0:00 some tour dates to announce if you want to come see The Return of the Rat tour we'll be in Louisville Kentucky January 25th and 26th Indianapolis Indiana January 27th and 28th Shreveport Louisiana February 1 and 2. Baton Rouge Louisiana February 3 through 5. Corpus Christi Texas March 24 Houston Houston sorry Texas March 25th uh Phoenix Arizona April 26th through 29th New York City at the Beacon Theater May 13th in Austin Texas June 1st through 3rd
0:45 um some of those dates are getting sold out some of those dates we will be adding new shows to I know specifically Austin uh Phoenix and possibly uh Houston you can get tickets at theovan.com t-o-u-r make sure to access tickets through there to get accurately priced ticketing uh thank you guys so much if you do come out to a show and you want to leave something for us a gift or an item or something you can always leave it with the merch people at the merch table uh just so you know that uh thank you guys so much for all your love and support um I'm excited to uh to come and see you you know it's hunting season it's hunting people are out there setting traps snares
1:32 put a Taffy some people put a damn Taffy out there and they'll catch a pigeon on that [ __ ] people do all kind of thing if you like to hunt then check out the hitter hunting club collection new merch now available at Theo vonstore.com we've got hoodies in Orange and maroon we got a raccoon on one of them because you know my brother's out there killing raccoons out there out in um Southern Utah he's out there uh we're just really getting those little damn criminals they are we got camo hats traditional and orange we got it all Elmer fudge yourself up Elmer fud your cousin man fud your cousin a bunch of
2:17 cousin futters get that hitter and more at theovanstore.com today's guest is an astrophysicist he's an author he has a new book called Starry Messenger Cosmic perspectives on civilization we're going to chat a little bit about it and he's just that you know he's that Galactic bad boy he's that um you know he's that uh outer space uh Joe Montana you know he's going deep with the facts baby you know what he is um he's science he's a science man he's a mannequin for science he likes the facts and he wears them and he wears them well we're happy to have
3:04 him here today Mr Neil deGrasse Tyson out loud [Music] sit and tell you my story [Music] there's an old joke uh there's a guy his name is Tex and people said why they call you text are you from Texas
3:49 and he said no I'm from Louisiana and he said why they call you texts he said because I don't want anyone calling me Louise I could see that that was just a cute something from the 1960s what old old sort of old-timer old-timey joke yeah that's one of one of my favorite jokes is uh they have this guy Crystal Lee he's a comedian and he has a joke it says um oh I saw the first 48 it's a TV show where they have 48 hours to solve a crime but really they have as much time as they want that's one of my favorite ones um
4:34 and then this one's a little edgier but it's um what's the last thing you want to hear when you're giving a [ __ ] to Willie Nelson what I'm not Willie Nelson okay I've heard that somewhere yeah that's not my joke but it's my favorite joke and you know the uh George Carlin has a [ __ ] joke he said uh here's a sentence that's never been uttered in the history of the world stop giving me a [ __ ] or I'll call the police and ever since I heard that I said there are sentences in the world that just have never been uttered in the history of the world well that's funny because Joe Rogan when he says that everything has been
5:20 he says like everything has been done like you've no no no I'll give an example okay okay we uh in New York 20 years ago we opened a new facility to the universe and we have models of planets and molecules and things that are dangling so you get the size the relative sizes of things I gave a tour of the facility to Martha Stewart wow okay She's All That by the way because as we're walking around and it was like a display surface she's like oh tidy she was taking the fingerprints off the off the off the he's probably taking her fingerprints off she's been guilty or something so Watch What Happens we're walking around and and we have these orbs and she says Dr Tyson
6:07 you have dust on your molecules and I thought I said wow that sentence has never been spoken in the history of the universe that's fine see I think that's it I agree with that kind of stuff right yeah one time I was on his show and the first thing he said he's like you know there's been another theovan there's been another in a like there's just he wants to Multiverse to be another one of you oh we can go there we can go that's what he goes into but you actually in your uh did we begin yet we all up in the beginning I think we're rolling we're rolling yeah yeah we're good Let It Go I love what you've done with the place by the way oh that's very nice we're just about to get up we're we're getting a new studio so we're we're getting close to the end of the time don't make it too impersonal I mean make sure the studio is still intimate just
6:53 feels intimate yeah yeah I agree it's important right yeah yeah otherwise what are you doing you know you're on stage you know and that's not the point of a podcast dude that's a great point because we've been looking at places and I'm like I don't want something that's too corporate or something no it doesn't feel right it ain't right it ain't right yeah feels like more you want and when you're on stage that's you be on stage that's different right yeah here we're chilling yeah yeah we're killing you wanted to feel that way yeah exactly that's a great point I'm glad you I'm really glad you said that because I needed some affirmation there um but in your book in Starry Messengers so this is your new book right and thanks for for checking it out yeah yeah yeah definitely I tried to check out as much as I just as much as like um I had time to kind of uh here's what you do you're here in La you're in L.A okay you get the audiobook and then when you're stuck in traffic you just
7:38 three days of traffic get through the book just fine right that's how they should Market them how many days of 405 traffic you know four days of traffic um but one thing he said about it was individual that the end of their uh you you kind of almost did a little bit of an equation on the individual it's kind of towards the later in the book you talked about it was just like that each person is unique and you kind of went into you went straight there yeah oh my gosh because yeah that's the life and death chapter so there's so just tell me about that I just want people to hear how unique they are oh yeah okay so just the book is at Cosmic perspectives on civilization and it's what the world looks like if you're scientifically literate and you have a
8:24 and and you're thinking about Earth from space and the world looks really different not just the world physically but people's interactions are different you have some strongly held opinion and I say no you don't you think you you think you've deeply thought this through right but you haven't there's this part of it and have you thought about this and have you thought about that I'm not here to hand you an opinion I just want to make sure that whatever opinion you do have is deeply is is rationally formed that you that you've folded all the information together then I walk away and think how the hell you want I don't care yeah I think yeah it definitely helps like adjust maybe the scope of stuff like if you're looking at some from this angle what about look at it from this side or what about it look
9:09 at it from the inside or what about a look at it from the history of its beginning like exactly and a quick one before I get to the the uh how unique we are uh just a quick one you know I don't know if you you buy tuna uh now when you buy tuna it's very clear whether it's line clot tuna oh really mine caught okay that's a big selling point because when it's not wine caught it's net caught you know what happens when they drag a net occasionally they drag a dolphin dolphins are air breathing so if they're caught in the net they suffocate and die oh okay you don't want that so you get line caught tuna and I'm just thinking so for people who just care about that I'm just I wonder what about the tuna just cares about the two do you just not give a rat's ass
9:56 about the tuna wait what what what and it's and and and then they said well dude kills the dolphin unnecessarily or so so then I said well then make dolphin Burgers okay he said you can't have that and I said well why not you go to the deli yeah okay if a deli made Dolphin salad sandwiches they'd be picketing out front wouldn't there okay I'd have a cut of it look at your Theo Von I love it we had owl one time at Thanksgiving oh Thanksgiving oh man okay so uh my point is if you if you go to a deli you and there'd be picketers out front if you're serving Dolphins no watch but what else does the deli serve they sell dead chicken dead turkey
10:44 dead salmon dead pig dead cow with with roast beef dead vegetables I'll get to that in a minute but they sell all kinds of dead animals in a sandwich and this is just another dead animal but somehow we culturally philosophically we we've divided up the all the kingdoms of life and we do carve outs yeah for what we want to protect and what we don't and often that carve out is arbitrary at some level yeah and just be self-aware of that are you high and Noble because you're saving the dolphin but you're eating the tuna right I don't know that you entirely are civil dolphin is a mammal well so are pigs and cows all right last I checked yeah okay they're just I think people they're not as graceful they don't they can't do as
11:30 many well most of them admit that say I will not eat graceful animals right I'll only eat clumsy animals that are ugly so it's a it's an attempt to just make you more honest yeah with yourself about the opinions you carry there's another one let's say you're a vegetarian this is from the chapter meat eaters and vegetarians okay I go there because you know saying that's what I'm saying each chapter is a is a point of conflict in Civilization I'm trying to illuminate places where people could think differently or maybe not have to think that way at all because in fact what they felt would was deeply held argument really just evaporates in the face of a
12:15 cosmic perspective so here's one you're a vegetarian because you just don't want to kill animals okay you you don't want to kill a fine so in your basement you have a Humane mouse trap okay oh yeah I've seen that you've seen those yeah they some of them it's like a little it goes It goes in it gets an art on the walls inside of it it's inside it's like a mouse condominium all right yeah so they go in you got to check them every few days every few days because they'll they'll dry out all right so anyhow so you check it and then you and what do they do with the mouse once they capture it let it free they let it free into the wall all right because they don't want to kill animals all right I get that but do you realize that a mouse in the wild lives between 9 and 18 months because it's highly likely to be swallowed whole
13:01 by a owl or pecked apart by all manner of Woodland Predators okay carnivores and so so what you've done is Doom you've doomed the mouse to be eaten prematurely in its life so the best thing you can do for the mouse is leave it in your basement where it will live sex up to six years of a full fat life in your basement but you're not doing that no because yeah so I guess it makes us feel like some type of noble if we transfer it I'm just saying but you're really putting into a harder life in a harder life correct so if so if you want to say well that's just Nature's Loop and circle well all right so you're saying it's nature Circle to have a owl
13:47 eat it then by the way if you crawled into the domicile of any animal they'll kill you if they could they'll kill them they will kill your ass yeah they don't care bro if you if you lay down into an ant nest they will bite you so so all right but oh no we have the intellect and the power to capture something and remove it from your home and I'm just saying if you cared about the mouse you'd leave it in your basement yeah that's all that's that's my only Point yeah I think well that's a good point a lot of a lot of this book is like that it's kind of I thought it was nice about the book that you can kind of pick it up whenever you can kind of almost start in on any cash yeah because the chapters are independent of each other and but and each one is a is a is a way in a way a chapter on the
14:35 things we all argue about yeah the chapter on on there's a one on politics you know are you left wing right wing what are you arguing about and why and have you really thought it through there's the vegetarians and meat eaters there's there's um a chapter on life and death risk and reward that one there's a gap in the human mind I have no other way to account for this where we do it is not natural to think about statistics and probability oh yeah it's not natural and did you know that that doesn't feel as much fun sometimes that's true it ruins something what you want to be true or what you feel to be true yeah or the mystery it takes away the mystery and but it's a Triumph of human intellect that we even went could
15:21 figure it out in the first place here's what you have you go to you go to Vegas and and there's someone puts money on a seven on a roulette and I'll say why are you sticking with the seven let's say it's due and they're looking at and and the roulette table they have a list of all the previous numbers yeah and they say it hasn't shown up it's due no it's not it's not due every role has the same probability every time every time it's not do all right what is so what is that feeling then that we get what is that I feel I'm telling you I'm telling other things that people rolling Dice and they need a low number like a three or four so the roll the light the dice gently and if they need a high number they'll throw it hard no and so so do you know who exploits this about us casinos
16:07 casinos know we suck at math and probability and statistics so they exist other human beings learn this about human beings and created an entire industry to exploit it damn it's sad My People my people the American physical Society physicist um this is back in the 80s they were going to have their annual meeting in in San Diego and there was a snafu with the hotel reservations Vegas said we'll take you you got four thousand people at the MGM said we'll take you so all the physicists went to Vegas and we know probability and statistics we understand the fact that basically you don't win relative to the casino at the end of the week there was a news headline physicists in town lowest Casino take
16:55 ever [Laughter] so it's just it's sad like almost the saddest chapter that I wrote well why do we feel that so what is that feeling that makes us feel like is it a feeling that we create is it or where does that come from that makes us feel like this is it it's because we don't have the brain wiring to know otherwise I have no other accounting for it we just don't think by the way that branch of math was one of the last to be discovered do you realize probability and statistics was developed and discovered after calculus wow you can pick I think it's because the brain doesn't even know how to go there I have a I have a research paper from the mid 1700s which it feels like a
17:41 long ago but a lot of math had been developed before that including calculus and in that paper it says I've just discovered how helpful it is to take an average of numbers right that's pretty normal that's normal stuff and somebody had to discover this WOW about the world and so so we yeah I guess we don't want because do you think also at that time there was a lot there's also back then there's more sorcery there's more Wizards yeah there's more less than than the Middle Ages and stuff but right there's still a few Milling around yeah a few and and so and so I think people there's a little bit more mysticism then so probability probably is something it probably would be the last thing you think about if
18:26 somebody over here is you know Hester prenance somebody at a dam that that's a perception party what you're saying I think is because we had Sorcerers and wizards and people with mysterious powers and shamans and things they could live in the mystery of the probability and statistics and you think it's a power that they wield and so there's no urge to try to decode it because it's their powers right yeah so I agree with you I think right they hadn't really debunked all those powers and religion was really at the at the on everyone's breath so there was a lot more I think uh mystery and it's not just probably even physiology so for example you go back you know three four hundred years if you fell on the ground
19:12 writhing and frothing at the mouth people would think you were winning something from God no no it's no no no no you J and you're doing this and you're shaking the devil just occupied your Bible boy that's what the devil looks like and feels like so oh my gosh the devil's there let me go to get the priest so you're in a small town how far away is the church it's two blocks away okay so you go down you know you could be choking on the damn muffin okay you know what I'm saying it could be but I'm specifically referring to that condition okay you're frothing at the mouth okay so they get the priest the priest gets the robe the holy water the crucifix they go to on location they bless them put the and then the symptoms go away oh now you're healed by the priest that is the exact and it was a
19:58 seizure and it was a seizure it was an epileptic seizure epileptic seizure matches the time scale of you going to get a priest down the block in a small town yeah okay wow and so boom why think it's anything but the devil this episode is sponsored by betterhelp that's right unfortunately life doesn't come with a user manual you won't find when you can check your pockets check your pants check your crevasses check your check out chat go ahead check feel around feel yourself there's no user manual so when life isn't working for you it's normal that you can feel stuck hell I felt so damn stuck I'd feel like I'm got glue on me I'm glued out
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22:16 t-h-e-o that's better h-e-l-p etherhelp.com Theo we are so so I don't blame people for this it's just the reality of Discovery and and if you question what you see and and find ways to to experiment with it and you'll realize no it is not the devil it is epilepsy that's uncontrolled firing of your the synapses of your brain it's still a you know a tragic Affliction that's not entirely cured we can control it with drugs and things but that's an example of the mystery that existed back then do you believe in the devil I remain unconvinced that such a thing exists dang you challenging him
23:05 by the way Jews don't think of hell just to Jews into heaven but no hell and therefore there's no devil oh wow that's in taking the easy way that's why I hadn't thought about it that way yeah and it's better Real Estate too if you're if you're I feel like if you're advertising it like that like others are Heaven yeah yeah don't worry about the hell right right right right maybe they needed less forces of control over their conduct than the Christians later did I don't know yeah that's one thing about Christianity man is too sometimes it's like too much pressure well yeah and no one could fulfill that no one can live up to possible which is why here's another one in the spirit of your earlier comment here's another one oh you got sick and this person didn't God is punishing you you did something
23:52 against God in the last two weeks yeah you were touching your privates all right whatever I mean we all do stuff oh I do and it's and it's easy to find it and say oh my gosh I must be punished for that and and when that happens then you blame starts getting handed out so here I got another one consider consider that Muslims the it's part of the rituals of being a Muslim is you're cleaning your hands and your feet and you're and your ears and your nose and there's there's an ablution whatever the word is where you there's a cleansing daily wow daily okay good idea my grandmother I think was Muslim then well just think but just think about this back then nobody's
24:38 showering every day nobody people's but some funky times okay all right there's some people don't shower every day today but you could and United States we probably take more showers than anybody else in the world from the research I've done on that but point is if a disease comes through and it comes from contact or or some other thing because you're dirty you get sick and the Muslims don't oh so they seem powerful oh my gosh and you're Christian and they're Muslims you're saying they put us a hex on me these heathens these non-jesus following okay wow this is how this can happen I got another one you ready so now I'm still around the last one you had one you
25:24 ready you got okay here it goes all right so we would later learn that many of the plagues uh-huh uh were from a flea okay like from a um like a little fly oh yeah there's a fleet just regular regular flea that the house flea that you get on yeah yeah and pets okay so now watch so the flea would get infected and would bite you and you'd get the plague okay okay the plagues have killed more people than practically any more than Wars okay wow all right so so wow plague is like a blight on you all right so now Watch What Happens where did the fleas come from we would later learn they came from rats and mice yeah okay that were infected with the plague so if your house had rats or mice
26:10 and mice were common look at old Renaissance paintings there's mice in the corners of the paintings it's really funny just to see this all right so now watch maybe they were good luck huh if you owned a cat you didn't have mice you didn't get to play You're Gonna Get the plague no wait a minute who owned cats well there are many women that own cats so women didn't get the plague and they were there for Sorcerers they were witches witches and some of them are and and you still associate a cat with a witch yeah to this day to this day I mean when you're when you're you know storytelling about items these are the two uh uh so attachments those are them so these are this is what happens when you live
26:55 in a pre-scientific era wow the blame game begins but that's fun as hell some of it well for a movie but I don't want to live in those times yeah so this book is an attempt to unravel this blame game when you see things happening it's not my fault it's your fault but did you really look through your opinions and your thoughts and and and it was neat some of it made me mad ah good good some of them are like [ __ ] out a woman no no it's mad because you knew it you knew it's true and it's against your urges yeah it was like damn Neil I want to believe what I want to believe you know that's what it felt like sometimes but no but I'm not I don't think I'm heavy-handed I think it's their offerings right have you thought about it this way yeah no I don't think it
27:41 came off like I'm trying kind of think no I don't think it came off as like no at all I think it was like I don't it wasn't my intent right if it ever felt that way that was it's just well you're a fat guy you're a factor you're a man you know and uh you know I battle you know like I think I've always kind of battled the dark arts overall so it's like I've never really looked at a ton of the facts you know it's always been this more ethereal sort of but what you feel what what you want to be true rather than what is true and by the way that's uh that that's that's coming a long way in life to realize the world this is the difference between the different kinds of truths I spent a chapter in the truth in Beauty chapter I just talk about I'll just say spend a minute on it now so there's something I
28:26 call personal truths this is something no one's going to take in a free Society no one's going to take it from you if Jesus is your savior and you know true to your bones that's a personal truth in a free society and especially in the United States where it's constitutionally protected your freedom of religion no one should take that from you okay you'd have a legal case if they try all right other personal truths oh well uh Muhammad is my last savior on Earth my last prophet on Earth okay that this would be a Muslim personal truth other truths are Beyonce is your queen right or whatever the things you feel okay personal truths are the foundation of our strongest held opinions and in a pluralistic world society that
29:13 we should cherish that this is why people are different from each other all right you don't want everybody to be the same oh that's called a a dictatorship yeah if everybody aligns with exactly the same yeah they don't want it the problem with your opinion if it's in a personal truth if you try to have someone else agree with you you have to have an act of persuasion so what but in the limit that becomes all-out conflict and War people fight over personal truths kill each other because their personal truths don't agree with your personal truth so personal truths when they go outside of yourself risk Bloodshed right in the history of civilization has demonstrated this all right then there's a political truth which is just something that becomes true just because you heard it often
29:58 enough and that's a weakness we have and not a weakness evolutionarily it made sense if you see something repeat a hundred times that's reality oh yeah okay but you know what happens now we would people have hijacked that urge to recognize that something that repeats must be true they've hijacked it now they just find something that they want to be true and they repeat it to you you hear it enough it must be true yeah there it is yeah this Festival nowadays also we have you know since we have technology and we have this advancement like you know with the internet social media it's so it's easy to get things in front of people so many times yes it's easy to I mean our attention span has been high project it's been hijacked completely that's the word there's no other word but hijacked and in the old
30:45 days we called it brainwashing where you repeat something and then it becomes true that's hijacking this feature of our evolutionary brain that it's trying to create order out of chaos like Stockholm syndrome we almost are slowly developing almost uh some variance it seem like of a Stockholm syndrome or something like we're like all like Elizabeth's smart you know without the or Elizabeth dumb that's who we're becoming you know saying we're all like you know we don't we're just bearing with what we have to deal with all the time exactly and so you try to sift through what is true and it must be that which was repeated often enough that's a political truth then there's an objective truth okay what does objective mean and the methods and tools of science are exquisitely tuned to establish objective truth so these are
31:31 truths that have been demonstrated by observation and experiment and repeated experiment what is the word objective objective means it's true whether or not you believe in it okay so it's no doubt true yeah because I can show that it's true and it's not my bias that thinks it's true here's the data now you see and I don't believe you I think you had a bias I I think your wall current affected this so I'm gonna do it on 240 volts while you did yours on 125 volts okay 20 volts you do a different experiment of your own design you get the same result so that's objective it's a fact when you do it enough times and that all experiments are great this is this is why science uh it wasn't really developed as we now practice it until around 1600 all right I know that feels like a long time ago
32:18 but a lot of the world unfolded before then all right and so once we learn if you say something is true let me test it let me let me find out let me devise an experiment and if I can verify your statement with this experiment and someone else can in a third person we're good here that's an objective truth and what objective truths have going for them is that they're true whether or not you believe in them I don't like them well because the actual nature can't be fooled nature is the ultimate judge jury and executioner yeah if you overeat this week and you gain three pounds next week you can't protest with placards saying I protest the law of gravity because it made me heavier no you don't have that
33:03 option so it seems to me if you're going to base laws on things uh but there's a whole chapter in here on on Law and Order right if you're going to create laws in a pluralistic world you base the laws on the objective truth right because that applies to everyone don't base a law on your personal truth because that's forcing it on me and I have a different personal truth is climate change an objective truth oh yes oh yes so what happens is you believe in climate change it's not a belief it's not about a belief right it's but it's when it's objectively true you don't have to believe it it just is true yeah I believe in it when it's really hot I believe in it it's like a hot day I'm like damn they're right they're right about oh [ __ ]
33:48 I'm serious dude so I'm like we gotta fight this so so here's the thing so so if it was only determined that way then another person that was in a cold snap would say no I don't believe it right and everybody's making up their own theories about it because they're it's their own life experience but an experiment takes the information out of yourself okay it's not your perspective it's not your bias it's not your world view and you get all the data available and then you establish the objective truth so so in climate change and I give an example here in the probability uh in the risk and reward chapter um You probably heard the number 97 scientists say it's happening in three percent it saw that in here in the last
34:33 20 years um there are basically no scientists left denying it so it's basically 100 damn right in one hold out but let's go back to when it was three percent because that's a fun number okay all right let's do an experiment some Engineers there's a bridge that's there you don't know where it came from but it's a bridge but it's brand new and it's about to open and you say I want to drive my truck across the bridge and 97 Engineers come up to you and say but I don't know any of the other Engineers so we're not in cahoots or anything yeah um if you drive a truck that's going to collapse and you're going to die you'll likely die plunging into the Ravine so 97 of them say that three say oh Theo go take your F-150 drive across
35:20 go on you'll be fine what are you gonna do making my way he's feeling it he's feeling just saying man I take the General Lee off that Master that's what I'm saying man but no I hear you so so you would probably listen to the 97 Engineers especially if you're not an engineer yourself yeah I'm thinking if you got to look the engineers in the eyes now no ice got nothing to do with this this that's you trying to be human about this ah don't be human that mess you up let me feel what you're saying no they'll show you the research papers there's no eyeballs in the research paper there's no emoticons in the research paper so then what is that that
36:07 makes me want to look him in the eyes and see what is that oh I'll tell you I tell you it's a good one it's a good one uh we and again I think it's understandable evolutionarily if you look someone in the eye and they tell you something that just happened that is more true to you than a statistical table with charts right bar charts then a pie graph then a pie graph that says the same [ __ ] thing so that and advertisers know that they hijack this okay testimonial but in the watch they could just show a bar chart and say this detergent is better than all the others and here's the data they could show that but no they show some parent and a kid and they put it in the machine they pull it out and look how clean and the eyewitness testimony
36:54 has huge value to our emotions because another human being is communicating it right and so you so so I'll give you another example you could be it's a little more obscure but you you read in like Consumer Reports or whatever that this one car is like a vacuum a vacuum sure is the best one and it's working every time you walk into the vacuum store because you saw the data and someone's walking out saying I will never buy one of these again it's struck oh you can't say a vacuum sucks sorry sorry uh no this vacuum was awful oh It reversed and it made my whole place I would never do this and you you you hear this the person you don't even know them
37:40 but they're not a human and they're speaking with emotions huge effect on me and there's there's fire in their gaze okay you're gonna back out and walk out of that store I ain't getting that you ain't getting ain't getting nothing not gonna happen broom I'd rather use a [ __ ] broom okay so I think it's natural to trust another human right in that context but that's why we have to train ourselves to trust the data and in science when you become a scientist I'm taking statistics and data analysis and probability essentially every year I'm in school it's not just one class and you move on there are different nuances over there different ways you think about it different ways you ask questions you know what science is it's a professional way of querying nature
38:27 so that you can not fool yourself into thinking something is true that is not or that something is not true that is um did I say that right whatever the opposite you might have I don't know I was following it was good no no I'd say that you don't want to be fooled because nature can't be ultimately nature economy right and we have biases where so you don't want do whatever it takes I'm going to give you the scientific method do whatever it takes and I'm going to reword repeat that do whatever it takes to not fool yourself into thinking something is true that is not or that something is not true that is doesn't mean getting a video of it does it mean getting getting someone else to check on you did you have your coffee this
39:13 morning or not is that the measure were you more alert did you miss something right do whatever it takes and when you do that it ain't got nothing to do with the passion in their eyes oh just okay now so let's take this into a something that is the a realm that doesn't have as much probability probably go for it so let's take it into the realm of love right love it or affection things like that so whenever you met are you married yes I married 34 years oh wow oh yeah congratulations thank you man wow that is a damn record almost you should win a Nobel Prize for that I met her in relativity class she doesn't really agree in mathematical physics dang yeah in graduate school so that was fun yeah better in relativity that's wild um so all right so you're talking about
40:00 love okay love so do you I mean are you do you take these same Concepts into like whenever you were falling in love and stuff like that or was it more like a normal okay so starring class so so the answer is yes I do why I don't often talk about this you want to hear you want to hear it yeah well I'm just curious because I don't have a wife or anything yet but it's mathematical okay then this could be helpful to you okay okay it could be helpful okay all right at this point I'll take on any it's a little bit of mathematical okay how much mass have you had in school I took a couple of them you took a couple I took at least yeah a couple of weeks I was good I did all right you did all right you did all right okay one of them at high altitude I took one class out in Arizona at pretty high altitude you know what they say that if you learn something under certain psychomotor uh
40:47 uh conditions that you recover it better under those same conditions oh wow like if you get high and you learn something if you get high again later you'll learn you'll remember that better because you match the mental States oh dang it yeah I've read that I haven't read it lately but a few decades ago I think I wrote that okay so I'm glad it made it okay so here it is all right here it is all right um you gotta follow me with some math here okay okay it's not complicated by the way I I don't know any dumb professional comedians you all are smart people you're perceptive you know what's going on you have to know deeper what's going on to come at it from the other side and show why it's hilarious okay that takes Insight you guys are the keepers of the Soul
41:33 of the social and cultural mores of civilization yeah I think a lot of us try to be Jesus I don't know what I'm doing but I think a lot of us try to do our best yeah you're holding up Windows not Windows mirrors to what we think say and do and so it's a fundamental part I think of modern existence because without it my gosh how how how unpleasant the world would be it would have these perspectives that's my I'm not just blowing smoke I'm just saying and you especially have a certain authentic honesty that is palpable and it's like whatever you say I'm with you on I feel you this is what he was saying do you feel what the person if I can't feel what you're saying go home right right what are you doing you just just type it up and send you know text it to
42:18 me I if I if I'm not looking and you're in the eyes you know so okay yeah well it's helping me because it's like you know I think I have a I'm not like a naysayer of science I love you know I'm grateful for science because I exist and I'm grateful that the world exists and that we're able to have all types of different experiences of like caring about each other and getting to travel and see different things and then my eyes work like I'm super grateful for science I think sometimes I get a fur like I have a fear sometimes of like if anything's out of like the vid like out of like right here everything else can seem a little bit questionable you know so I think it's just uh you know it says probably the questionable part is because you you create your own world view yeah and you're and you everything makes sense to you in your world view
43:05 and something's trying to poke it from the outside you're understandably skeptical of it yeah yeah I'm probably skeptical I'm rejecting it because no I got my thing my my situation it works for me yeah and I like to just I like to daydream and stuff you know so science sometimes they want to really hey bro you know we need you to pull these Daydreams over here and uh we gotta tag them you know we just we need to get the weight in the uh and the density of these Daydreams so we can have them on file so I respect it um and I'm really really grateful that you're here um but yeah so tell me about that when you went into so here it is and this is a little geeky yeah it was a geeky thing so all right um you can have a line and you can measure
43:51 the length of the line okay right whatever okay uh that's the only thing you can measure about it there's no area there's no volume it's just a length all right now I can add another line at like right angles to it and when I do that I can actually Trace out a square okay so now A square has more than just a length it has area okay this area inside the square and that area is defined by both both axes you need both to get an area okay all right let's add a third axis oh now X Y now Z now you don't have a y you don't have a square what do you have you have a cube now my mushrooms I think you have a cube that's full each of these right
44:38 so now it's a dimension okay right so now watch now I can take that to higher Dimensions but I won't I would stick to three okay we can go to four in five dimension let's stick to three so now you ask yourself what do you care about in a relationship okay it wants a person to look hot nothing wrong with that make a note of that okay um you want the person to be good and bad okay that it's not just fine be honest with yourself that's another by the way you can be hot and not good in bed oh yeah or vice versa okay so so these are separate coordinates okay okay so all right now watch let's get a third one uh you want the person to be kind let's say kind you want an
45:25 evil evil person no okay no so each of these is completely separate from the other you can be beautiful and and evil you can be ugly and kind but you can be but you care about those three right so now rate this person from zero to ten in those three categories just go ahead and do that so you say um a person's really kind and they're great in bed only give them a five okay in looks the green bed and they're kind all right here's what you do you know how you get the volume of a cube you multiply X by y by Z okay the area of a square is is x times y the area of a the volume of a cube is you multiply all three I'm telling you to take those three numbers multiply them together
46:10 you will get the volume of your love the volume of what you care about okay so now watch now here's my point what you need to do is because presumably you're if you're in the field the different people out there get each person's volume and go after the person that has the largest volume because they might be higher in one than the other but if you really care about them it's the total the totality of that package that matters especially in a relationship those features don't always stay the same they could vary yeah sometimes they grow better looking as they get older or they
46:56 might you might get more attracted to them or less attractive or less attractive so there's very much different skills often some of them get less you know yeah it's a mix it's a mix so let's say they get a little less attractive but the other bits were strong so you have a volume a strength of a larger volume to work against okay if things start uh shifting okay in this okay I'm telling you you can take that to higher Dimensions so it really bad what are they hot are they have a maybe a good sense of humor something you might think oh yeah for sure okay um are they curious do they want to keep learning okay that's important do you have of course why wouldn't it be all right because I want them to keep learning about me because or no that's just no that's
47:42 selfish if they're if they're curious you're part of what they want to keep okay that's fair no no dude no you're right okay so I sir so I went around with a five-dimensional uh so in math we call it five-dimensional Vector space so that's what I did okay so what I'm saying is there could be someone who's the hottest person you've ever seen and and and you could be distracted by that and so I'm marrying that person and then they're not so hot 10 years from now or they get a little chubby whatever you're valuing or not evaluating and then all of a sudden everything you marry the person for isn't there anymore and then you divorce seven years later so you gotta look at that volume got to look at the volume and by the way be
48:29 crass if you want to be crashed do you want to marry someone who's wealthy put that in there too put it in there okay don't be ashamed of that because right because any one of these can change people say oh I want just that's shallow you need the personality people's personalities can change why are we sometimes ashamed to look at the criteria we honestly want to look at I I got my I got through that I matured out of that because because Society wants you to not want that and if someone is honest I'd like your wealth I enjoy it and by the wealth can go away too in the same way you're looking all the all the things can but if it matters too then it's one of the coordinates in this volume by the way if any of those go to zero because the volume is a product you're
49:16 multiplying these numbers if anything goes to zero the volume goes to zero oh really yes oh because you do you're not adding them you're multiplying them wow so so try to make sure that the likelihood of it going to zero is or if it does go to zero if you don't matter then it shouldn't have been in the right it has to be things that nothing could go to zero so then but and if you do that then you're probably going to be picking things that have some real value to you that correct overall value correct objective or just be honest I just want money and if you if you run out of money I'll divorce you right and but the person could be fun and happy the whole other time oh yeah they're buying sandwiches for everybody y'all are having a good time or whatever you know that's people are their own individuals so what happened what happened when you
50:04 got delayed you you invite her out where'd you take or where do you oh well we you know we were graduate students at the time you know very poor you know so a big meal is like a 12 oh yeah good dish and uh so um oh oh I have to say this if if I'm airing all the thing so I took her for granted initially oh and and we broke up initially and then I and then like six months I said what the hell did I just do oh my gosh I went back to that volume and I said all these other people are not feeling that volume the way she did and I was really sad did you go back to her and tell her I was I could because I broke up I can't but you can't do that she knocked on my door
50:50 she came back to me and what'd she say and I don't remember because I was distracted by the fact that oh my gosh I have a second chance here wow and so on that second chance that's when we moved in together and got married three years later and he didn't mess it up the second time no no no and and the strength of a marriage is is how how big is that volume because yes they will vary and people will get crabby and people you know you there are things that will test it of course with something that you and your wife like to do together is there anything like that do you feel like helps keep a marriage together over time is there any you do things together yeah you just and do new things together so that you have a new memory to add to the portfolio if you always do the same old things it can get you know you see the person every day of your life right and so so just make sure
51:37 it grows have you take do you guys take like classes or is there stuff like uh do you just take walks like what are some fun stuff yeah we do take walks in fact I should take walks with my ex-girlfriend I liked it yeah walks are simple they're low budget let's go another Block it's an incidental fact about it not the not the instrumental fact okay hey baby I love you because every step is cheap no that's not that's not gonna fly is that why you're not married yet it could be probably I gotta start investing more here's the thing we all are fairy tales you see the courtship which is so
52:23 romantic and beautiful and and how do those fairy tales end what's the final word um final phrase the end no before that oh um happily ever after they live happily ever after wait a minute why don't you show me some of that oh yeah that's true give me some hints how do you pull that one off yeah like Rapunzel they don't show you that she's selling her hair in China you know what I'm saying they don't show you it'll show you the odds leave that one out so we we're trained in the courtship and then we'll say this snow white as an opioid they don't show you some of the truth a dealing with actual life problems and challenges yeah or that uh Goldilocks is
53:09 in the bestiality they don't show you some of the troops out there Neil damn you're right bro that's what I'm saying they just gave us the Goldilocks are sleeping with the with the Bears you know it's whatever I know they don't tell you that she has a crush on uh Gail Sayers you know they don't tell you she's out there been running around with Jim McMahon they don't tell you all of that right so we we have no no literary life experience even thinking about what happens Beyond they lived happily ever after so you have to sort of discover that on your own is that band is it do you feel like is it hard for you to let is it this is it just your was it just the brain you were given that made you
53:55 more scientific um or was it like uh do you feel like it was a nature or nurture like that you develop that as um because as it was a skill that you needed to help process your own like life and childhood that's an important and perceptive question and I have to unpack that because you put a lot in that one because we talk about that kind of stuff a lot on this show excellent I'll go there let me go there right now so I everyone wants the secret to things what's the secret to intelligence the secret to this that implies it's only one thing and not something more complex and so I remember when I was a kid this is a slight off ramp but I hope it's worth it when I was a kiss it was in seventh grade I did a book report on Ponce de Leon and he's the guy the
54:41 Spanish explorer who went into South America searching for the Fountain of Youth okay you drink from it and you have eternal life and I remember reading that and I say that idiot why would he even think that exists he's going to commit an entire Voyage to to believe that there's just some Elixir coming out of the ground and he lives forever really a full-grown human being believe this I was thinking to him I was already I was a geeky kid okay yeah I'm I'm 12 I think at this point but I did the book report on him and then I noticed as I got older this is something deep within us nobody actually wants to do the hard work to improve their health to live longer healthier lives they want the
55:29 instant fix yeah and realizing that Ponce de Leon was looking for the Fountain of Youth allowed me to see what people were doing I'm old enough to remember yogurt eat yogurt that you live forever Dannon had a commercial with centogenarians eating yogurt oh yeah okay I'm her mom would eat the yogurt I'd be like damn mom's gonna be around but that's what I'm saying so you we're we're we we want there to be quick fixes for things and quick answers and quick Solutions what's the latest kale kale eat did you eat your kale today no if not you would die you're gonna die a miserable death okay you'll be dead by noon yeah there's definitely and kale is so hard to eat you know it feels like it does not want you eating it if you had
56:16 bacon too yeah look I ain't saying nothing but it is what it is baby they knew that with collard greens they put in the ham hockey you wanna eat leaves put some dead animals dude you could put bacon under a damn corpse and I'll [ __ ] have a little actually actually you know what um cannibals called humans long Pig really yeah because of all the animals that you would eat the humans and pigs come closest but it tastes like bacon you have to cure it and do the things whatever but anyhow uh I have some cured human a little yeah I'm just saying would you have any uh if I were starving I mean I have you know I have yeah I see you dog
57:05 no no I'm starving hey bruh no wait wait if I'm in a mountain and the help is not coming and people died in the plane wreck otherwise we will starve to death I'm eating me some dead humans that is not that isn't I'm not thinking what are you eating first what part you think uh not muscle tissue I would say you know the bicep maybe or or I would I would take my cue from from just what you'd get in the store ribs are some good eating I love ribs yeah yeah so no I wouldn't hesitate it's not about morals it's about survival yeah so so but by the way if there's a pig over there I'm eating a pig I'm not eating the dead human yeah that would be weird if you're like I'm gonna have Randy instead of Pumbaa I'm eating Pumbaa okay Puma ain't surviving the day okay
57:52 so that'd be crazy there's one dude at the plane crash and he just wants to keep eating the people like but do we have and pigs and cows and turkeys and chickens what are you doing he crashes on a farm right yeah he crashes into 7-Eleven and he's still over there cutting up an old lady we got some creeps out there man so now I'm completely distracted what the hell was I talking about Zach um um I I don't we kind of went out you were talking about you know I don't know you started about bacon it's been a long road I don't know I know it has uh just no we were talking about love love no we got off we okay we evolved evolved uh oh
58:38 oh I remember how do I how did I become me okay okay oh yeah so did this yeah did you do you think you developed a sense for science out of nature or nurture so watch so I'm walking through life watching people want to believe that simple things will fix everything those are the YouTube uh ads that get your attention you've been doing too many sit-ups just do this and you'll have ripped ABS just eat this drink this and it'll be and you don't have to do any of that work and I thought to myself there must be something deep within us that just wants to be lazy about what our accomplishment our accomplishments okay yeah but that's a kind of an off
59:25 ramp just to say I'm not I don't care about nature or nurture what I care about is that whatever you are you know you can improve it you know this in practically everything we do you get better at it from trying from practicing in practically everything we do so I'm not going to say nature nurture people say oh well Michael Phelps he's got really flexible big feet that flap in the for swimming and he can fly me he's got webbed fingers I don't know he's a long head okay I don't know but they'll say whatever they will about his body but wait a minute uh he's in the water 30 hours a
1:00:11 week yeah did you factor that in is that where's that in your equation right for him succeeding how about that okay so generally you part the curtains someone's working really hard at what might look easy to them that they have accomplished right so I and I don't think that about you I feel like you've obviously put in the um what is it the hours that it takes to have your credibility so let me get back to your point so when you were a kid wondering it's very simple it's very simple all kids are curious about everything they overturn rocks and you know poke things and generally create chaos at home and most of what parents do is they spend the first years of the kids life teaching them to walk and talk and then the rest of their life
1:00:58 tell them to shut up and sit down because they're wherever they go they make a mess but that mess the parents think they're making a mess but no they're not these are the results of experiments they've been doing to discover the operations of nature if you happen to leave an egg up on the counter and a little toddler and because you're making breakfast and the toddler is reaching up you say No don't touch that and I'm saying no let him grab it let him what did the egg cost you last I checked 40 cents at most watch you know the egg is going to end up breaking but so what once the kid starts playing with the egg yeah and then they do something with it and then it breaks that's interesting something can be hard yet fragile hmm how many things in life
1:01:46 are that most of Life eggs are hard and no most things are solid this is hard and not fragile but a lot of experiences in the world and stuff I mean well no that should be thinking emotional and I'm talking about physical objects at this point the egg is hard but fragile okay and so that's they'll learn about that very fascinating and it's brittle it doesn't bend it breaks yeah okay so these are structural properties of organic substances all right and then what's inside there's this transparent goopy stuff and there's a yellow thing what is that and then you tell them that might have been a chicken oh my gosh blow their mind blow their minds and by the way you see that colorless stuff if I heat it it turns White
1:02:33 you can watch it change color in front of your eyes there's this seven science experiments to do with the kid reaching for the egg that you didn't want them to touch and you just squashed that because you don't want to use the 40 cents yeah because you want to have a damn quiche for yourself okay the president of Harvard once said when people complained why are you charging so much for edu he said if you think the cost of education is high you should try the cost of ignorance that's even higher yeah okay so all I'm saying is that curiosity is beaten out of us by the time we're in Middle School if you retain that Curiosity that rampant curiosity you're a scientist a scientist is a kid who grew up physically but not emotionally not mentally
1:03:19 if I see some hey what is that let me poke that let me see what's behind it and it doesn't have to be a physical object it could be like fictional objects I watched the Thor movie and I'm saying gee I want to know how I wonder how how much does that hammer weigh I'm still curious okay wasn't hammerway and I heard a sentence in the movie that enabled me to calculate how much is Hammer weighed wow they say uh hammer forged in the heart of a Dying star oh my gosh I'm an astrophysicist we deal in dying Stars I got this hide some dense stuff going on in a dying star I filled out the density and I tweeted it and I said if Thor's hammer is made of in the way the movie says it has the weight of a herd of 300 million elephants ah
1:04:08 that's why nobody could pick it up the Hulk couldn't pick it up you need the magical powers of of Thor to do it so now I saw Lou Ferrigno at the post office one time luffino both the original TV yeah the original one yeah and his wife was making him move boxes around he was all pissed and I'm like you're the freaking hole man move a couple of blocks you know he's got to be green to do that yeah dude get with the program he was without his paint but watch what happened okay because I'm in the geekiverse yeah I'm thinking yes I tweeted that out that was like total nerd alert and then I got out nerded no oh somebody said uh Dr Tyson is wrong about this calculation okay so yeah I got totally smoked on this one so what
1:04:53 happened was in 1991 Marvel issued a Thor's hammer trading card where they said Thor's hammer is made of a fictional material uru and it weighs precisely 42.3 pounds ah so they kind of cheated well yeah yeah but but uh I I'm getting to your earlier point I wanted my answer to be true right I think it's a way better answer than 42.3 pounds but it's wrong it's in the cannon in the marble Cannon it's just simply wrong and you got to know when to hold them when to uh when to fold him and went to what's the third one and when to walk uh when to walk away we're in a run I think yeah and that's I think usually out around
1:05:39 alimony yeah yeah hold them fold them run so so that's an example of still being curious into a dollar and all scientists are like that so so no it's not nurture nature it's did you protect your curiosity in childhood if not you'll ossify I love that word you'll Harden in your own beliefs you won't even seek out things that might conflict with what you think is true and because you're comfortable where you are right you know what it is and we want to be where we are we want to be it's right here it is well yeah you get you want to yeah you get from a place of like I'm right and it's funny because I don't really like being in that place even there's part of me that does like it because it feels like I'm winning
1:06:25 but there's another part of me that knows it's not helpful to me as a evolving human which wins sometimes one when sometimes the other I think sometimes someone One Way some of the other but I'm grateful that that I have that I have awareness of both and I do find my own way that's half the effort by the way if you know that this is going on you're there and
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