StarTalk-ology with Alie Ward & Neil deGrasse Tyson – Cosmic Queries

[Music] this is star talk cosmic queries edition i'm your host neil degrasse tyson your personal astrophysicist and we can't do cosmic queries without chuck nice chuck welcome back and by the way you could and you said you can't i was just lying i'm sorry i was lying you're being kind to me you're being kind and i appreciate you know you're like we couldn't do this without chuck knights but i've actually seen shows where you have okay damn call me i thought i could slip that one by but apparently not okay uh but good to have you chuck and we we've got a special guest we i guess we've never had and i don't know how she came under our radar for so many years we've got ali ward with us allie welcome to star talk i'm here i'm i'm so happy to um to incite such excited stammering here i am no one can believe i'm here least of all me hi so you've got quite the thing going on you've you've taken ownership of all the ologies of the universe and have delivered them back to us in digestible bites not only in your twitter stream but in podcasts and and videos so this is just i love it and and but this is not your first rodeo really right you've been at this psy ed stuff for a while um what was innovation nation what was that oh i'm still doing it we're on uh season eight right now and now ouch one i know season eight going into season nine any second now so is there anything is there any any fear you might run out of innovations no they keep inventing them that's the wonderful thing is people keep making stuff so who knows what do you have going on what do you have going on netflix brainchild what's that about yeah so um innovation nation is on cbs it's with mo raqqa it's different innovations and then on netflix i'm on brainchild which is a kids science show and 100 humans and i consult on a new show called ada twist scientists that's coming out pretty soon i'm very excited about it and a what scientist uh aydah twist science that's a person right she's yes yes it's an animated person yes it's an animation well i thought you said aid a twisted scientist okay you're fine um just going to say that aydah does have her problems so you might be right and what is did i mention invention what's that oh that's another show that i host for cw and uh what's a little crazy and uh i've been working with the obama's company to higher ground doing some consulting for uh waffles and mochi so i don't name drop did i every once in a while you know michelle and barack just come by and i mean you know i'm not i'm not saying anything i'm just you know every once in a while they'll we talk and we talk about you know mochi and waffles while we actually eat waffles it's awesome it's just amazing but wait wait wait so also uh okay wait mochi that's that japanese candy is that right yes yes that's the name of a of a kid's show all about food and nutrition right mrs obama is right because because you're also a food person i did something i did some work for cooking channel i had a job for cooking channel where they made me go to bakeries and eat like 16 donuts a day and describe them which is great the first couple seasons close to mochi and waffles and it was called chicken and waffles you're gonna die so you're gonna die wait so after the second season they would just roll you to the to the next bakery yeah you'd be on an off camera you'd be on an insulin drip it was uh it's pretty intense pretty intense i'm much happier in the science base but yeah so i juggle all these things and the worst part about all of the jobs is that i like them all and so i don't know which ones to quit so i just stay up late and work on everything i just drink a lot let me say something if i ca if i can just i don't sound like you know father time on the porch on the rocking chair but uh you have a background that would not immediately indicate that you do exactly this but your background is all the background you need to do exactly this right so so they're people they're they're students who study acting because they want to be an actor right so they go to law school going to be a lawyer business school you're in business and you do these things and now you invented all of this stuff because that is that melange of talent now unique to you and that can only manifest in products that are the unique paw print of what you bring to it that makes me feel a lot better about job security i'll have to say well that's your parents who said where did we go wrong she's not under me but i mean you know i think that really one thing i've learned from ology so much is that the people that i interview are so passionate about what they study whether they're a buffologist studying toads or they're someone who is a fire ecologist or whatever they tend to really love their jobs and so i think i've really learned from doing ologies is figure out what you love the most and then just gravitate toward that because you're going to be the best at passionology so yeah the study of watching people get excited about their work i just invented an ology right so there i can actually use that now that you've said it i can use it i didn't invent it you did maybe maybe there's an analogy for my passion buttology is there you know who i had on i did do glutealogy with natalya reagan who has been on star track a bunch so she yes we've been yes she's a friend of star talk we talked all about butts we talked because the primate but the whole thing with the orangutan yep tactile and glutealogy and the mandrel the yeah the big red glutealology that's what it's called theology glutathione so do humans have the biggest butts humans have the biggest butts right all the way primates and i'm going to use first person plural on that i'm going to include myself on that we do have right that's very kind of the juiciest it's very inclusive of you yes it is you're a big fine primate when you back that thing up and for a reason so yeah you can listen to um to her episode learn all about it but that's kind of i realized i was really good at being curious and and just nosy enough to be uncomfortable in some situations so it turns out you need that because that cat should be on the the edge of your comfort zone which is always important otherwise nothing new shows up and what did you study in school i studied science i loved science and i also loved fine art and so i was studying illustration and science and i couldn't decide which way to go and i thought maybe i would do both but i ended up um as a double major in biology and film and so i yeah kind of tv and science ended up working yeah it's so funny you're keeping it you're the full manifestation of that that's great and then she if you notice neil if you notice there's a very distinct dichotomy in her choices one actually pays money where you can get a job and the other one does it so she's like fine art and science which one can i live on which one biology and television i mean ask a grad student though there are grad students listening saying do you know how much grad students make wait allie let me put chuck in his place here i can put checks in this place please do your fine art infuses the depth and elegance of everything else you do so no you may not be specifically making money from the fine art everything else you're doing is enhanced by it yeah i tried to say that i tried to tell my mother that when i went in about comedy i tried i tried to do the same thing neil did not work did not work okay she's like you need to infuse some money into this rent that's good there isn't there is an ology for that gelatology is a study of humor and i interviewed someone who told me he was it's uh dr burke down in loma linda he studies the effects of laughter on on medical patients and he is a man who is serious about laughter and it was one of the driest interviews i've ever done which i thought was absolutely perfect because he's so wait wait so wait wait wait wait so so if you say i was laughing so hard i was in stitches that would have extra meaning to him probably would it probably i think because if i if or or if i bust out my stitches i don't want to laugh too hard you know if i'm in the hospital trying to recover i don't want chuck two near me because i might laugh you could just say i was laughing so hard i was lengthening my telomeres is a better way to say it oh good longer when you laugh is that the deal yeah that's the deal okay yeah you want to you want to the telomeres are good good but chuck you we have questions for you is that right that is right from our fan base this was so much fun i forgot we were doing a uh the cosmic queries cosmic queries yeah yes what do you have for us okay so uh let's just start off with adam krauther or crother it's c-o-c-r-o-w and then thur so krauther krother i don't know anyway he says thank you for this opportunity to ask the question chuck you never know so you never know so so okay go on i wish i could refute that i can't you can't okay here we go okay he says thank you for the opportunity to ask this question i have friends and family who have been convinced that coveted vaccination is useless against the disease and it will be harmful to our health they are motivated by the general distrust of conventional medicine and faith and alternative so-called holistic and spiritualistic healing methods and their strong belief in the paranormal so um he says how do i approach this discussion adam so you're a person who studies everything everything yeah so how do you what do you what do you bet how do you how essentially let me back up let me better formulate this each of the fields that you dip your toes in or or full body in require some sensitivity to the vocabulary the jargon the what's interesting what's not and so you have to think this through and somewhere in there you would have come up with methods tools and tactics of communicating what needs to get out there so what have you what can you share with us on this topic well you know i was lucky enough to study biology and i used to read a lot of journals for fun when i was in college i was a dork so luckily i have that kind of background but um you know things like this when it comes to communicating science that i always try to start from is just empathy and understanding where someone's coming from whether it is asking a scientist to share their work or whether it's trying to get these ideas to the public and so i think of course there's things that are infuriating about this but if you are with someone who does not want to understand science or is blocked to it always come from an empathetic standpoint of what are they scared of i think typically fear is what blocks us off from a lot of learning so what do they say this would come from psyche yes analogy indeed um am i good am i good loved it loved it haven't done that episode yet too brought a topic the idea that the empathy at least doesn't have them dig their heels in more strongly you might be able to find a place to have that conversation yeah i mean a space a conversational space yeah there's no you don't do any good if you are um if you are being condescending to someone or patronizing or if you are annoyed at them for their beliefs doesn't do anyone good you don't get it doesn't help anyone well i'm doing this whole thing wrong because i have i have the fred samford uh approach shut up dummy shut up yeah he did say that didn't he yeah does not open a lot of mind so try to address what they're scared of and then try to perhaps talk to them about how scary the other alternative is which you know in this in terms of vaccinations so what you're saying is you're an idiot is not a good opener i fight no we have to get you back on another show the week before thanksgiving before everyone goes home yes so that the thanksgiving dinner conversations can so no one dies yeah right we'll have the special yeah i have two allergies for you though we do have vaccine infodemiology um which premiered in january has a lot of information has a lot of talk about vaccine hesitancy and where those come from from historical psychological place and agnetology which is the study of willful ignorance which is a real study and i talked to a stanford professor about that so those episodes are there in case you want to understand why some people just okay very good i like i like the overview there very good we got to take a quick break when we come back more q a with the queen of ologies ally ward on star talks we're back star talk cosmic queries edition i got chuck with me and chuck we have a guest i don't know how we missed her the past eight years that we've been doing uh ali ward welcome welcome to star talk and here how do we find you on twitter just at ologies on everything i sat on those handles i got them they're mine ologies so you own ology i do i do i couldn't believe the i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing i have to think about that it's a good thing if you turn evil then to control the ologies is you become a superhero nemesis no that's my plan yeah my plan is to read everything uh you're just seeing part of my backstory now so if someone's gonna wrong me and then i'm gonna use energy story right now so chuck we have to be nice to her because no telling what powers jesus we might turn her into an evilologist yep right yeah lightning's gonna come out of my eyes i'm gonna own the world it's gonna be great there you go so chuck we we solicited questions specifically for her in this unheard ology universe so what do you have there uh this is chapter lift shits who says uh hey what's up stellar start talk crew neil and chuck chester lipschitz here with the question about ancient science clearly man made discoveries before language even though they did not formally fall into today's definition of science do you think there would have been a limit to the advancement of civilization without language oh interesting i like that so ali have you interviewed any any any linguists or anybody who's thought about this language in the brain and i haven't i haven't but i want to say obviously i guess it depends on how you define language because there are so many animals that use language and have different ways of communicating so are you talking are they talking about just written language are they talking about um like certain syntax because there's i mean there are different primates there are monkeys and uh that have different dialects in terms of where they grow up in certain ways i'm thinking every species of animal on earth has no trouble communicating with other members of its species all right i mean you look at ants and bees and birds and and they're just having a doing fine and i bet cavemen or you know the cave people they without a dictionary in a language in a school i'm sure they communicated with each other when they were hungry when they needed more food when they're sleepy i mean so so maybe let's maybe we should tune the question a little tighter and ask uh maybe basic discoveries could be communicated but not subtle nuances of discoveries which would require a more sophisticated way of communication what do you think of that that's my answer and i'm sticking to it it's a good answer i think we would find those nuances because the same way we found nuances for when you're deaf or when you're blind we always seem to find a way to communicate with each other as as as human beings and even if we didn't have that we would just find a way to communicate those nuances it would be interesting to look at yeah written language and technology and if they follow a similar curve if there's a certain like limiting factor i don't know but i will say that i want to just deconstruct the question in terms of what is language because i think that we have a very narrow definition of that um in terms of like what is human written language and and uh and the ways that we communicate so that's what i say i say yeah that's your question re-tinker the language of your question and then we'll we'll re-answer it that's a nice day damn just send them back to the drawing chester hey ally we have to be here next week okay chester i think it's a good question chester i do i do i just want to deconstruct a little bit how about this how about this let me let me leapfrog this and say science as we now think of it took great leaps and advances only after scientific journals became the common way discoveries were shared not only within a country but across national boundaries speaking whatever was the agreed upon language of the day right and you go back several hundred years it was latin the language of the erudite and the scientific communication that's when it really took a took a jump so i have to say whether or not it's spoken language the simple act of communicating a discovery at a distance mattered greatly there you go and you're right you know what's that's so interesting because that's where the codification comes in is the fact that you're able to have these you know um records so that you can go back and compare and then compare across distances you don't have to reinvent something next we have the record right not only the record of what's been discovered but the record of of of dead ends so you don't have to repeat the mistakes of people who came before you fascinating great job right okay all right keep going that was awesome all right here we go uh tom says um c-e-z so i don't know [Music] i think being nice it's better for teaching the scientific method what were were no sorry what are the verified experiments showing which teaching methods are best uh yeah so so ali what's this field i mean other than the field of education is there an ology associated with that i think i had i had bill nye on pedo just started just started he's just starting out in his career okay that's right we talked about science communication and um he essentially was talking about how you shouldn't introduce a concept with a big word first you should talk about the concept first and then define it instead of just dropping a big word essentially i think not alienating people is the biggest hurdle to get over with science communication so i guess i would err on the side of being nice in terms of trying to be as inclusive as possible and have it be a welcoming space because i think one thing about science that intimidates people especially lay people is they think that scientists are all in lab coats they know everything they don't break anything they don't make any mistakes they don't fail at anything they're just imbued with knowledge they don't realize it's inaccessible inaccessible to them they don't realize that scientists are just really curious people who do a lot of experiments that mess up a lot until they find an answer so i think trying to come at it from a more humanistic like hop on board learn what you can instead of get out of here i'd like that rather than think of it as something up on the ivory tower hill yeah that you have no access to very good all right and i also think the more varied backgrounds we have in science the different questions people ask i think if you have the same people in science they're going to ask the same kind of questions of their experiments and i think that's one thing i really love about genealogy is having all these different types of scientists who approach their research based on their own background so yeah i think hop on in we need as many scientists as possible so nice nice is better okay i think no i agree all right all right very cool so uh thanks for the uh supercilious answer ally i don't know english humor loved it here we go steven som summers wants to know this he says hey say you've spoken on tv or a podcast to a huge audience with total confidence in your idea only to find out later that you got something wrong how do you set the record straight when that happens that's a great question that is a great question one thing i recommend if people struggle with this is just take what you need from your house and go live in a cave for the rest of your life don't show your face again remove yourself from society uh you've failed it's all over is what i would say um no that's not me i i think you know i think one thing that a lot of people don't realize is that science is evolving there are so many things we thought about science and then we did more experiments and learned something else and so understanding that science and just knowledge human knowledge is always elastic it's always changing you may have been wrong that's great admit it cop to it issue a correction on twitter and instagram and on your website and move on with your life i think um wait but not ollie there are two kinds of wrongs one of them is right this is what we think is true today but more research may undo it later and so yeah i say well three years ago i got i got that wrong because that's the best we knew at the time that's different from blunder where you just simply say something that's just flat out wrong and someone calls calls you out later on so that's a more of an embarrassing kind of error to do should that person move to the cave forever i would say remember every human is a human everyone makes mistakes and uh you know they say there's a fixed mindset and a growth mindset one is like uh too afraid to make make mistakes others i make a mistake and i move on from it so i think the best thing you can do is admit your wrongs apologize for them sincerely and put out a correction and so so we have to work on that mindset that's a mindset that people fear i think because you know what it what is it they said that the scariest thing even scarier than death is speaking in public yes for some people yeah i never understood that because i i never had an issue with that i mean you think people would rather be at the front of the room at their own funeral than giving the eulogy to somebody else's then in the front of the room of of a full house uh right okay yeah and so i mean unless there is a sniper or you're gonna die straight up of a heart attack at the speaking podium you'll be fine i always say that um you know the we're definitely so afraid of things that can't hurt us i remember i made a flow chart once of like can this thing kill you if yes run if no chill out those are the basics i did an episode i love that flow chart it's a great flow chart it i use it all the time but i did an episode um two-parter called fearology with someone named mary poffenroth and she's an expert in fear and the amygdala and how we react to fear and it was life-changing she is so great and she essentially said most of our fears and anxiety and stress is just worried that we're not good enough and so if you think about everyone walking around worrying that they're not good enough to do their job or follow their dreams or start a conversation or a podcast or correct their mistakes then you know that's a whole lot of stress that we have that we can i got one for you chuck yeah ready what flat what flat earthers fear most is sphere itself by the way that joke made me believe the earth is flat did you just come up with that or did you no i tweeted that a couple of years ago and no no it was i think it's been around it's been around but the only thing we have to do is sphere itself actually i'm just hearing something that's pretty damn clever so yeah yeah that's good it's the it's fear it's sphere is what does it yeah from the word play i like it all right we got time maybe one more question what else you got chuck yeah let's go to kayla slaughter kayla says by the way these are all patreon members right yes that is correct and yeah because uh let me just tell people that you can go to star patreon.comtalk support us there if you come in at a certain um support level um we uh we take your questions and we read them on the air and that allows us to i mean they bribe us to uh to ask their questions that's what that is that's listen yeah neither neither nobody in this organization is a law enforcement official there is no law that says we cannot take bribes all right next question she says i'll be starting a family soon i want to make sure my children have a well-rounded experience in science and politics and every all theologies basically any thoughts on how i can start early i wish that paper encyclopedias were still around because i feel like when i was a kid all i wanted was an encyclopedia shelf in our house just to take a volume and then just go sit under a tree with it but i guess so you're 75 years old i'm one million years old yeah i'm uh that is good but we had papers but books were made of paper smell them with your nose we did have an old we we finally got one from a garage sale but it was so outdated that it was like one day human men will be on the moon and i remember being like yes yeah i love that i love the out-of-date things they're fun they're cheap but um uh i would say i would say let them frolic let them frolic get them get them a microscope because you start swabbing window sills and start looking at fly mouth parts you start to realize the world is a lot bigger and smaller than we than we think so i'd say let them frolic fly mouth parts that was very random right there of all the things you could have listed fly mouth parts i don't even no no i'd retract the question i don't want to know how you came up with that in your list have you ever looked at them what are you doing later today get yourself a microscope find a dead flock july mouth parts you know they just they're thinking about them barfing on a sandwich and sucking it back up the world is big and small it's beautiful it's great get him a maybe get him a telescope and a microscope and then so you want this should be free range free range children yeah with access to the large and the small yes and in those limits there are no bounds nice and i wanna i wanna make it known that i don't have kids so okay take this with a grain of salt because i don't know how to write we we i heard in offline that you have a dog i do i have an eight-year-old daughter she's a poodle yeah and does does your eight-year-old poodle daughter have a microscope she does yeah she has a microscope she's doing great she's got infrared goggles i got her a uh yeah an electron scanning microscope we just keep in the garage um yeah so she's she's got everything she needs uh by the way kayla has a a follow-up for you ali she says what's it like talking to so many smart people all of the time and by the way i love your shows plural she put yeah what it's like talking to smart people all the time is incredibly incredibly humbling so it's it's there's nothing better than being reminded that you're uh the stupidest person in a conversation and that's what i do for a living it's great um so yeah i love it that reminds me of a quote if you're the smartest person in the room find another room yeah that's a good thing that's that's what you're saying here ollie right you're reveling in the fact that every outing you learn something absolutely for so many people the pain of learning something new is unbearable to them and so they stay steeped in their ignorance ossified from the graduation day from when they left school that's true living in the past living in a shell of their former attack is there such a thing as a stupid question no i really don't think so i think if it's honest if it's honest and vulnerable it's not stupid and chances are someone else in the room has it and we're all going to die anyway we're all going to be bones and dust and a fungus is going to be yes that's how i live my life cut bangs wow that's very crunchy but true we're all going to die you're going to be powdery no one's going to remember you i don't even remember my great grandparents name so why would i be like i don't want to ask this question about uh you know solar power or about the you on that universe okay someone said i'm afraid to do this you're going to die anyway yeah i'm going to die you're going to die literally a fungus you're going to die anyway your fungus lunch at the end of the day ask a question and learn something who if someone laughs they're a jerk so it's great just do your life all right wait a minute i got to tell you okay i got to tell the story real quick because it's speaking of stupid questions now you just reminded me you're going to die okay i have i have evidence to refute that where somewhere outdoors it's neil and i and these people who are huge fans they come over they're talking to him he's being very very gracious spending way too much time talking to him and so the guy says hey do you have one of those apps on your phone where you can hold it up to the sky and it will show you constellations and the meal goes like this are you kidding me right now and i was like yeah bro he is the app i'm like are you insane you're asking you're asking neil degrasse tyson does he need an app on his phone to look at the night sky i'm like brother he is what is your problem yes yeah my answer is in my day we have to remember where the constellations were i still i think embarrassing moment for him but still there's a lot of stars up there if anyone's taught us that it's you so he learned something about you that he your brain has even more capacity than he ever imagined and also he learned he needs the app you don't yes thank you there you go okay and this bit about being fungus lunch i'm trying to decide whether that's a happy note or a sad note it is it's amazingly liberating it's i did a whole episode on thanatology death and dying one of the happiest episodes i did i came out of there saying well i'm just going to do whatever i want to do so yeah your fungus lunch ask a question do your thing follow your passion you know read the encyclopedia it's all fine and remember you're delicious to some organism you're delicious all right we're going to take a quick break when we come back more stock talk with allie ward hey star talk fans this next segment of our episode with algie's host ali ward is sponsored by the all-electric chevrolet bull euv the everyday electric vehicle for everyday people that's you the all-electric chevy bolt euv has so many cool features including the ability to engage in conversations hands-free with the industry's first hands-free driving assistance technology you can find out more at chevrolet.com electric slash bolt dash euv all right let's get back to the show we're back star talk cosmic queries and for this segment we're going to actually devote this to a discussion about electric cars chuck what do you think of that yes that's awesome because i know you don't like the word awesome but in this case i think it is awe inspiring there but just to be clear i i love the word awesome but when properly applied like when you discover a new universe or something but okay when people say it would be awesome if you could pass the salt that is not a good use of the word awesome okay okay here is a good use of the word awesome because electric vehicles actually do so much to help the environment and i care about the environment i know you do people don't think i do but this segment we're doing in partnership with the all-new chevrolet bolt euv so i'm just over the moon because we get to talk about electric vehicles man and that's our future all right so this euv is that like suv except electric is that how are you yeah yeah exactly doesn't sound better though doesn't sound better to be like the uuv you know auv yeah so yeah let's get back to our guest here ali ward from ologies who basically did a did a land grab on all ologies in the universe that's a straight power move that's total gangster right there once you get the handle you're sitting on it and it's yours but yeah this would be electric vehicle technology i suppose the the segment could be the ology okay you just cram that ology in whether or not it belongs yep that's what i do someone mentioned something in casual conversation and i tell you what all agita is but this one is really exciting to me i've been excited about um electric vehicles since i was a kid my my dad is really into alternative sources of power and solar power and so i have been watching for years and seeing how evs come on the market so i'm really excited about the chevrolet volt eevee i think eb is a good move too i like the way it sounds and but is it like 100 grand like other electric vehicles like what's going on there that's the great thing about it otherwise it's not for everybody you can't take that chevy to the levee if it costs that much nobody's no good old boys are doing that so yeah well that's why they just the price point on this that's why they drained the living was to pay for your very expensive which this is not actually when i said it's accessible that's what i mean it's uh you know this is a a car that allows people to enter into this realm and if you're a conscientiousness as a first a foray okay very good very good yeah so so ali do you have a question related to this i do actually i wanted to well wait actually that's not fair because you're our guest and we usually take questions from the audience from our fan base but but you know you seem so into it maybe we'll give you the occasion to ask the question with the permission of our fan base i think they'll allow it okay go ahead so the floor is mine i have the cosmic query conch right now and can launch a question okay so i wanted to talk about whether or not electric vehicles are good for the environment how much good do they do over a car that runs on fossil fuels what are your thoughts yeah yeah so i can i mean i don't claim to be the world's expert on that but i can get you a lot of the way towards an answer to that question so uh here here's the problem transportation today you know cars and trucks and things that that move commerce but i guess even trains but some trains are electric so let's just stick to the ones that have sort of engines that burn fossil fuels uh the problem is if you have a car that takes gasoline it can only run on gasoline right so if so if you run out of gas you got to go to a gas station and fill it up with gasoline so you know we all know how much gas cost and we know where it comes from in the world and we know if a pipeline gets shut down or we know if a war breaks out and we know of an oil well is on fire and we know if there's new regulation related to it so oil has become a strategic commodity simply because we need it to run a transportation grid so now in comes an electric car so an electric car of course it still uses power all right so so what's up with that why is it good rather than sort of neutral or bad or equal right so here's what happens you got your car and it's at home and you plug it in okay now it's getting electricity from your power plant there's a chance your power plant is using coal there's a good chance of that all right so that's not really much better all right coal burning coal or burning gasoline there's still this carbon footprint okay however the power plant is not limited to just coal if they wanted to and many have they can put in if they have sunlight where you are a solar farm or with a wind farm if you're near water you could be hydroelectric all of these sources of power can be generated by your power company and show up in your wall socket so you don't need 12 different engines in your car to use 12 different kinds of energy you just need a plug that gives you access to the thing that's generating the energy 12 different ways so if you electrify the transportation grid you are future proofing our path in into a a culture in a civilization that can wean itself off its dependence of fossil fuels and so that's why it works that's why it's good i like that answer not to mention if you go solar on your house you essentially have a solar-powered car which is a car powered by the sun there you go exactly there's got to be a bumper sticker for that like solar-powered vehicle yeah that wouldn't work in places like seattle where the sun never comes out or upstate new york uh but yeah it would be believable if it's in a place where the sun is is prevalent so so that's why uh electric is good now the problem is i can have a gallon of gas over here and i can move it over there where you need it okay you can't do that with the like you can't carry electricity with you oh so you can charge your battery and then i can move the battery over there no the battery's in the car okay so so one of the problems with electricity as it's generated is it can only you can't sort of store it outside of the battery that's in your car so to run your lights to run most of the things that civilization uses electricity for it doesn't come out of a storage battery it's generated on the fly as you need it from the power station and delivered by the high tension lines i was going to say like i'm glad you said that because there's a lot of people who are you know um electric vehicle hesitant i will say because they're worried about how far they can drive like because of what you just said and the cool thing uh about the industry but more importantly about the chevy bolt euv is the because i know this because i got to take a tour of the car with gm but the cool thing is this car has nearly 250 mile range on a full charge 250. right that's good that'll get you between any adjacent cities i mean new york city is 250 between uh boston and washington right and you're in la ali what what cities with it san diego is easy oh um if you need to make a getaway that's palm springs that's joshua tree that's santa barbara that's yeah excuse me joshua tree oh excuse me okay excuse me i'm about to take my chevrolet bolt euv down to the joshua tree sometimes you need an instagram shoot you need to get in your bowl i love the euvs i think if you like a hatchback with a little bit higher profile um yeah i love that and the range is great they call it range anxiety people who are afraid to go ev because they think they're going to be stranded but once you drive an electric it's kind of like once you become a bird watcher you start seeing all these charging stations just like you would see birds you didn't realize were there before but once you drive an ev it's like oh there's a char they're everywhere you can charge in parking lots at the mall you can charge next to your grocery store you can charge at hotels it's just like but so the bird watcher analog there is if you've never looked for a bird you would never know it was there until you knew what to look for yeah and then they're everywhere i got you okay so that's like a psychological effect sort of once you know what to look for but yeah there's ev charging stations everywhere yeah there's about 40 000 uh birds to look for when you're traveling is that how many is that how many uh ev stations are there yeah yeah there's about 40 000 public charging stations so you know okay so so chuck which which goes faster down the road a chevy bolt or usain bolt you know i'm gonna say that the usain bolt is faster out of the blocks but the chevy bolt is going to ultimately smoke them don't tell him that exactly not to mention you don't need as many carbs for your chevy bolt you can you don't have to run it on pasta protein anything i think range oh i gotcha there you go yeah for sure so was that that's your only question you had uh well that was my main question about it i think um you know people who are considering going from a fossil fuel car to something that is electric i think tend to be people who are environmentally conscious and so they really want to know how much better is this for the environment but knowing i agree and those are the people who do it first but ultimately if you get the right price point people just do it because it's the right price point right yeah oh wait so then you know speaking of what you just said before we actually got on the show today ali was doing something on your computer where you were like looking at the savings so when you talk about price point there are hidden savings in every electric vehicle uh but i don't know do you have what are you doing well there are fewer moving parts oh can i can i back up real quick we're running out of time i don't want to take up the whole thing but but uh michael faraday go back a hundred and fifty sixty years when you sit back back in the show you're like can i go back michael faraday so michael faraday an english scientist physicist he basically is responsible for figuring out how to generate electricity and he he invented the concept of an electric field by the way because that's not a thing you can touch right it's just this thing there and so he can draw it and calculate you can calculate with it so he he realized that if you move a wire through a magnetic field it induces current in that wire and you can it'll show up on a meter and so whoa well that's kind of it was a little novel at the time but what would you do with this this is kind of a stupid toy and then people figure oh my gosh this is the birth of the electrification of the world point is the way we do that now is we have a tightly wound you know what's called a turbine a tightly wound wire coil that spins in a magnetic field and an electric um uh current is induced in that wire ever since the beginning of electricity we've known how to spin things that's that's what we do best we've been doing it for 150 years and what is a car if not electricity spinning things so the acceleration on an electric vehicle can be excellent because of this fact and that's why the chevy bulk i didn't check the acceleration numbers they might actually accelerate out of the blocks faster than usain bolt now now that i'm thinking about it so well also uh i was checking on price point stuff just to see how much wood i save per year driving an eevee and my parents live about 400 miles away so i go up a couple times obviously like every month or two and i would save 10 000 over five years on gas just based on that which is um yeah if you're calculating not to mention how much co2 that is right i know right so a little karmically and then pocketbook wise but yeah i i did they have a number cruncher for you so you don't have to you don't have to pull out your spreadsheets they have it for you i see what you did when you say karma karmically yeah do you like that yeah electric the puns are electric so guys we got to land this plane or park this car [Laughter] so ally's been delight to have you on this show i can't believe we haven't had you ever on before we got to do this again with your permission yes and talk about some of the ologies that you've you've discovered or i think you're inventing some of those ologies maybe bending some words i think i think you're pulling them out i don't know where i swear i do look for i do look for them in the literature first i promise but yes so many allergies to cover i'm here whenever you need me it's in so little time yes okay excellent thanks for being on star talk thank you dad you can catch your honor ology podcast and um it goes everywhere i mean every ology you can ever imagine it's even the ones you haven't imagined because she made them up they're there right chuck always good to have you man hey neil before we wrap up i just want to let the viewer know that if you're ready to make the electric future part of your present do some good for the environment which is what it is all about check out the chevrolet ball euv at chevrolet.com electric chevrolet.com electric do some good people come on all right this has been star talk cosmic aquarius neil degrasse tyson here as always keep looking up [Music]

Channel: StarTalk

Views: 101,575

Keywords: startalk, star talk, startalk radio, neil degrasse tyson, neil tyson, science, space, astrophysics, astronomy, podcast, space podcast, science podcast, astronomy podcast, niel degrasse tyson, physics, electricity, future proofing, oil, gasoline, charging stations, transportation, Usain Bolt, flat earthers, fear, science communication, literacy, ology, civilization, language, teaching, learning, misinformation, vaccine, infodemiology, agnotology, gluteology, laughter, death, ignorance, curiosity

Id: mdlT8h7Lblk

Length: 49min 26sec (2966 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 12 2022