Science and Communication: Alan Alda in Conversation with Neil deGrasse Tyson

I just wanted to comment that this illustration of you has slightly more hair than you currently have educate oh yeah I usually do my interviews on the radio where I still have my hair so it is it is an honor and a privilege to be on a stage with you as you tease for me with you not to please you you are you are media royalty a television royalty acting royalty with a career that goes so far back is touched so many of our lives and I as a scientist I'm going to take sort of a science angle in my lens to you so that's my privileges as as hosts great with your permission I will be glad to tell you about all my discoveries so I have I have to know your native to the area right your homegrown New York flower growing in Manhattan on 32nd Street and 3rd Avenue okay what was I saying I have got a hand for being born I was there Hospital there or something when no one is laying at home at home yeah okay whoa that that that still works out that we're less where my mother was [Laughter] and so in in k-12 did you have any particular science influences a good or bad experience with a math teacher or sign up well I got polio when I was seven and so I after that my I had to have a tutor for a while and my parents kept me tutored until the seventh grade and I had a teacher I didn't like too much this isn't scientific except for the fact one day I was drawing a nude figure for the pleasure of the person next to me and he for the person magnet him yes sir etiquette right out of my hands and I was really pissed at that you know so when April Fool came around April Fool's Day I prepared my I prepared him a sandwich even luckily my goldfish had just died so I put the goldfish between two slices of Wonder Bread and gave him a snack I didn't expect him to actually eat it I thought he'd lift it up and look at it and say Oh April Fool but he put it in his mouth and bid on it and now I'm looking at him and he's got this tail hanging out of it and I thought I gotta tell him before he swallows that and then I remembered the picture and I thought that's cruel [Laughter] since its kind of like a science experiment well yeah it really was what to do with a dead goldfish yeah but I did do experiments as a kid you know when I was six years old I had a card table where I would mix things let mix my mother's tooth pay my mother's face powder and tooth paste to see if I could get it to blow up what did you then put it either back in the toothpaste tube or back in the powder tube no nobody I once opened up her watch to see how it worked inside what made the hands go around and I couldn't get the case back on so I bid it all to try to squeeze attacks against it back together and I left tooth marks so she knew who did it so how was the good scientist but not a good criminal yeah yeah I think regardless of what the results of an experiment turned out to be what matters is the curiosity that led to it right here exhibit whichever way it goes and this right as a scientist whether it goes the way you hoped it would or not you've made some progress along some path and you've kept your curiosity alive exactly what any good child does and any good scientist does isn't it funny how children are natural scientists and then they seem to lose some curiosity or at least a way to exercise we beat it out of them how what do you think what I said is we spend the first year of their life teaching them to walk and talk and the rest of the lives tone is shut up and sit down that's sitting down and facing the teacher doesn't seem like the best arrangement on fire this was one time I had a biology teacher in high school who said to the class recent studies they miss a studies we know now he said that when you cry you release toxins so it's good to cry so I thought well that's interesting and I raised my hand and I said because it worked the other way does something positive happened to you when you laugh and his answer was please try to be serious I was and it turns out twenty or thirty years later they found some value in laughing so you're just smarter than your teacher that's it I'm sorry to say that's the way it's always been so if you had this curiosity what was there some fork in the road we said I could be an actor or I could be a scientist no never no I I was lucky enough to go I followed my nose and when I seemed to be good at I tried to do more of although it's a little crazy for an out-of-work actor I went 9 or 10 years and we were married and had three children and I still wasn't making a living acting but I knew it was for me somehow well that's how you know it's love yeah right right let's keep at it yeah you do it because you love it not because I yeah right yeah what do they say I pick something you would do for free and make it your career and you'll never ever have to work a day and you never have to work a day or live a depressed day of your life yeah and you can be depressed about your work I thought they were citing what I heard let's not go too far alright so I went to college what they went to Florida in college okay spent my junior year in Paris which was water go in the house someone somebody home for them in that yeah well hello and how would you major in I majored in English but they wouldn't let you graduate with a BA degree in those days unless you were a student of Greek and Latin both so I got a Bachelor of Science in social sciences okay not actually studying any social sciences all right and and so this did you know yet that you had a path to Hollywood him too I don't know I had a path anywhere just knew I wanted that you know what I figured out early on that I wanted to act with people I respected in material I loved in front of an audience that got it and that's all I wanted it didn't matter to me where that would be or how much money I'd make doing it as long as I could earn a living that's a very pure goal well I really felt that way and then I wound up doing that for 11 years on mash and it was a wonderful experience I have to ask if I remember correctly it was Donald Sutherland was that character in the film mash right and was he invited to do the TV I don't know and you don't care he probably feel like what me television of a back then the others is divine there wasn't there like it was it was and yet some renowned people came out of television Clint Eastwood was a television actor right and but but there was a stigma attached to it but I just wanted to act and I wanted to do stuff I cared about and that was clear from the beginning that it was really good stuff now in mash that was the first war where the helicopter was used in any meaningful way but the helicopter was not yet perfected as a instrument of weaponry so oh yes so it was used in the case of mash primarily to airlift injured soldiers was there a self awareness that this was like the first time helicopters mattered in warfare no it's the first time I heard it oh okay come you for me buddy right knee here now what else can you tell me about no no really a little got it all about tell me that I'll tell you no I've just been a minute on it so the the play will get here I ever had and smarter than me we'll get right back to him so consider that the Wright brothers invent a an airplane an on glider airplane in 1903 and helicopters are not really useful things for another 50 years as they were developed in the Korean War and it's a it's a testament to how how hard it is to make something that flies that without wings without grace that's exactly right and yet Leonardo had a model of it yeah tomorrow he didn't know enough physics excuse me physics had not yet been discovered right for him to have properly designed his version of a helicopter but he had some idea that it might be possibly something he would have to turn it would have to be able to move push air down and lift it up so he got he was he was most of the way there but you needed some more physics physics of rotation and this sort of thing so you know something interesting about wings what I want to ask you with this question that I bet you know then we have to get back to me interviewing you okay just that's why they can't buttburn about a wing it's supposed to be what lips doing is the air going over the rounded surface goes faster or slower than the air rats are faster yeah it was a good let's go yet like every time I'm at an airport I'm checking the wings they're all at a slight angle so that gives it a little lift - yes the combination of both things yes it is so in other words so if nothing else we're going on and you just had horizontal wings with the air had to travel a higher a longer distance above than below that air moves faster than below and fast-moving air has lower pressure right so the higher pressure needs and you get lifted up but if you take the airplane and take your tail flaps and lift them up that will press the tail down word lift up the wing so now your wings are exposed and now that'll just lift you like that that's how the plane can go horizontally down the runway and then just decide to go up I hate when it does right it's not like it didn't just sort of slowly do this right it says it is time to go airborne up the flap BAM and now you get maximal lift and it's also how yeah you got me starting here it's also how a plane right an airplane can fly upside down get out yes okay so so even with this Bernoulli effect wanting to do the opposite if it angles its wings strongly enough against the direction it's going it'll provide more lift than the downward force then that there's no one to land that way yeah you don't to land that way right right right there was a movie about that yeah yeah yeah so ask me another question so so alright so you have some scientific baptism in your curiosity in school yeah okay so now we fast forward to 1993 and someone was born in 1990 no I think the guy next to her just was gut fresh what have what are you yelling well we're about to find out so we fast forward to 1993 Nash is long in the rearview mirror you've already had some great movies in your you know in your portfolio and so you get a phone call from PBS yeah what was the producers of Scientific American frontier frontiers yeah and now the reason I was interested in doing was to twofold I had read since I was in my earth doing it to host the show all right I'm sorry to host Scientific American frontiers and it interested me because I had read practically every article in Scientific American since my early 20s you're subscribed those are not easy articles to get through no I know and at first I couldn't figure out what they were saying and I and I just little by little learning the lingo from comparing one to another and I had a general knowledge of it enough to excite my curiosity who does this well I was just curious you know how I got the scientific interest in science reading science was the way humanity got into modern science I I reek a pitch elated the human journey I was interested as a very young man in spiritualism and mental telepathy and I'm read 100 books on the subject and did experiments and tried to see what and I was reading a book that was supposed to be the story was that it had been dictated by a man who was dead 200 years already to a living person through a medium and he said this is how matter is made it's made of three constituent parts ask any physicist no oddly enough this was when Murray gell-mann was figuring out quarks a three-fold theory of that he started with but I said I don't recognize this but there's a physicist who lives across the street I'll ask him I said did this make sense to you and he said I know I don't know I haven't heard of anything like that so then I said well I'll look in Scientific American that day or two no and I started reading every article and then I was introduced to this whole new way of thinking a universe for our universe of inquiry based on evidence based on observation keeping track assiduously of your observations and applying the whole method to it of checking it out I'll be objecting to your own theories first before anybody else gets a chance to and accepting the the efforts of others to try to replicate with all of this stuff it really it was a new thing to me and I gave up what I thought was lacking in evidence and I got excited by this this quest that science was on to understand how the universe works and how they could understand the deepest things with the tiniest bit of information they could extrapolate but not in a crazy way not just making things up not science fiction but scientific evidence and it was just so exciting to me and I wanted to share that with people but I wanted to know more so when they offered me the program Scientific American frontiers I said yeah but you probably want me just to read a narration I want to interview them and talk to them and learn from them all day long while you were roaming around their labs they said oh yeah well they took a real chance on me because they didn't know like if I could do it I had been an improviser and I'd taken over talk shows a cup at times as a guest coach so I thought I have no problem with this then I did it wasn't easy the first time I'd made some terrible mistakes what was with you were you well I made this whole book is his first-person narrative of everything this man has done to figure out how to be a better communicator and so it's delightful reading I feel like I'm on his couch and he's just telling stories you know just good one after another so please retell this how you first got in trouble in the lab well well I did this scientist who had made a solar panel that would power a car in a race for electric cars and early days of electric cars yeah it was always on the frontier and so I went in and started talking to him and I I started off by thinking I knew more than I did which is a terrible mistake and I said gee it's just wonderful that you made this solar panel just using devices right off the shelf like that he said they're not off the shelf I made them it's strike one Yeah right and I wasn't listening the biggest mistake I was making was I wasn't listening to him and I wasn't reading his face you'll notice the title of the book yesterday but I had this look on my face he had a look on his face but I wasn't noticing it it was the biggest error I was making because I could see later when I thought about it he was troubled that I was assuming things that weren't true and I tried to relax and make you know be comfortable with his work and I sort of put my hand on his solar panel and said this is wonderfully should don't put your hands in strike you're going to destroy that thing and then I would ask him a question and he would tell me the answer to his to my question and I wouldn't really listen to the answer so my next question didn't come out of what he said it came out of what I thought I ought to ask him next so we didn't really have a conversation you were ships passing in the night right and I learned an awful lot from that experience and from then on and they didn't fire you no no no but we talked a little bit but what finally happened on the show is we we did something that's not usually done on that kind of a show these weren't conventional interviews they didn't go in with a list of questions I went in just with curiosity and my own natural ignorance I had plenty of that to go around you know it curiosity plus ignorance I think is a good combination brilliant combination yes and you got to know that you don't know yeah that's really helpful but that led to just a conversational approach and if I didn't understand them I didn't pretend I did I just kept after them until I got it and that changed them that made them look at me in a personal way the tone of voice became personal the language they used the terms they were using we're not technical terms allure because they had to make me understand so then there was one science you sure they weren't thinking how do I get this guy out of here as fast as I can I've let me try hard to get there was they would sweat bullets they think you don't get it yet that's not it okay because we had you know we shot a lot of stuff and then cut it down to where it looked like I got it an hour sooner but but one one one side is was wonderful she she was really wonderful conversational with me and then she remembered that this was just like a lecture she gave and she turned away from me and looked into the camera and started lecturing the camera and her tone of voice changed completely it wasn't personal anymore the vocabulary changed I couldn't understand what she was saying so I coaxed her back with questions she came back to me then we got warm again and it was conversational and then she turned back toward the candy so it that was a real lesson that if we don't make this contact and really observe each other let the other person in it's not going to be it's not going to lead to something live life life happening it won't be alive you come to this as an actor where you've got to sell this character that was written for you yeah it's not you it's something else and so well I was struck by something which is retrospectively obvious now that you lay it out but to see it for the first times like Oh what was that it's wet you just there's a script and somebody says something and now it's your turn to deliver a line right and you don't deliver the line then you would not be acting you had you said it best in here what's literally I can remember what I said I remember what the guy said with told me yeah this is really what I go through on the stage and I think most actors do you don't say your line because it's in the script right right it is in the script and you remember but you say it because the other guy does something or says something that makes you say compels you for that to be the only thing that belongs in that moment exactly and the energy that comes out of that the way it just came out of you because you were finishing my sentence and you were reacting to what I just said that energy is real it's not mechanical whereas if I said to myself now I'm going to be very energized when I say this mine and I get very enter and it sounds like somebody's talking into a garbage can somewhere whereas if I really let myself respond to you my performance exists in your eyes it comes out of what's coming from you if I let myself be changed by you and that got me interested in the idea which is a little radical maybe not everybody can go for this that I don't think we're really listening unless we're willing to be changed by the other person so some part of you has to be susceptible yeah not you that doesn't mean you're going to change but you're willing to change if if it really is something that strikes you that really hit you but if you say this this person doesn't know anything this person doesn't believe what I believe I'm not even gonna I'm going to let them finish talking and then I'm going to tell them the real story that's not communicating not communicating is not listening it's just waiting for your turns dueling monologues that's all that is happening in television talk shows news talk salida here ruling monologues I love that phrase it so I for myself distinguish facing a chalkboard a whiteboard whenever they have today I've never seen a white book i all know where a job woods so I face a chalkboard and I'm delivering a lecture the expectation is that you're going to meet me at the chalkboard this is not a contract where I'm somehow meeting you halfway but if I'm otherwise facing you and I see your body language and your eyes your eyebrows again then I want to respond to that otherwise I cannot claim credit as a communicator and so you're taking these acting lessons and you made a whole Institute out of it yeah right right and same thing you go to X how you communicate that's what you do you talk to them in a personal tone but you studied the mechanics of that well and I kind of stumbled on some of it and and I do it I'm like hey hey hey that explains it that explains it so so you have the Center for science says it's the Alan Alda Center for communicating science what a coincidence it has your name on it I know what how to put it wouldn't chances are that it is originally had the name didn't originally it might have your name on it given what its mission is because it's targeting people who are becoming scientists yeah and I know in my field it'd be great if many more could communicate and I'm sure many more would like to but in science we do not get points for that no no there Damaris I even hear from some scientists that what would used to be called the Sagan effect is still sometimes happening the Sagan effect was as you know better than anybody in Sagan was Carl Sagan when cosmos was such a big kid was derided as therefore not being a serious scientist right meanwhile he had more than 100 research peer-reviewed research papers so yes so that effect was mostly jealousy I think and there's some other sort of dynamics to that it might be something in this department we interrupting like good no good New York you don't pardon for interrupting because it's bust in yeah if you don't interrupt I don't think you're paying attention how do you like that wait where's the chapter on that's funny I have no idea what I was going to say [Laughter] I'm only in the moment I can't remember what we represented but what were we talking about by the way which one are you so I you speak of a dark empathy in here yeah what is I I think what a dark I think of dark matter dark you know black hole it's a little like dark energy like an arc Internet what is that well in that dot the same way the dark energy is the opposite of gravity and gravity's pulling us in to some cozy connections and dark energies pushing us apart to more do more distance it's a little like that against the wishes of gravity right right so the reason I called it dark energy dark and empathy is that a lot of people consider empathy to be the same thing as sympathy or commiseration to be on the side of the other person doing good but some people who said the more empathy you have the better person you are I don't think so I think it's a tool and it can be used in a good way or a not-so-good way it's an essential tool I think for communication because you've got to know what's going on in the other person's head to communicate with them how do I know if I try to explain something complicated to you how much you know about it already where can I start can I start with more complicated ideas and processes and terms or do I need to start way back earlier and I have to have to get a sense of that from you it's know your audience but know your audience in real depth and in real time it's a more refined version of that however it's a tool for good communication but it's also a tool for working against people for instance bullies know what you're feeling and they can twist your feelings and make you hurt and they do it because they can read you pretty well they know just how far to go do you think bullies would make good psychologists is a switcher sex well some may be up when they don't they take a lot of pleasure in saying I'm sorry your time is up don't tell me that just tossed off but an interrogator or a torturer but just a plain interrogator has to know what you're feeling to make you say what he wants you to say there are but but you although empathy doesn't make you automatically a better person you can use it to do the good things you want to do but you might not otherwise do it for instance because this doesn't just apply to scientists and doctors or lowered toward 8,000 of them around the country and around the world thank you very much we began to realize that it applies to everybody especially when one scientist said to her this training has saved my marriage so it's so this is not eat so that Alan Alda Center for science communication should be the oldest center for communication well I started the company commit to raise money for the center called the older communication training company the acronym is act a CT act you got to go like that when you say act so we just today had a workshop for women and business which was really exciting and you could see people getting transformed to be able to use the things about communication that make you more confident make you able to defend yourself against the barriers that show up and especially since guys are assholes I mean you need we didn't teach that part oh you know we didn't get into biology yeah I know no in the workplace yeah silver so that neon oh that's a it's a profit-making company because we go to corporations and train but all the profits go to the Center for communicating science like the Paul Newman model instead of selling spaghetti sauce we sell them we sell empathy but so here's an example that's like in a marriage right guy is up late it's after midnight his wife's already in bed and he notices there's a huge pile of dishes in the sink and he thinks I guess I ought to do something about that what are the odds that he'll do something not so great but maybe if he uses a little empathy and he says what's my wife going to feel like when she wakes up tomorrow and sees those dishes in the sink and he actually connects with her feeling of dismay chances are he might wash the dishes and chances are he might find out doing the dishes is foreplay Oh that's a whole other book book of kitchen foreplay unlike most actors you have a particularly acute sense of comedic timing and comedic sensibilities and personally I have found that when people smile I think they're more eager to learn and that must have been something very an interesting thing you said would you go into that a little more what do you mean by that well interview can I would you let me interview you what what I'm curious why do you say when they smile they're what gives you that impression that's an interesting thing to say I found that if something makes you smile you come back for more of that because you enjoy the feeling all having smile yeah that's good that's great if you seek more I have an interesting that when we're laughing were vulnerable were seldom more open and vulnerable than when we're laughing and I think I might interviewed some some science teachers professors who special II one I talked when I was writing the book who said he feels a secret weapon is humor when it gets them laughing they're the more absorbent absorbent you know for the information oh I got that yeah interesting he was I mean I'm like empirically I agree with that yeah that's your experience yeah oh definitely definitely and it happens that I find the universe to be a hilarious place so that's funny I'm really glad I'm stuck on earth because to me stars and supernovas know and all that stuff out there and they are fiery cauldrons of destruction as far as actions indeed they are yes so I don't want to go to Mars I don't want to go no place I want to stay right here so you want to go to Mars if one of those asteroids is headed towards Earth no I want you to get something to push it at okay what the hell are you good course I'll get top people to working on it yeah so let me ask you something though the in in the sciences especially the physical sciences until I read more about the autism spectrum and at the time Asperger's I think was a something you could be diagnosed with until I had read those symptoms it was just 10% of my colleagues were just not social all right and you try to teach him and that nothing worked we just give up put him in the lab and just let him write their papers but you knew not to put them in front of the public but they were still highly productive yeah later I learned that their symptoms exactly match what you find on the autism spectrum and I'm happy to report that certainly in the physical sciences or at least in the sciences that don't involve human interaction as a fundamental part of doing it they we can still have highly productive people who are drawn from the autism spectrum where in other professions it might not work out what I'm asking is can these methods help people trying to work with those with autism yeah and in terms of the population you talked about all together in terms of scientists a lot of scientists get a bad rap because they they're considered to be not not outgoing enough to entertain an audience or to get an audience engaged and what we do is teach Sciences to improvise before we teach anything else and we keep those exercises those improv exercises very basic and the whole purpose is to get them to be able to engage another person to get that experience that we were describing before the being on stage and getting something from the person you're working with the way we're doing right now and we teach them these exercises that enable them to turn that into an experience - with an audience where they're talking to the audiences if they're really there which they of course are not so what a concept we are actually out there yeah on that on the other hand often people are so scared about talking to others they talk over their heads so they won't be frightened the funny thing is when you connect with people you're not frightened it's a wonderful experience to connect the beautiful thing so it's very interesting you brought up autistic people people on the spectrum in the course of doing the book I interviewed a psychologist whose name is Matthew Lerner muttering 80% of this book are your accounts of interviews you've had with people yes smarty bouncing around everybody's lab how come you never came to my lab every other scientist in the world is eventually here some should say I did come to your lab well I might well while my wife interviewed for you for her book yes yes for PBS on the brown best kids from the bronze yeah yeah then your stories are wonderful in that boat okay well so this guy in that report for his wife's book yeah I guess in the water because that was brilliant brilliant wit so Matt Lerner when he was a boy was visiting a friend's house and there was a child in the other room playing with some trains or cars or something little toy cars and he said can I go in and play with him and his mother said oh he won't respond to you the kid was on the autistic spectrum so he went in and started mimicking mirroring the boys actions and then he did something that was the opposite of the action the kid noticed so he sort of made contact with them with these motions and he spent hours with them that day and his mother remembers the kid saying goodbye Matthew when he left so he had made contact them now he met at the time without precedent yeah yeah right nobody he already so he's got interested math learner got interested in working even though he was still in school working with autistic kids and the way they were taught he was taught to teach them a certain way in the way they were taught was when this happens to you in life do this and when that happens to you in life do that so it was very prescribed individual encounters were described and the kids hated being taught that who wants to be told how to behave in specific situations he said they were so upset they were throwing things at him looks like his more compromises life is uncertain so one night he was talking with friends who were actors and they started talking about improvisation and he said what's that like what do you do there and they gave him some exercises he could try out with the kids he started to work with the kids now the kids were getting used to all kinds of things that their imagination could supply them with they loved it and they started to make progress and the boy he started with who wouldn't look up from the cards on the floor it's recently graduated from graduate school whoa okay okay so there this is there's hope even in cases where people have given up hope yeah and and and it you know what's interesting to me it works at all levels people who come in to be trained we go to a university some other part of the country or Australia and the people who are very very poor at communicating Rhys the ones who are very very good at communicating also get better and we work with senior scientists not just graduate students and even they who have been used to giving lectures all their lives and may be entrenched in a certain way of working they get excited by this ability to connect and they even they get better I got two questions just to round this out before we go to audience QA what do you do with scientists who represent fields that are heavy in jargon because my field we are not yeah you had very ordinary words we we we we are simple people in astrophysics quick quick but I said what what do you call spots on the Sun sunspot but because that's how we roll okay learn it you know a region of space you fall in you don't come out like the black hole with one syllable communication drives our lexicon it's on a level where half of our vocabulary has been taken into commerce right we have Milky Way candy bar but there's no candy bar called deoxyribonucleic acid okay I don't know that you want to buy that right now so what do you do with scientists who are mired laden with the lexicon of their field you know there's I want to say a good word for jargon first is a good reason that you're in a sentence that sentence makes another house it weren't for jargon I want to say a good word for George the good word is that if you can say something that in one or two words that stands for five pages of explanation and the other person knows exactly what you mean like a colleague somebody at the other end of the bench why would you say five pages every every profession has jargon my profession if I said to you you're in a movie set and I said to you go get me that get me that century and put a gobo on it and give me and bring me a big apple a half Apple gets give me a half Apple and while you're at it hurry up because this is a martini shot would you have any idea what I did said I would question your sanity yeah if you were a grip on a movie set you would know exactly what I meant the century stand is a light stand and it's got the word I need to know what a grip is right let's let's go whether a grip would know that in the air that's a grip that's the grip which is if I pick up some of that from from doing yet you know if you haven't know you and what but not all of it but this is by the way what we just did is an example of another problem with jargon is that ordinary English words are sometimes understood in different ways by different disciplines and there was a meeting between nano scientists and neuroscientists a couple of years ago that's right dangerous it's right where they were trying to cooperate to find new ways to understand the brain they argued for hours over the work the one word probe PR OBE they had different definitions when they were upset that the other guy wanted to do a probe oh okay which would have been even worse if they were a proctology I don't know yeah probe if someone says they want support they want to probe you do they know first right right yeah note that let me finish out with just tell me about Richard Feynman Oh in his wife and indeed my little hero of mine until I fell in love with Marie Curie he was my guy oh okay so you know you have a second love oh yeah yeah but but it's not just that you were fan of his you well I got totally into his situation yeah I did I I read books by him and about him and thought it'd be a play and here's a different a brilliant physicist of the 20th sent a lot of arguments Nobel laureate and many people feel he was second to Einstein in the century for sure yeah yeah and yeah many people know and love them and it was a very colorful character and so I thought it would make a wonderful play and I had brought it to a producer in California we asked a writer to write a Peter Parnell who wrote a brilliant play but we thought beyond the stage in the year it took six years to really get a piece that represented this amazingly complex man who did it who did very complex work and to prepare for it I went to Caltech and I took the great service professor he was a professor and they were so loved there at Caltech and I talked with Kip Thorne about glue one too and I really really got into and I loved it and I asked Brian green to give me some help so his name dropping his physicist now this is this was before they made me a fellow of the physical society for a kid named Robin that's mine yeah I'm science drop it up so you you in this play you portrayed Richard final yeah which was a wonderful experience I just loved the chance to introduce him to maybe 50,000 people in the audience over the course of the year and and I hope that some of them would get the same curiosity that Klieman had in the same all and wonder about the universe you know what's interesting about communicating science there was a study done I think at the University of Pennsylvania where they studied what was the most what were the most commonly emailed stories in the science section of the New York Times you might think they were about health about medicine fitness things that affect their bodies every day the most emailed stories were about to wonder and all found in confronting the universe that sense of wonder in all we all have we go out at night we look at the Stars you tell me [Applause] you forgot who's interviewing here and he said I had comic time let me get to some of these questions I I didn't get to this but someone who is already read your book is asking in your book you talk about the mirror exercise yeah can the two of you show us what it is yet come on get okay I read it okay so okay so now in this you know about the mirrors I read about it so I can still see all explain to those who don't know the mirror exercise is a very basic improv exercise where I'm looking in the mirror and you're my mirror and you have to be totally in sync with me what would i whatever however I move you can't let there be a lag because there's no lag with a mirror it's exactly the same for the speed of light time delay if anybody notices that we're dead that's a superhero person yeah okay still here okay now I didn't blink that entire time another part that's good we were thinking of it I did that deliberately because it's pretty clear that I'm leading and he's not following when I go too fast and then what this is so good at implanting in people's minds as they begin to study communication is it's the leaders responsibility to make sure that the follower is following it's not your job it's my job to make sure so if I'm trying to explain something complicated to you it's my job to make it clear to you and help you follow me so if you out if you if you do something that you knew I could not anticipate that burden is on you yes yeah okay so but once I get your rhythms and you know I'm getting your rhythms that gives you more latitude I got more things you know we were pretty good at that lets you lead me now okay a little fast I can't follow [Laughter] [Applause] [Laughter] now now let's see if we can get in motion and both of us lead neither one we both of us follow each other oh we don't know who's leading it all right Franklin right oh forget it there is the right one one thing about a mirror yeah you can actually try this at home in a mirror you can only kiss yourself on the lips [Laughter] let's go man I have observed many times it's a simple fact of optics I think Newton was the first to mention that uh you quote George Bernard Shaw in the book then your opening pages the single biggest book the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place yes that's a wonderful saying and it's often attributed to George Bernard Shaw who probably never said it so why you got to spoil it no no no but that's I think the essence of communication is we think he said it that he didn't say it somebody else said something like it but it never made it to us it's a little bit like Dawkins mean this is a little more remember rememberable I'm a master communicator once but there's only one thing that word however garbled it was could possibly mean that so that means you're still successfully communicating right but it's more memorable so like Dawkins memes it sticks in our minds and we attributed to the person we think probably said it because he was so witty yeah he could have said it and surely would have said it he whether or not he did he would that's a good a good way to say yeah I've got another one here we kind of addressed this a little bit what's an engaging way to communicate scientific ideas to children with disabilities if I can take a quick crack at that yes Lena it's just I don't what matters for children is not how many ideas of science they can grasp I think that's not even important to what matters is this how to sustain curiosity which all children have which we agreed and whatever is the disability if a child is exposed to something fascinatingly scientific just let the curiosity roam that space and who and don't fret over whether the idea has been accurately communicated because if you develop a curious adult all mysterious ideas will get investigated yes because you have an insatiable and burning desire to then learn and and most learning and won anyone's life is going to be after you've left school anyway provided you have retained curiosity for having done Xena when I got out of school out of college was to be able to use language and to think clearly to think logically everything else I learned except some of the classic ideas was out of date by the time I got a little older that's a good thing yeah it is a good yeah yeah yeah that's a good thing Alan and Neil what are your favorite podcasts so what's your favorite podcast yours and I love science Friday and I love freakonomics I enjoyed the economics okay good Malcolm Gladwell had a podcast that comes in and out but what was that one called a revisionist history you know I never heard that yeah yeah I think ten episodes deposited with more to him check that out I'm a big fan of Sam Harris so I was I try to catch up with his podcast there's sort of a deep thinker about all issues yeah I don't always agree with them but that's not what matters what matters is or is your mind challenged you know this sounds like a can thing but don't you enjoy hearing from people you don't agree with oh I feel in fact I was asked once by some book list well what books do I have on my shelf yeah and what am i reading now and I listed some books that were very opposite what they had pigeon-holed me to ascribe to and they said why you or what but and I said did you expect that I only be reading books that affirm how I already think what fun is that where does that ever leave you other than in the same place you started sure so yeah I try to always read something that is different from anything I'd want to know or expect Oh leave that woman alone but how about this one I'm gonna like this one for you why do you think so many people are ignorant about science and don't care yeah that's the hard thing I think the first thing we have to do as we try to communicate better and better with people who are not tuned into science is to find out how we can help them care if they don't care doesn't matter how much we say to them that's hot stuff they're not going to listen but if you can get more of the the folks from the lab who are actually doing the work we're committing their lives to the discoveries that journalists are talking about if they this is first-hand access and you know what we do now when we teach graduate students to be better communicators so they can practice we send them to high schools so that the kids the teenagers in the high school see somebody not much older than them with a passion for learning about nature and the way they do and the kids catch that enthusiasm it's contagious uh here's one uh this does not have the proper nouns and verbs to be a question but it is nonetheless a question okay okay you ready yeah Joe Biden Alan Alda 2020 question why [Applause] I'm Jill Biden Arnold Vinick nightly character I play Tetris you know I was so excited and when I played Arnold Vinick running for president that they had the election at the at the end of the show and we had shot the show and now I'm home watching it and right up until the end of the program I thought I still had a chance to win oh I really wanted to win uh time for just a couple more of these it's a good one here do you think that texting and tweeting as ways of communication that don't require your voice or a sense of hearing has contributed to our inability to effectively communicate it might have who knows I think people should study it but one thing that I think I've no it was great to hear that it's something that needs to be studied that's what and I said I don't know you don't hear much you don't know what's wrong with you yeah right Here I am up here I should know everything one thing I think I've noticed is that there even when we have these truncated messages in texting and email there's still the desire there's still the wondering what's going on in the mind of the person reading this we still wonder if what we said there's this little flash of a moment when we get to the end of a couple of phrases we think is that going over the way I made it to and that's why we use Smiley's and emoji there is still this vestigial interest in what's going on in the person's head that we're trying to communicate with and that's what we have to build on but we all have a smidgen of it at the very least okay last question here better be good okay this is related but maybe we can take it in a slightly different tact in this age of instant online contact are we losing anything interpersonally because you all about this book is all about interpersonal contact well I will take it in a slightly different direction it's it's based on personal contact but what the personal contact is supposed to give you for instance to look on my face what that's supposed to give you is insight into what I'm going through so you can adjust how you talk to me when you're trying to communicate but I have to be seeing you when this happens not necessarily I believe I believe that what we found is that once you get used to figuring out what a person where you get you get used to wondering what the person is thinking as you communicate with them even when you write when you put down a sentence you've done something to the person to the reader's brain you can make an estimate of where that person is as a result of that sentence and that gives you an idea of where to start the next sentence and I did that all through writing the book I almost don't write anything now even emails without thinking about how it's getting into the other person's head so the person doesn't have to be physically in front of you they can be distant in time and space they don't know when they'll read it you're not even sure who's going to read it but you have a general idea who the reader will probably be and you can judge based on the expectations the person probably has about what ought to be in a sentence the guy called George gokhan who was very very good at this and he thinks we have expectations that in the beginning of the sentence should be what the sentence is going to be about not half way through it kind of makes sense something should happen soon after that to me it's like the hero of the sentence has to do something has to take some action pretty quickly the hero has to come in soon otherwise the play won't be about Hamlet you'll think it's about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and he's got to do something then the punchline like the end of a joke comes at the end of the sentence the thing that is something emphatic the emphasis of the sentence and then the next sentence has to somehow pick up where you left off in the previous one so the person reading it is still with you you want to keep them with you and take them down a path so I think it works for reading to writing yes Alan your book weeks of that book who means that in a good ladies and gentlemen this book is available for sale in the lobby and join me in thanking Alan Oliver thank you you

Channel: 92nd Street Y

Views: 129,796

Rating: 4.9023113 out of 5

Keywords: 92Y, 92nd Street Y, Alan Alda, Neil deGrasse Tyson

Id: syIb73RQqVU

Length: 58min 25sec (3505 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 08 2017