This is Exactly How You Should NOT Raise Your Kids! | Neil deGrasse Tyson on Impact Theory

I was in Central Park we were just finished seeing one of the Shakespeare in the Park performances and it rained a little earlier so there were puddles in some of the walkways I saw a woman walking with their kid the kid has galoshes on and a raincoat on and they're coming down the walkway and this is big juicy muddy puddle right there and I said please let the kid jump in the puddle you know the kid wants to jump in the puddle the kid is like three or four you know the kid and what is that what is the mother do you pulls the kid around to prevent that from happening that's an experiment in cratering that's what crater has happened that way you splashed the water there's mud it's fun you get to see the cause and effect of a force downward force operating on a fluid gone that was a bit of curiosity in that moment that was extinguished [Music] everybody I hope you enjoyed this episode brought to you by our sponsors at audible everyone welcome to impact theory today's guest is arguably one of the most important scientific voices of our time a Harvard and Columbia educated doctor of astrophysics with an impressive string of best-selling books under his belt he's been instrumental in creating some of the most influential works of popular science the world has ever known from his funny and informative show star talk which in its very first year on TV was nominated for an Emmy for best informational programming to being the executive editor and on-camera host of the groundbreaking television series cosmos which garnered four Emmys a Peabody Award two Critics Choice Awards was translated into 45 languages ran in 181 countries and has been viewed by over 750 million people helping to inspire entire generations of budding scientists the world over his rare ability to spark curiosity and guide public scientific discourse has not only made him one of the most sought-after public intellectuals but had seen him amass a staggering list of accolades including more than 20 honorary doctorates NASA bestowed upon him their distinguished Public Service Medal the International Astronomical Union recognized his contributions by naming an asteroid after him he's had multiple presidential appointments was made a research associate of the Department of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History and was named as the fifth head of the world-renowned Hayden Planetarium in New York City as well as their first ever occupant of the Frederick P Rose director ship so please help me in welcoming the man People magazine named the sexiest astrophysicist alive the author of letters from an astrophysicist the legendary dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson [Music] [Applause] all right thank you ma'am my pleasure thank you for being on the show what an introduction you gave me there but yeah I need to clarify something yeah first of all the the People magazine distinction sexiest astrophysicist that was 50 pounds ago okay just make that clear second I I don't think that's one of the more competitive categories that they have in there I will say that you there's just now more sexy on the astrophysicist and that whether it's a big category or not you're a very distinguished you know at the time you know Stephen Hawking you know I don't know I don't know how victory was i but that year that I think that was the only year this is back in 2000 I think it's the only year they actually had that category though these fun categories that they throw in just for for for entertainment purposes but they're the recurring categories like sexiest action hero right sexiest athletes sexiest actors so those are those are really competitive categories and and my year of the cover whose transcends all categories was Brad Pitt and he was the sexiest man alive beyond category so the literally the epitome of sex symbols back in the day for sure right right so you were in good company that's good I want to start so the book is great by the way and I really enjoyed it it's a wonderful taken mix as they call it in the UK of different topics where you're diving in sometimes very quickly and then other times I'm much more prolonged yet depending on the on the subject and or or depending on how much I knew about about the subject brought to me that I could then comment on equally fair yeah one of the ones that really hit me was you talking about your dad you called it a eulogy of sorts and you went through some of the things that he did which I actually I didn't know anything about your dad before reading that what was it about your dad that impacted you so much that you still carry today so it's not so much oh he's my dad I love my dad that's all true but at the end of the day what matters is for who and what you become in life for me at least was what level of wisdom did he lean in his life and then successfully communicate to me either by example or by just explicit statement and that combination of those two means of delivery had some important impacts impact see what I did there impacts on my life just for example and I gave these examples in that that that eulogy was a letter to him during the memorial service he died a couple of years ago at age 89 so it's not a tragic death but you still miss someone even though you know they're ready to check out and I'll just give one example if I may in high school he was in gym class and they were lining up and they were about to enter the next athletic unit and it was track and field and the gym instructor pointed to my father on line and said cereal Tyson everyone look at him he does not have the body type that would excel in track and they used him as an example and he says what no one is gonna tell me what I can't do in my life and he used that as the reason to start running any started track in that moment I mean at that exact moment he decided that his the tasks in life would be to take up running and excel at it within a few years of that he became world class at one time had the fifth fastest time in the world in the middle distance they don't run this anymore 600 yard run and he in 1948 the Olympics was not yet ready to come back to us because we're still reeling roiling from the second world war instead that it was still in Olympics that was called the GI Olympics and it was held in Hitler's Stadium so he competed in Hitler's Stadium in the late 1940s and just one of the great memories of his life but when I'm saying all of that as a friend of his named Johnny Johnson who they were competing against the New York Athletic Club in the day it mattered that you had amateur status no one's thinking of that anymore but back then you couldn't compete in the Olympics if you were professional at all and there's a hole so professional wrist éand sort of you were tainted in some way and it's hard to think that that used to be how people thought but that's what how it was in the day once you graduated college you needed some sanctioning body to compete with so they were athletic clubs the New York Athletic Club at the time accepted only white Protestants so there's another club called the Pioneer Club which took everybody who was not accepted to the New York Athletic Club which was basically Blacks and Jews is really what that came down to and some Catholics but basically Blacks and Jews so he competed alongside Jewish athletes so there they are competing against the New York Athletic Club and his best friend Johnny Johnson okay it was coming around the back stretch might have been the quarter mile coming on the final straightaway and a runner from the York Athletic Club is a few paces behind him and Johnny Johnson overhears that runners coach say catch that and he overheard this and so what did he say to himself he said this is one he ain't gonna catch that extended is his his lead to the finish line and he tells this story not with any bitter tone as you might think any story like that today would certainly be told with with great remorse and consternation so he never had that kind of tone when he shared those stories with us it was here's an occasion to parlay what today might be called a microaggression into a reason to excel even more than you had expected of your own abilities and talents and so I have taken that lesson with me he was just telling a story he didn't say let me give my kids a lesson today no these are just things that happened in his life and in my sort of letter to him in death I recount for the audience several of these examples and that among them yeah that story is really powerful to me and in the book you you frame much of your own success is you know I especially when I was starting the the system of certainly astrophysics didn't exactly open its arms wide to me NASA was born the same year I was born and there was not a welcoming of people of my color and so in some ways the the amount that I have overshot average is a result of having to push back against that friction but again there's no bitterness in your voice so how did you make that a positive thing in your life yeah I think dare I even suggest that it's possible to draw a line in the sand between transgressions be they racial cultural religious I mean we live in a very fractured world today I don't know if it's the most fractured ever but I mean the first world war a second one that that would those were fractured times so I don't want to claim uniqueness in how fractured we are but what is clear is that the Internet has enabled in social media have enabled people to tribal eyes you might go your whole life without ever finding another person who thinks the earth is flat you go online and you see them all and they have conventions and they and they meet here even if it's only virtual so so you have ways to say why you are different from other people and I don't know that that's always a healthy place to be in a pluralistic land you want to celebrate differences rather than go out of your way to establish differences and then claim one group is better than another it is the very motto of the United States out of many one the pluralist pluribus unum you can carry that forward to to immigration and the ethnicity the melting pot of ethnicity that was the goal or at least the vision for what we thought a future America would be and I don't feel it heading that way now so so but you can draw a line in the sand between people who transgress but do not hold power over you from those who transgress and do so the coach who said catch that he doesn't have power over Johnny Johnson unless you allow him to there's a famous quote from Martin Luther King you can only be ridden if your back is bent and so in the earlier days not only when I was less known but just the racial climate was different yellow taxis in New York City would not pick me up if I was going uptown in the direction where Harlem is whether or not I was had intended to get out before then this wouldn't pick me up I'd have to switch sides of the street pretend I'm going downtown then they'd pick me up and then I say please go up to this I'd have to pay an extra 50 cents for that turn around but that taxi driver whatever is their bias was not between me and my goal in becoming an astrophysicist so I apportioned my emotional reactions to where it actually mattered for my life's trajectory a lot of people when they hit adversity they're broken by it and whether that's just it's hard to get good at something or it's something like that where it's prejudice sort of naked Lee it stops them and they never overcome that and and you've said and this is so interesting and exciting to me especially in today's world that that worked almost as like a gravitational slingshot that threw you farther so how do people capture that energy I see what you did there too closely not very good huh so the slingshot case everyone doesn't know so what happened is all the planets go in the same direction around the Sun because we're all formed in a disk that rotated a gaseous disc the planets condense out of that so they everybody is moving the same direction from the top it's counterclockwise but so if you launch a spacecraft and don't have enough fuel to go the distance that you want what you can do is you can come in behind a planet and fall towards it and the act of falling towards it is its gravity pulls you in that's fine but the act of getting pulled in you actually gain the speed of the orbit of the planet as well so falling into the gravity you now have to exit the other side that will eat the speed that you gained by falling in because of its gravity cuz that's symmetric but that entire process you gain the orbital speed of the planet coming out the other side it's called a gravitational assist and you can do like a multi cushion pool shot in the solar system to get enough energy to reach Pluto or beyond and almost all of our spacecraft that went into the distant solar system rather than giving huge rockets which are expensive to get it there you use a smaller rocket and you just what you're doing is you're stealing orbital energy from other planets which is they don't miss it they'll be fine unless you did it like all the time then they'll though you can mess them up but Jupiter versus our spacecraft Jupiter doesn't care so I just want to explain the orbital assist in case others didn't know so yes these these microaggressions are converted to enthusiasm to excel and dare I say something that I think today many people are thinking older folks are thinking but they're not speaking I'm gonna say it when I grew up I probably older than you it was very common to hear the phrase sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me you recited this this is what you told when you came home when you said oh you know this bully called me a name it sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me and so this was an inoculation against hate speech really against just evil people just nasty people you ever develop a set of system of defenses against unpleasant people out there and I haven't heard that phrase in a long time I don't hear it recited in the elementary schools what I think has happened over the years is we came to learn a civilization that words can be hurtful and words can sort of change your mood or it set you into a depression make and so I don't have a problem with that that's this is a an enlightened new place to understand the role of our emotional state and how it interacts with our world around us that's an advanced in in mental health what I see on the flip side of that coin however is people are less able to deal with the very same people who are around today who are around back then who are calling you names the people who might be bullying you on the internet whether by saying things about you we I don't know that we have how to defend against that now other than seeing a counselor for your emotional state I can say from the era in which I grew up I don't give a rat's ass what you say to me okay unless you are between me and some goal then I have have to navigate that some way if there's a racist person or sexist person or a person with some kind of cultural bias I want to know that actually I don't want them to hide that I want you to say everything you want to say then I'll say okay that's who you are that's how you're thinking so now what do I need to do because you're in my way do I dig under you go around you leap over you what do I go this way and then come out the other side yes longer it's more effort it's more energy yeah yeah but on some level it's sort of same different day so as they say that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger you just hope you don't get killed okay that's so I hear in all this an echo of the notion that your dad gave you which was so powerful for me when I read it which is it's not enough to be right you have to be effective oh yeah he worked for city government in New York City during the civil rights movement and if I just add one thing to that the press doesn't write about stories that don't happen understandably but I just want to say that he at the time the 1960s mid-60s to the late 60s arguably the most turbulent set of years on American soil in American history since the Civil War itself a century earlier with the assassinated leaders and the campus unrest and inner cities were burning the ghettos as they were known at the time and what is what is a riot if not the very last act of desperation because you are left without any hope at all that is what a riot is and so Watts burned and Washington burned and Chicago burn federal troops brought in 1968 after Martin Luther King was shot new york city silent just some skirmishes here and there nothing so no one writes a story about that my father was active he was commissioner in New York City in the human resources administration Human Resources this is human capital being nurtured and and established in such a way that you feel some sense of meaning and importance in your life because you have a job waiting for you after you get out of school there wasn't any lost hope there there was still some hope and so he was behind the scenes on that and he just knew that in the most turbulent year of the most turbulent decades since the 1860s the most populous city with the largest ghetto in the country did not burn and so you can be right and say oh I have this plan let's just do this if you can't implement it you're just talking you just you just you you can say things that sound nice and if people can cheer you on but if you don't have a strategy to make it happen a path that's why I went as I did my hand gestures there's somebody in my way and and I want to get there I can't just say let me got to let me through I have a good idea I don't know it's not good enough I can't say you're being racist you're being that that's not you got to navigate it I think high school that's where you learn how to deal with difficult people there's not a single high school movie that doesn't show the angst of the cliques that have formed and what their relationships are that they have to one another it's this microcosm of real stuff to goes on in the real world there are beautiful people and they will get jobs you're not going to get okay there are people who are nasty you're gonna have to navigate them there are people who you cannot interact with for whatever reason or another they're gonna be in the cubicle next to you in your workplace so I think we undervalue the total social pot that people are tossed into in their high school experience they want to say oh I could have learned more but I had to deal with all these people hey having to deal with all these people is now in your portfolio for when you're in the workplace you got it and research continually shows that the people who are send to manager level and beyond they know how to interact with have high social what EQ the emotional quotient as somebody who has achieved astronomically grand heights because they have an ability to almost translate like take things from the scientific world and make it accessible or navigate you know finding that path when somebody's trying to stand in your way for whatever reason do you have strategy specifically that you're like consciously aware of using and if so what are they communicating yeah when you're communicating or when you're looking for a path oh yeah well so first of all just to be clear I don't know that I totally fit the philosophy of this show and I've seen many of your shows not all of them but many and what's driving the conversations and your motivation for the guests that you have in this couch is that they they had some vision statement and they and they've grit okay they got knocked down they stood back up they tried another way they got knocked down again then they were successful either measured by wealth or influence or or just joy in their life's passions for me what I do for the public is prime almost the 80 plus percent of it is driven by duty not by ambition what gives you the sense of duty because I can do something and if I can do it better than others and it's for a greater good in society I would be irresponsible if I did not that's how I view it so when I get requests to either advise in the science on a movie artists calling I say well my expertise is not unique in what it is you need here are seven are the people you should get them I'm not seeking this visibility if someone says well we need this for this reason and we came to you for that reason I said yeah I think I can make a unique stamp on what it is you're doing I will agree to do that because if I didn't then the product would not be as good as I know I could have helped it become and so I'd be irresponsible if that were the case this is how I ended up posting cosmos in 2014 and Riaan the widow of Carl Sagan who is hugely talented and a little bit in his shadow over his years but she co-wrote the original cosmos in 1980 co-wrote it and was co-writer of the cosmos that I was the host of in 2014 she's one of the most enlightened people I've ever met okay she approached me and said would you consider hosting cosmos I said I don't did a dozen people maybe half dozen others who would jump at this opportunity I don't need to do this I really don't have books I want to write this sort of thing I don't I don't need to be a TV star then I thought about it and I said well I met Carl Sagan when I was 17 I was applying to colleges he was at Cornell I had been accepted at Cornell but it was didn't know what college I wanted to go to and the admissions office saw that I wasn't totally in the moment there they for I didn't know this they had forwarded application to him for his reaction I was already deep in the universe since I was nine and he sent me a letter he doesn't know me from Adam I'm a 17 year old kid from the Bronx he's a professor of astronomy at Cornell University and I get this letter and I open it says I understand you like the same stuff I like do you want to come visit the campus to help you decide if you want to go to Cornell it was like whoa this is now he hadn't done cosmos yet that's how old I am but he was already famous he'd been on The Tonight Show and you know and had best-selling books so I took him up on it I took a bus up to if they could New York he met me outside his building on a Saturday vited me up to his office saw the labs I'm there in front of he did some really cool he reached back didn't even look grabbed a book off the shelf there's one of his books that was the baddest that was a badass thing nobody have to look that's one of my books yeah okay here and he signed it to me you'll take the future astronomers sign Carl but that's not that's only the half of it later in the day I'm ready to go back to New York it begins to snow as it does often in December in a fika and he says here's my home number if the bus can't get through from the snow spend the night with my family and go back tomorrow I'm thinking Who am I what I'm nobody but I was somebody to him and I said to myself if I'm ever as remotely famous as he is I will treat students the way he has treated me so why did I go down that path oh because I had that memory and I said to myself if we can fold this memory into this this next cosmos then we have a way to justify who and what I am as the next host because a torch got passed it wasn't passed in 2014 it was passed in 1975 all right to Neil Tyson future astronomer I still have that book so I thought to myself I possibly could bring a unique contribution as host to the show and that's what I did so my visibility is primarily because things that I think I can contribute uniquely or that people request and it would help enhance their lives I think we have to talk about purpose a little bit and you have such an interesting take on purpose I get asked a lot you know what's the purpose of life or what's meaning and all that tell people your take on purpose purpose I consider purpose and meaning equivalent in this answer maybe there's a way to divide them but let me treat them as the same for the moment I that many people look for meaning in life as though they will you know I'm still searching for meaning and what my life as though it's gonna be under a rock or behind a tree oh there's my meaning and I'm thinking to myself you have more power than that you have the power to create meaning in your life rather than passively look for it so for me I create the meaning and meaning to me is do I know more about the world today than I did yesterday that enhances meaning for me and if that accumulates at an accrues daily in a month you know way more than you did then just that day later so that you continue to grow have I by whatever powers I have available to me have i lessened the suffering of others or the corollary to that would be have I enhanced the life of others they're related and I don't mean have I devoted the whole day to doing that then I would be ignoring myself but if there's some small gesture that I can do that can completely add value to someone's life I'm gonna do it because the leveraging of 10 minutes of my life into that happiness or enlightenment or the reduced suffering of someone else I'd be irresponsible if I did not how do you develop that as like a guiding value where did that no one ever told me that I had to search for meaning in life to begin with so that was never even a part of me it was I got my life this is who and what I am this is what I did in school these are my dreams ambitions how do I create meaning in my life as I go forward my first question of me wasn't where do I find meaning it was how do I create meaning and that started early early teens did you help your kids with this is that something that you found a way to sort of educate on or pass down so that they would be asking a similar question instead of doing this sort of wander search thing yeah I have an unorthodox approach to what we do with our kids my wife has anymore it was all legal my wife has a PhD in mathematical physics so people always ask us are you kids up you know no is askins right because they said I'm scientists or like always doing experiments but we discussed this my wife and I Anna I wanted to make sure that in however they were raised that they retained the curiosity of childhood into adulthood man how do you do that well beats that implies that you have to do a lot of work to make it happen when in fact you'd be surprised how much work you put in to squash it okay let's say there's a little toddler walking here okay crawling on the ground it comes up and they start grabbing this what's the first thing - no don't touch that okay this was an experiment waiting to happen that you just squashed this is a cup it has water in it okay this is breakable the kid doesn't know that they want to experiment so they'll grab it of it it'll fall it'll break water will spill all over that was an experiment you just prevented so you would let your kids yes under over yes and the kids make a complete mess of the house you don't have kids with the intent of retaining a clean house these are non commensurate goals okay kids are sources of chaos and and disorder get over that fact and where does the disorder come from it's because they are experimenting with their environment everything is new to them everything and I was this is an obscure example but I I was in Central Park we were just finished seeing one of the Shakespeare in the Park performances and it rained a little earlier so there are puddles in some of the walkways I saw a woman walking with their kid the kid has galoshes on and a raincoat on and they're coming down the walkway and this is big juicy muddy puddle right there and I said please let the kid jump in the puddle you know the kid wants to jump in the puddle the kid is like three or four you know the kid and what is that what is the mother do you pulls the kid around to prevent that from happening that's an experiment he cratering that's what had craters happen that way you splash the water there's mud it's fun you get to see the cause and effect of a force downward force operating on a fluid gone that was a bit of curiosity in that moment that was extinguished so with our kids curiosity provided it does not kill them if it meant we had extra work in front of us I would do that extra work so your task is less to instill curiosity in your kids than it is to make sure you don't squash what's already there and I have pretty high confidence that they'll retain that curiosity through the turbulent middle school years into high school and what is an adult scientist but a kid who's never lost the curiosity and so in here people ask about raising their kids they ask about education and one day I'm gonna have an education book one day but an but I'm not ready for that because I'm still baking these ideas and I can tell you this if we're if Einstein were here and we're talking with Einstein we could talk them for hours and hours and hours you know what we'll never come out of our mouth it what college did you go I want to go to that same College I bet most of your people have sat in this chair it's not about what college they went to it's about their own initiative their own Drive their own ambitions their own curiosity that is not taught in school sadly school they view you as this empty vessel that they pour information in and you test it over here you get a high grade you're praised you might even give the commencement speech is that who become the shakers and movers of the world I don't think so there'll be some of them but not with the not the totality of expectation that has brought upon those who succeed in school in that way so I can just tell you that what has to change in schools and I don't have a recipe yet I just know the result what the result has to be it has to be when you come down the steps on the last day of school you are not singing the Alice Cooper song school's out forever you will be there'll be a sad song you'll be singing Saint gee I got to go two or three months without learning anything you should be sad that school is over not happy and the fact that you're happy that school is over means something is not working in there you're not enjoying the learning process and on the other side of that is school should as a minimum preserve that curiosity for you it yeah if you lost some of it because and it's not going to be in all of us put it back in so that when you graduate school you can give literal meaning to the word commencement commencement means beginning it doesn't mean ending and so you leave school and you say to yourself I now know how to learn I now have a curiosity of all things I have yet to be exposed to and I will now become a lifelong learner without that you become ossified and whatever was the body of knowledge that existed the day you graduated and you will lead a life always looking back at that time without continuing to grow who and what you can become in life I think we should all get as high grades as you can but if you don't get the highest grades possible no one should be standing in judgment of that if you have some other ambitions that have pathways that don't get encoded in the GPA that other people are referencing that's all I'm saying and you said the goal of school is to hopefully commencement you know how to learn when you approach a topic that you don't know well how what is your actual process they can learn great question so I'm gonna give a slightly longer answer than you bargained for just because it's all for you because it's got good flesh on it I'm a scientist raised Catholic but started drifting when I was like in third grade none of it was making much sense to me and so not only that my household though we went to church it was a secular household there were no decisions made in the house that referenced the Bible or God or Jesus or anything so in that sense decision making was secular and rationally informed and I thank my parents for that and actually a testimony to them in this book I just thank them for their just their rational approach to everything it it I value that as someone being raised by them because it meant if something didn't make sense they will do it because I said so that's not a rational reply to your child they would have the reason for it and then we discussed the reasons so early on as I became more visible I'd get letters and people would ask about God and I don't know much about God you know so I my early letters were well science is that religion is that and that I can't help you any further then I thought to myself that's not fair to the person who wrote the question the coming from a place some religious tradition whatever that tradition is and I if I'm receiving that letter there's a contract an implicit contract between me and the person who's seeking my guidance my wisdom my insights and I owe it to that person to know as much as possible as I can about where they're coming from so I said I should really read up on this so I started buying Bibles okay I bought the Torah had bought the New Testament the Old Testament I bought the Mormon Testament I bought the Quran and different translations and started reading them and I studied the rituals how the rituals differ how who celebrates what holidays and the job as witness don't celebrate Christmas last I checked okay they have a different interpretation and understanding of the same passages that other people say trying to celebrate Christmas that's interesting to me because people raised in different traditions and different belief systems at different times they are writing to me so I've shelves upon shells of religious tracts I've shelves upon shut to shelves of the UFO material okay people's I saw UFO what was it I think it's an alien let me find out where these people come from what literature have they been exposed to what are they thinking what is their belief system conspiracy theorists so I've shelves on all this stuff and usually you go to someone's house and you find books that completely aligned with their worldviews all right someone asked me that somebody said what what did the books on your shelves right now and I and I made I gave them the list and they said wait a minute do you believe in that stuff and I said I read things that take me to places where other people think if I'm an educator I want to know that because when you're speaking to me and I have some understanding of you I I can navigate we talked about navigation earlier I can navigate your receptors for learning I don't have to have you come to where I am that's not right I'm the educator not you you're the curious person so I'm going to meet you on your territory and I had to read all of that to do so just to be genuine and honest in my replies to people in this book one of what took me a year to answer one of the questions it was a a Jewish woman Orthodox why do I know she's Orthodox I didn't have the latitude to ask her because it's just a letter I know she's Orthodox because she doesn't spell God his G - D so I know above certain thresholds you don't even uh tur the name god that's so that's a level of piety that I got that she's Jewish she's got a ten-year-old son she's sent him to Hebrew school so that he can learn this is I'm quoting her so she can learn where he comes from and his learned his traditions oh by the way he's on the autism spectrum so this is building right okay she's Orthodox she's really religious she's got a ten year old son going to Hebrew school he's on the autism spectrum and he says by the way one day he came home and said he doesn't believe in God he thinks Bible stories can't possibly be true and she asked him how did you come to think this and he said cosmos it's like okay so I'm a deep now okay should I read further where is this gonna go this can only end badly I'm saying to myself and it turned out she was very open she said you know I don't want to make him believe things that might not be true he respects you I know that and I thank you for that but sometimes I have my doubts too about these stories in the Bible so I just don't know you know Kent science and God coexist and I just want to be a good parent it was like whoa okay so I went back him brushed up on sort of Jewish rituals and and it took me a year just to get all the right words on the page so I wrote back I think it's my finest letter in the book so you can ask well so how did it all resolve so my only thought tell you is was a year and a half later or so she wrote to me and invited me to his bar mitzvah so I said okay I think that would that worked out that that worked out good so you said how do I prepare what was the essence of your how do I learn I learned because I want to be better at what it is I'm doing than I am it sounds like it starts with books it's reading disconfirming evidence yes I think it's super powerful yes point at you please have point to what it was like yes I tried and one of my highest compliments I got one day I'm this is earlier when I was sort of sort of recognizable to people people would say I think I know who you are but they're not quite sure I was at a CVS and yet I'm waiting in line and there the magazines that are there the impulse magazines right and one of them was Life magazine and it was this is around Easter right and it was like Jesus what different cultures say about him is a Hispanic a French German whatever so I looked at it and I something that could be interesting let me guess I pick that up and I add it to the stash only when I did that did a person in another aisle come up to me and say you're Neil deGrasse Tyson aren't you and I said yes and he said I was I wasn't sure until I saw you pick up the magazine on Jesus because I know you read everything and I said wow this guy really knows who I am so yes you said the right disconfirming books yes yeah I think that's really powerful if you were going to give people one topic that they should study that would be sort of the most eye-opening and useful in their lives that dealt with the cosmos what would it be yeah I'm gonna give you a cop-out answer for that and I'm gonna say I want you to learn what science is and how and why it works where would you send people for that is there a particular book a website one of your books yeah I kind of did that a lot in my book just saying one of my books which did very well not as well as the most recent one it's called death by black hole that book is the some of my pedagogical insights into connecting you who might otherwise be disconnected to science and putting you in the middle of what science is how and why it works what it means when we say we know something what it means when we say we don't know something and in spite of the morbid title it's really about science as an enterprise and well one of the sections is called the nature of knowing and another section called the knowing of nature right there's their philosophical dimensions to it where you will come out of that book that's my goal you'll come out of it saying the world looks different to me now because I see all the way science has reached in and has an enlightened civilization to enhance our health our wealth our security in this place we call nature where's the best place for people to connect with you you've got a lot of amazing stuff oh well I'm upping my presence on Instagram your Instagram feed is rad dude what no but it's there's not many postings there it you could do more I don't lie I'm saying they are awesome okay so what I started my Instagram because I had spent some period of time in my life where I did a lot of photography as art art projects I am deeply sensitive to art my brother is a professional artist so I grew up just he went to the high school of music and art so I would just grew up as the nerd scientist but exposed to art and so I liked photography so my initially my Instagram was I think how many Instagram accounts were there just places to put beautiful photos but lately they've come they Instagram has become a platform for communicating so I I think I'm gonna ramp that up a bit and it is good mm-hmm all right my last question what's the impact you want to have on the world I don't seek impact I'm okay my impact would be people learn from me in a way that they're empowered by what I taught them so that when they think of what they learned from me they no longer think of me they think of their own base of understanding of how this world works and so that I become irrelevant from that exercise and because if people say this is true cuz Tyson said so then I failed that's not how you teach someone that's that's teaching abaya for 'ti i don't you know doesn't know I want to I want to teach you how to think about the world and then you say I have a new way to understand the world eh you run off don't eat you don't even look back because a new level of hunger has descended upon you and methods and tools to feed that hunger are now accessible to you so my impact would be that others are impacted and they don't even remember that I had something to do with it on my tombstone I want the epitaph be ashamed to die until you have scored some victory for Humanity oh that's harsh man I can get behind that a victory for Humanity it's not a victory for yourself it's not statues it's not your name it's just humanity's better off what the world to be any of us I think should want the world to be a little better off for you having lived in it that doesn't mean people praising you that that's no not even about that so what do you have to give with no expectation of return back to duty I get it that's what it is it's beautiful man yeah guys there are some people that get famous on hype and there are some people who get famous on substance I'm telling you right now this man has gotten where he's gotten on substance it is incredible dive into his world you will not regret it follow his Instagram account it's absolutely incredible to read all of his books I can vouch for several of them and they are amazing if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care Neil deGrasse Tyson in the house thank you hey everybody I hope you enjoyed this episode sponsored our friends at audible this time of year everyone is trying to find thoughtful gifts for others and I want you guys to consider giving yourself as well as others the thoughtful gift of an audible membership with audible you can access an unbeatable selection of audiobooks which contain all the knowledge you could ever want to actually execute on your dreams recently I listened to the audiobook feeling good by David Burns and I'm challenging all of you guys to do the same the audiobook is excellent for anyone who suffers from depression or anxiety and it has helped meet enormous Lee and so many others as well and with audible you have the opportunity to listen to that audiobook or pretty much any audiobook you've ever wanted you can browse their massive selection no matter how busy you are you're gonna be able to listen to some incredible life-changing audiobooks whether it's in the gym or while your holiday shopping traveling pretty much while you're doing anything and with the convenience of the audible app you can listen pretty much on any device including mobile Alexa enabled devices Bluetooth and more and right now for a limited time you can get three months of audible for just six ninety-five a month as more than half off the regular price every month you can choose one audiobook regardless of price as well as two audible originals and audible makes it easy to want to become a member because you can exchange any audiobook you don't love at any time and you keep your library forever even after you cancel and remember right now for a limited time you can get three full months of audible for just 695 a month that's more than half off the regular price choose one audiobook and two audible originals absolutely free visit audible.com slash impact Theory or text impact theory to 500 500 all right guys audible is a game changer there's so much information so enjoy this one and be legendary take care with all these equations there was that pot of gold out there I wanted to understand Ines I want to understand the quantum theory I want it to be the cutting edge of science even if it meant that I had to sit at my chair and simply crank out the math you got to pay your dues

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 418,365

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, talk show, interview, motivational speech, Neil deGrasse, IT, astrophysics, physics, science, scientist, astrophysicist, NASA, microaggressions, pluralism, education, experiments, children, curiosity, Carl Sagan, mathematics, religion, Cosmos, evidence.

Id: Tv0kQbOIrjY

Length: 52min 7sec (3127 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 19 2019