed if you cut off its nutrients at its roots does it not wither and die the top most Leaf knows if you've cut it off from its roots and how many hours 12 hours 36 hours within a day the leaves wither which tells you it was communicating roots to leaves daily it has a circulation no it doesn't have a beating heart not for want of one but for the absence of the need of one I'm gonna say I want to cut down a tree because it doesn't have a beating heart what kind of heart bigot are you in the tree of life this is very species diseasest we have a heart we have a brain I'm going to protect those other animals that also do but not the tree and I'm not telling you to cut down trees or not cut down trees I have my own opinions I don't care if you share my opinions on this what I'm telling you is you're saving the mouse and thought nothing of buying a home with the wood of 50 trees but nothing of it of course it's made out of know what's behind your choices yes but what if the answer is I do I like how I feel when I choose to believe these things or these people no no it's not a true story it's it's as long as you are self-aware of what the trees would have been doing that made your home and are no longer as long as you're self-aware that the mouse is gonna live a very short life in the wild because of you as long as you're aware that fine my issue is people make decisions without fully seeing all the parameters that relate to it you have the conservative left that asserts that it's the family values party conservative right conservative right thank you and the Liberals are the ones with the loose morals and all the rest of it they pause they say wait a minute okay I hear you but I'm going to just look at the data because I'm I'm a scientist but I shouldn't have to be a scientist to look at the data that should be a natural thing anybody does so let's look at data how about divorce that's not family values that's a mark against Family Values any precedence of the United States have been divorced yes two of them both Republicans okay Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump and Donald Trump was married in his third marriage to the woman with whom he was cheating on his second wife Family Values okay no Democratic president has ever been divorced let's keep going uh how about uh teen pregnancies teen births nine out of the ten States with the highest teen pregnancy rates have voted read in every election this Century nine out of ten highest teen pregnancy rate okay let's keep going uh how about oh just divorce rates among states do you know the state with the lowest divorce rate by far no Massachusetts it's a fraction of the divorce rate of many red States scattered throughout the South the point is the conservative right does not have the high road on Family Values but no one is saying that no one is challenging them on this because it's how you define it so the left says there's no such thing as gender you can be whatever you want to be and the right says that is offensive to Common Sense and to morality and to science because there's male and there's female so the left is contrary to the values that we should be thinking about okay long before the gender Spectrum was even on the table as a political football the conservative right was still saying this and all the data that I was still saying was so we can add that and and unpack that as I do in the gender and identity chapter because I I bring up Freedom there in a way that I don't like bringing up freedom because it's so Freedom it's so what's that movie where he says Freedom bravery it's so Braveheart you know Jay freedom and I don't want to be that guy you know but I was that guy in this I was that guy you know somewhere I read somewhere I heard that one of the founding principles of this nation is The Pursuit of Happiness if I wanted Don address one morning and put on a full face of makeup even if I have a penis and that makes me happy why why do you want to stop that unless you want to homogenize this country so that everyone is just like you to accomplish that would have to constrain freedoms of others that I thought this country's founding principles pivoted on they say you're going to force me to call you a woman even when you're Neil just because you have a dress on and you've decided that you're a woman and that is offensive to my rights so there's a whole other conversation which I didn't get into in the book about laws put into place so that you're not offended I'm still thinking that through just for my for my own principles my urge is to say that you being offended is not an argument in a debate in fact in college that should be the place where you're offended daily by all the ideas of the world that could possibly offend you that's how civilization advances what does it mean to you that the left seems to be leading the way on Collective consequences that result in suppression of ideas and sometimes even censorship yes that's a problem universities are an easy one but I see it in a more troubling place which is because you got a choice where you go to school you don't have you can be on social media or not but it's hard not to be in this Society if I don't like what you're saying absolutely I should be able to come at you a hundred different ways but the new Avenue of attack is the band what we call canceling right that it's not enough that what you say offends me it's not enough that what you say is actually demonstrably wrong but you should not be able to exist in the form that you are now in right ever again what's happening there is you have two people with bows and arrows pointed at each other and each one is pulling Tighter and saying only when I pull tighter do I feel safer right and there they are pointed at each other so the concern about you being offended by who I am and getting platform for doing so we live in a world where people are violent there are people who will respond to your hate of me maybe you're not going to one who's gonna pull a trigger but someone else just might someone else already has multiple times because they're part of a mindset of hatred sown by your attitude towards who I am as Whoopi Goldberg said in the early 80s you don't like gay marriage when that was an issue okay uh in some ways you can say we've Advanced we're talking about trans rights not gay rights in the way that it was an issue how quickly we forget that under Clinton the big issue was gays in the military don't ask don't tell that was considered Progressive that was the liberal posture about how to deal with gays just don't tell that's the posture in Qatar right now okay you can be gay in the stadium just don't show it right and we're saying oh my gosh you guys are so backwards that's how we worked 30 years ago yeah not everybody's at the same place at the same time in this world but when it becomes an issue of safety someone who is different from you then what else what recourse do I have but to ban your speech if your speech sows hatred and I get shot up in a bar I don't have a good solution to that other than the fact that you thinking that way is bad for my security and my health so what Whoopi Goldberg says is if you don't like gay marriage then don't get don't get gay married yeah don't marry don't tell Mary Gabriel it's kind of simple right we're kind of we're done it's not enough here on to the next problem because of demagoguery because of the work off of fear as persuasion and we don't want others I'm not arguing against anything you have said what I'm saying is I recognize everything you say is correct about politicians and how they gain votes and how they so fear and hatred in people and they get more votes when they do that okay the Mexicans they're climbing over the wall and they're going to rape your daughters and okay I'm voting for you because I don't want that to happen even if there was never a chance of that happening all right so I I get you I I hear you all I can do as an educator especially as a scientist is offer Pathways of reason that you can explore to try to get some rational discourse going in this world so that when people do disagree it's on things that aren't genuinely a matter of opinion so let's get back to the the gender Spectrum yeah there's X X or XY chromosomes and there's intersex among those so biologically we can say if it's male female or intersex it's clear and distinct uh when you see someone on the street are there chromosomes visible to you you see their chromosomes no you actually don't you know what you see you see layer upon layer of socially constructed elements that have the person declare what their gender is for example okay your man who goes to the gym if you didn't go to the gym where's his arm here come here look at this arm look at him it's too strong okay this because you go to the gym yes if you didn't go to gym you'd have wimp arms and and how much how manly would you be without the wimp arms I want to be more manly so you go to the gym you go to the men's section of the department store because they know how to dress you to look like a man we have forces operating to boost you looking like a man and we especially have forces that boost looking like a woman a little hair on the upper lip get rid of it women you're not supposed to have mustaches hair between the eyebrows get rid of it okay hair on other parts of the body shave it get rid of it a breast not large enough get them boosted as a decision made by 300 000 women a year okay breast augmentation surgery because it was not feminine it enough you want Rosy Cheeks put it put the Rouge on of course men could do all of this but if they do then they start drifting away from the man part of the binarity of many how people want to see the world those guys like their wings they like their room okay but whatever that was their powder that's true but in that age it was even more so for the women they had even bigger wigs and even more powder and even more makeup and even more bustle or the the corsets the corsets that's the word I was reaching for there so look at what we do to announce our genders to people if if the X Y chromosomes were sufficient you wouldn't have to do any of that a woman could come up to you with a mustache and you know and a brow and it wouldn't be a thing but it is a thing in our world apparently it's a thing so all I'm telling you is if someone feels neither male or female then they walk out androgynously you're gonna somehow reject them because you are incapable of thinking about gender on a spectrum when people who live on the gender Spectrum have no hesitation doing so have no problems so I claim I spend too many pages in this book indicting the human brain for wanting to categorize things that are not themselves fundamentally categorizable like hurricanes you probably reported on hurricanes in your life okay you're not the weather guy but you you know it's in the news okay it is a Continuum of wind speeds of a rotating storm system but we divide into five categories hurricane Irma category three all right that's all the news is today meanwhile it's gaining in strength but you don't report that it's just category three one mile an hour it crosses over it's breaking news news update hurricane Irma category three just upgraded to category three it went up one mile an hour faster but we react to the category because we can't think on a spectrum that is a shortcoming of the human mind and what's happening is we know objectively that there are people out there who Express themselves on a gender Spectrum we grew up with children in our class we had words for them the Tomboy which was the girl who wasn't quite as feminine they didn't she didn't want to play with the dolls okay we had a word for her all right rejecting her femininity and rejecting her masculinity does a character in West Side Story the girl who wants to be on the Jets her name is anybody's what a name to give a character but it's a it's a fictional story we'll deal with it she wants she's got a dirty face she's got short hair she runs she wears pants she she can fight she wants to be a jet she's a better fighter than other Jets but no she's a girl period we we grew up their guys in our classes that were more effeminate than other guys they were probably ridiculed for it did they start today say I want to be ridiculed today so let me behave effeminently I am sure that is not what was going on in their heads they just came out according to how they felt and what they were that day and we could take our binary lenses on the world and force people into it and if they're not we're going to ostracize them we're going to make them the brunt of a joke we're going to criticize them pass laws about them because you can't think on a spectrum that's an abomination of the intelligence the human species has been endowed with one other example of not thinking on a spectrum a crime gets committed cops go interview the victim they say uh can you describe the perpetrator was he white or black or Asian or brown whatever you only get four choices there really four choices so if they say a black person mug them then I'm walking down the street and immediately become a suspect even though there's a thousand shades of what it is to be quote black in America but no if you're not white you're black my boy you're a girl am I this you're that you know how I know we have the capacity to think on a Continuum go look at the hair color aisle of the pharmacy there's 200 hair colors for women each with a name in every box has a different model modeling that hair color is it Autumn Mist and desert wheat and the 25 shades of blonde we've thought about how to distinguish nuances and categories do an interior decoration of a room talk to an interior decorator um what color what what shade of white would you like for your the paint on your walls I just want White Walls no look in the Benjamin catalog 100 shades of white 50 Shades they're literally 50 Shades so these are colors that have the word white Modified by another word I know we can do it we do it for for these pockets of civilization so I so what the cops should have is a color wheel and say show me the color that comes even though I hate eyewitness testimony because it's Rife with bias and things as a first cut say here's a color point to the don't name them with a single word that lumps everybody together and gets me picked up when I had nothing to do with the crime because the person that did it their skin was either much lighter or much darker than mine be a little more precise about this so this this is just my diatribe here to set and all that's in the book okay I'm just trying to say that I don't want your inability to think on a spectrum to create a law that constrains my freedoms or gets me arrested just because you're too lazy to think on a spectrum my very simple version of that for people uh because I've now seen this raise its head when it comes to you know there are all these videos online of people almost exclusively on the right in the cottage industry of of developing their own followings they're like fighting with mostly college kids where they say uh so you want me to call you a boy or male even though you're a female I'm not going to do that it's offensive to science my follow-up yours is better but mine is the the the primary step is so you want to apply an objective scientific standard to this but only this you don't want to do it to global warming you don't want to do it when you're in the pandemic you don't want to do it anywhere else but here because it works for you that's good that we know we have male and female it fulfills your your political bias you want to stay on it because it works for you yeah and what I love about this book is if you really take your self seriously if you really do you need to read the book because it does when I was going through it there is a little bit of an embarrassment when you're reading the book but it's a good thing we need to think about why we think the way we do that's right I've more than one person has told me and that's in the comments right I've seen someone said you know I was reading the book and there's a part that made me angry and then I realized oh my gosh there's a reason I felt this way and I thought this way but I don't have any foundations for you I was angry because now I have to unthink that but then quote he attacked the up the other side with his equal as Vigor so he couldn't brand the book as a political Trope as a political trust definitely not that right it's definitely not speaking just one last thing about gender please let get back to your you said earlier your religious yeah Italian Catholic Joan of Arc we all know Joan of Arc you're burned at the stake couldn't burn her at the stake for not being religious because this was a this is half of what she was trying to be was religious okay she was defending France against the incursions of British occupation do you know why she was burned at the stake one of the major reasons which is all throughout her trial being a woman cross-dressing impersonating man correct cross-dressing 14 35 whatever the date was 15th century cross-dressing so you can so I looked and I say damn that's that's pretty severe that I wonder if there's a passage in the Bible that references this sure enough Deuteronomy there it is if it wasn't on the clothes of a man it is an abomination of to the Lord thy God an Abomination they would cite that and say you you're wearing clothes by the way she's leading soldiers into battle she's not going to wear a skirt and ride side saddle okay the woman's gonna wear some pants okay and so to me she's like the hero of tomboys all right of the day but Society at the time religious authorities couldn't handle it they didn't know what to do with it they saw it as an Abomination just as the creator of the universe did because apparently the creator of the universe cares about your wardrobe well they there's a twisted Biblical reference about that too about when women are offensive to the Lord by by wearing things that are uh that are meant for men but look all this is a construct of what people wanted to believe at a time yep I will leave you guys with this story messenger which I think is uh is the translation of a Galileo work right yes so just to be clear I'm not the story Messenger right I borrowed the title from I think without his permission with Galileo Galileo wrote a book in 1610 so Darius siderius which I thought was a Harry Potter totally there's there's a spell that happens that was the title he gave the book where he reported his very first observations of the night sky with a perfected telescope telescope was invented two years earlier he heard about it made a better version of it looked at the night sky and discovered like spots on the sun craters on the moon Jupiter had moons he didn't call them moons he called them Jupiter stars because why the idea that a planet would have you have to remember no one has any prior notion of what it should be other than just what they think it is so he's bringing this Venus is going through phases like the moon does how does that happen if Venus is going around Earth there's things you can't explain in the old Earth is in the middle of the universe idea solipsism and so he's got these observations that he's sharing with with you the reader and these are messages from the stars and so I as an astrophysicist as a trained scientist the world looks different to me I'm referencing what's happening on Earth by what I've learned in the universe in the universe we've contended with information that lands on a spectrum Specter the cell themselves are what comes from light okay with we're we're the OG Spectra people okay the sun spectrum is a rainbow all right we got this we've had this from very early so throughout I tell you why my knowledge of the universe gives me insight into the problem that I'm addressing here on Earth and that's that's where that perspective comes from and it's subtitled Cosmic perspective on civilization so my wife uh who I don't think I've met if you had you would probably never talk to me again because she is a far more interesting person Christina runs she's a fan as you know everybody is but she runs a company called uh the purist which is about Wellness as an ethos so it's that every you know in Tyson s fashion it's every decision you should make if you care about this should reflect what you say you care about so uh it's not just about drinking green juice or matcha tea it's uh where who made this couch how did they make it what kind of company are there it should be more holistic yeah so it's an ethos so she sees the book and um I was like yeah I gotta make sure people get this because I'm always afraid that Neil's gonna go over their heads even though he's so relatable and um I care about him I want to protect him but people really want it and she goes well no this is easy well she read it before you did well I had it so she you know she's a reader you know I mean I was like this is a nice cover so she says well no no this is your one thing thing I said what do you mean and she heard me once say someone was like If people could do one thing what would you have to do which I always feels like I would never ask that question it's like a ridiculous thing but if there were one thing I take it from George Carlin George Carlin be a critical thinker if everybody were a critical thinker we'd be in a better place and it's everything that we all say we want to be anyway we just don't do it because we're lazy we're conditioned uh if you want to be a critical thinker read the book if you want to know how to be a critical thinker read the book if you don't want it to be abstruse you're not a philosopher you're not a physicist you want to know how to deal with the fact that you can't seem to convince people around you of why you're right or why you're wrong read the book especially before holiday dinners with with the crazy relatives but they should come with a big black warning label on it and here is the Black Box warning on this you have to be willing to think about why people disagree with you and why you may be wrong you have to do that we don't do it we don't want to do it I understand yeah yeah that's what the book does and I love you for writing it dude can I close this out please with the opening quote that I chose from an Apollo astronaut oh yes Edgar Mitchell part of a cosmic perspective is you see the world differently not from a point of compromise which can work politically of course but from another perch where maybe what you were arguing about had no justification to begin with at all right if you start when you're positioned and I'm fighting you and you had to meet somewhere in the middle maybe there's some other place you can meet we realized what the hell were we fighting about so the quote and I've committed it to memory so I don't even have to read it Edgar Mitchell Apollo 14 astronaut quoted in Time Magazine 1971. you develop an instant Global country well it looks better if I read it even if I'm not he didn't know that was just a good he's got some politician you know go ahead you develop an instant Global Consciousness a people orientation an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it from out there on the moon International politics looks so petty you want to grab a politician by the Scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter million miles out and say look at that you son of a let me just say on the front this is Earth at night it's like the Western Hemisphere but on the back the other hemisphere both sides eastern hemisphere you're both sides at the end of the day no it's all I'm not on both sides here I'm an all sides here I love it listen I've been saying for a long time and if we were a different Society if we were France mainlining duck fat our thinkers like you our scientists would be part of our everyday mainstream understanding of our dialogue they weigh in they're artists they're poets they're scientists they are valued they have for perspective what's happening they're at the table and you are one of our best I am worried about keeping you safe from the rest of us because we we need you to be above us but I appreciate you writing story messenger it's going to be helpful for people it was helpful for me thank you thank you dude again oh please are you kidding me [Music] Man Neil deGrasse Tyson is so nice we need to rely on our great minds more think about it why do we have like just people who can survive the system in our politics I'm not saying that he should run for office I don't know his wife's come after me or his kids or him but I do think we should engage our best thinkers on the things that we should be thinking about best and that's Neil deGrasse Tyson thank you so much for watching and listening to another episode of the Chris Cuomo project Please Subscribe please follow please comment and check out the free agent merch because it's all about us doing for others and I'm so happy to be in it with you I'll see you next time foreign [Music]

Channel: The Chris Cuomo Project

Views: 130,332

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Id: ZohqtHcX0Jk

Length: 93min 25sec (5605 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 13 2022