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They say there's an eclipse. There's a black hole. There's whatever.
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WE NEED WHICH IS THIS ONE?
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HEY, WHAT'S GOING ON EVERYBODY?
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For First We Feast, I'm Sean Evans and you're watching Hot Ones.
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It's the show with hot questions and even hotter wings.
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And today I'm joined by a personal astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
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He's the director of the Hayden Planetarium.
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You know him from his work on Cosmos, StarTalk, and his many books.
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And speaking of, you can pick up his latest Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, available in May.
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Neil, welcome to the show. Thanks. And thanks for the plug.
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I thought you know I had to earn it and then you plugged the book.
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But now if you plug it in advance, I could like leave now. That's true. That's true.
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Nobody's ever hacked our show like that, but that's true. We are completely stuck.
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There you got a loophole there. Woah.
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How are you with hot food? I can hang.
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We'll see if you can hang. hang.
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Maybe maybe not with you, but I I can hang.
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We'll work our way up to Mega Death Sauce.
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So you ready to get it going? Mega Death. Mega Death.
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That means millions of deaths.
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If these get hotter and hotter and hotter, I will probably not be eating all of what's hotter and hotter.
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So I'm going to eat the whole first one. How about that? That's a great idea.
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That's a great strategy, Neil. Mhm.
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So in your book Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, you talk about how the shipping industry could save billions of dollars if they shipped in spheres rather than boxes.
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Because I read the book on Saturday, so it's uh still fresh in my mind.
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And it has me thinking about all the other ways that we leave time and money and energy on the table by being locked in these conventions.
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Are there some other things that drive you nuts in everyday life because you know as a society we can just do them easier, better, smarter. Yeah.
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I mean, there's a lot of scientific engineering solutions to problems where if you're not scientifically or engineeringly literate, you don't even know that that would simplify it.
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Can you give me an example? Well, okay. Let's be blunt. Okay. Okay?
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If you say, "Why are we spending money up there and not down here where we have the problems?"
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When the asteroid comes, you're going to wish we had spent money up there to know how to deflect the asteroid. And so, we see this. I know the asteroids. I see where they are.
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I know how many they are.
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No, we got to solve these problems here on Earth.
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Now, some of these problems will protect a generation not yet born.
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Are you only thinking about yourself or the future of Earth as well?
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In terms of scientific accuracy, what's the best science fiction movie of all time?
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Uh I'd have to say The Martian. Of all time?
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Even though that just came out, you know, year ago. Few years ago. The Martian.
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I think before The Martian, no one imagined you can invest that much science in storytelling and have it be a a first-run movie.
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I They say, "We need another lawyer or cop drama."
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They They're so comfortable reaching for tropes that they know have worked before and they were certain reaching for science would not do that for them.
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So, somebody had to break the mold.
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The mold has been busted open from the botany to the chemistry to the engineering to the physics to the astrophysics. It's all there.
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Is there an animated series or a cartoon that kind of impresses you?
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Is there something out there that get it right more often than not? Oh, animated?
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There's a lot of math in The Simpsons.
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I think it's not so much that you'd want a cartoon that's always reaching for science cuz that's not necessary.
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But, what you would want is when they do go to science, They get it right. it right.
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And for having gotten it right, they get to tell a richer story.
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So, I'm a fan of what Mark Twain says, "First get your facts straight, then distort them at YOUR LEISURE." NOT TOO BAD.
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SO, IN ADDITION TO BEING A connoisseur of the cosmos, I know that you're also an aficionado of fine wines.
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Is that because you were obsessed with the science of fermentation or you just wanted to drink?
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I mean, I think if you like fine food, you also will discover that you'll like wine that goes with it.
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Think about it, we have five traditional senses, you know, sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell.
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Each one of these senses garners an entire fraction of society's investment in bringing pleasure to those senses. Think about it.
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So, your sense of hearing, I want music and you'll invest money in this, you'll go to concerts, there's great works of art, there is beautiful architecture.
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Look at how much we invest in things that look beautiful.
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It is odd, when you think about it, that you can go home and eat a bowl of rice, some beans with it, and get most of you and maybe a salad and that's your nutrition and that would cost you a dollar in raw ingredients.
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Or you can go to a restaurant and spend hundreds of dollars on food and wine.
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The fact that people do that at all means you can raise the sense of culinary satisfaction to extremely high levels. And people do.
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So, I like a a good bottle of wine where I'm distracted by how good it is so that I lose sleep at night wondering how the winemaker accomplished that feat.
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I can't wait till Megadeth. You can wait. Mhm.
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So, these days, I'm sure you spend more time than you'd like debunking conspiracy theories.
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So, what I'm hoping I can do is that you can give me kind of an idiot's guide for how to deal with these various issues so that if I'm ever at a bar and some flat-earther comes up to me, I can quickly expose them and get back to my drink. Does that sound good?
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Okay, so what I don't do What do you not do? feel this way. Mhm.
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And I've done it once, maybe twice.
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But what I don't do is debunk uh crazy ideas.
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I've spent my whole life doing that. I'm an educator.
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My task is not to debunk the crazy ideas of adults, but establish an educational system that is incapable of producing an adult that thinks that way in the first place.
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Well, let me ask you this.
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You know, you've been at it for a long time.
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Over the last 10 years or so, have you seen an increase in the number of people who maybe think these things?
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I think that number of people may be the same over time.
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They just now can write a blog that the whole world has access to via a search engine, right?
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You'd be alone with your own view that has no correspondence to objective reality, and you type it into a Google search, and it'll find every other person like you who thinks the same way, giving you the false sense that you're actually onto something, that you have some deep insight into the world that no one else has. This is delusional.
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The internet landed in our laps without creating a curriculum that empowers you to know when someone online is full of [ __ ] That has a little bit It's like a pineapple. Mhm. Kind of sweetness in it. What?
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Is a pineapple blend in there, Neil? Really?
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Some people don't pick that up, yeah. I said I eat pine food.
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I told you I Didn't I Didn't I tell this man?
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All right, so the next part of the show is a recurring segment called Explain That Gram, and what we do is we do a deep dive on our guest's Instagram, pull interesting pictures that need more context.
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You're a little inactive, so for you, we pulled up some oldies but goodies.
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Wait, wait, actually, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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So, so I'm totally with you on Twitter.
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I'm I'm going to try to to bust into the Instagram world. This is exciting.
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I'm a little slow, but let your audience will be the first to know that I plan to be there.
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But it's not going to be like anything else.
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I care a lot about art and and so I have a set of I'm just going to put pretty photos on my Instagram.
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I think that sounds nice, Neil, but I also would say don't paint yourself into a corner already, Neil.
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You haven't even gotten your Instagram account off the off the runway. it off the runway. First one. Oh, hey. You and Buzz Aldrin. Yeah, me and Buzz.
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Me and Buzz were chilling.
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People say he wasn't the first to walk on the moon.
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They landed on the moon in the same vessel at the same moment.
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So I'm not who's first or who's second.
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I And it was 10,000 scientists and engineers that got them there and 100 billion dollars in taxpayer money.
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We all landed on the moon together. That is our footprint. Okay? That's how I look at it.
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But Buzz, he's he's been at it ever since.
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Neil Armstrong went and became professor of aerospace engineering and Buzz kept trying to get us back into space.
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We're boldly going where hundreds have gone before.
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And so it's time to go someplace new.
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So he's wearing a shirt that just says get your ass to Mars.
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And I couldn't help but not take a picture pointing to the word ass.
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I got two more for you, Neil.
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Man, you did some homework back here. Next we have Oh, okay.
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So this photo is my very first In-N-Out burger.
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Did it live up to the hype?
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It was nothing wrong with it, but I was I wanted to be transported.
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You had your bar I wanted to be transported and I was not transported.
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Now here's the difference I think, okay?
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In-N-Out is a fast food joint that makes a really good burger. Mhm.
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Whereas Shake Shack is a gourmet chef making a fast food burger. Okay?
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It's not That's where that's This is for me what that difference is. Oh. Classic selfie. Oh. Oh. Okay. Iconic.
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So here's the backstory behind that.
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We were on a receiving line for the president.
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We made sure we were at the end of the line.
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We We navigated this cuz we knew he didn't want to take a selfie.
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You don't do that with a president anyway.
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Say, "Come over here, let me grab you." AND LIKE, "HEY!"
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GIVE HIM a noogie on the you know, that's not how you're supposed to treat the president. Right.
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So, I was the last in line and I said, "Mr.
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President, you know, we'd like to just take a selfie with me and Bill.
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You know, maybe it'll break the internet. Why not?"
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And then he he he was a good trooper.
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I was fully planning to take the selfie myself. And then I did it. No space. It was like No. IN THAT MOMENT. OW! OW!
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And then Bill Nye whipped it out and he saved the day.
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Even though we're both positioned like it could have been either of our selfies, it was Bill Nye's camera taking that selfie.
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This I'm saving after we get to 10. Mhm.
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Then maybe I'll say, "Why wasn't there an 11?" Did I go there? Did I just say that? Woah.
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Did Speaking Let me see if I can hit you with this one because it's an endless topic of fascination for our viewers and our commenters is how you stop the pain of spicy wings.
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You know, there are people like, "Why do you have water out on the table?"
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Like, "Oh, blah blah blah. You need this. You need that."
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Did anything go through your head before you came here to like prepare for it or something? about it.
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Um but not not because I had done experiments but just I was trying to wonder um what would happen if I had a Ricola before I came in.
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That's what a coat your throat if you have a sensitive throat.
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I'm a fan of uh if you're in an Indian restaurant having a good lassi, mango lassi. That works every time. Plus, I love mango. All right. I love zombies. Zombies are good.
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But zombies prefer your brains. Mhm. Rather than hot sauce.
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So, I'd say that went up quite a few notches from D6. Yeah.
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So, when we have artists in here, usually we like to have them decode some of their lyrics.
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But now that you're here, I think it would be great if I could give you some of the most infamous science-inspired rap lyrics of all time.
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And I just wonder how they'll hit your ear as an astrophysicist.
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You know, maybe you'll be very impressed by them.
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you actually have a crack team of researchers who dug up these lines? Yeah, me and Chris.
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Me and Chris this morning really uh getting dirty. Okay. All right.
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This first one is from Kanye West.
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It's off Getting It In by Jadakiss. I ain't famous. My apologies.
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Are you into astrology cuz um I'm trying to make it to Uranus. Okay.
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Uranus is Uranus until you're like 8 years old.
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Then there on it's Uranus.
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So, that's an abomination.
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But you give it to them until you're like graduate third grade.
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And you know, and you get out of your your anal fixations your scatological referencing.
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Um So, I I would say that was not an example of an artist who is first getting their facts straight and then distorting them at their leisure. All right.
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This one's from OJ the Juiceman.
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It's off of I'm getting money.
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Cuz I got no bang going for a good number.
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Moving in the Grand Prix. Same color is thunder. Mhm. I like that.
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I like that cuz of course thunder is sound, it's not light.
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Uh but thunder is so striking that you not only hear it, you feel it if you're close enough to it. It rumbles your chest.
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So, I have no problems with anybody saying that the thunder was experienced through more than one of their senses.
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This is from Immortal Technique.
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The song is called Dominant Species.
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I'm the technique and you're nobody. So, what you try to say?
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Stellar density becomes your physical alignment. 1.
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8 billion tons per square inch confinement. Ooh. Woah. Let me think. 1. 8 billion tons.
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That is the density of a white dwarf star, approximately.
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The density of what the sun will be on death.
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And I think he's reaching in pulling out He's reaching in the in the canon of astrophysics pulling out some words and some numbers and he's just thrown them down on his on his rhyme sheet.
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And I give him credit for reaching in and pulling out some references.
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But, I don't think he understands the full context for them, which then subtracts from how deep his song actually is versus how deep he thinks it is.
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So, this next one is from GZA. It's off Big Bang.
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Oh, this is going to be That's You like GZA?
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I've had him on my radio show, StarTalk.
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I'm betting I will have very little to say about it. All right.
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Other than compliments, but go on.
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The universe in size is hard to fathom when composing the reach as small as a single atom.
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1 billion the size of the point of a pen microscopic on a macro level with that. We good?
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How can you do How can you be hotter than zombie apocalypse? The bomb is hotter. The bomb is hotter. The bomb. Oh, this is Fat Boy. Oh my gosh.
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Okay, so that is the proportions of one of the two bombs dropped in the Second World War. And it says radioactive. That's correct.
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Except, that's not the scariest part of the bomb.
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It's that it will blow you to smithereens. It will vaporize you.
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So, it should be caution will vaporize you.
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Not just that it's radioactive, which unless it's the old radioactive sign.
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Really makes you want to eat it, you know?
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All right, let's do this.
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I took two bites, [ __ ] Did I JUST SAY THAT?
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HE'S MAKING ME DO He's making me do this. That's pretty hot. That's hot.
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So, you were named the sexiest astrophysicist by People magazine, but people might not know That was 40 lbs ago, first of all.
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I think it still holds up.
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I think it still holds up. ago, 17 years ago. I'm just saying.
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But, people might not know that your roots as the scientific sex symbol are actually even a little bit deeper than that.
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Is it true that you attempted to moonlight as a male exotic dancer when you were a graduate student at the University of Texas?
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Yeah, yeah, and that was briefly.
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I wasn't a performing member of a dance company, and so one of my fellow dancers, male dancer, said, "Why don't you come down to the club?" And I said, "Why? What do you mean?"
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"Well, we dance there, and you get tips and things."
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I said, "All right, I'll I'll observe it."
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So, I go there, the guys came out in jockstraps only, but they were asbestos lined, and lighter fluid had been poured onto them, and they were ignited, and they came out dancing to Jerry Lee Lewis's Great Balls of Fire.
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And in that moment, I I'm disappointed that not until that moment did it occur to me, maybe I should tutor math instead.
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Am I This ice used to come up to here.
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I don't I'm breathing on the ice.
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It is melting the ice itself. I got this. Okay, so what's next? What's this one called? Dog 357. Oh, it's a . 357 Magnum, I guess. All right, here we go.
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So, you have such an influential bullhorn this one. You like Mad Dog 357? I like it. I think why? Because it's heat. It's picante. Mhm.
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It is very uniformly spread in all sensory points in my mouth.
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So, my entire mouth is participating in this.
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And I respect it for that.
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This one is creating a glow. A full bouquet.
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A full bouquet of hotness.
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So, you have such an influential bullhorn and as one of the most famous public intellectuals, I'm sure that you figured out the hard way that sometimes facts can be kind of a PR nightmare and sometimes you can cause a little bit of a kerfuffle with some of your comments.
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How about when you downgraded Pluto?
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Downgraded Pluto had it coming.
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Just don't get me started now.
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Did the fallout surprise you?
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Cuz there was a big fallout.
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It did because we didn't in fact downgrade Pluto.
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All we did was say Pluto looks more like these objects than those objects.
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So, in our exhibitory, and we were the first out of the box to do this 17 years ago when we opened the new Rose Center for Earth and Space here in New York.
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The The we took Pluto, we grouped it with other icy bodies that had been discovered in the outer solar system.
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Pluto and they look more alike than either one of them looks like any of the other planets.
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The New York Times caught wind of this.
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Page one story, below the fold, but page one story. Pluto not a planet? Only in New York.
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That's when the hate mail started coming from third graders. Dear Dr.
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Tyson, why did you take away my favorite my favorite planet? That's where it started.
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And they, who were in third grade in the year 2000, have now graduated college.
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I think Did I do math right? Yeah.
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Third grade eight They're They're adults now.
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And they're still pissed off.
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So Well, I have one bone to pick with you.
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It's the Manhattan Henge because you popularized the Manhattan Henge and now every time the Manhattan Henge is a thing, there's a bunch of amateur photographers on 34th Street just out there with their phones.
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Completely blocking traffic.
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Completely blocking traffic.
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I as a kid when I was 15, I did research at Stonehenge in England with the guy who decoded it and discovered that it was an astronomical observatory, not some temple where the Druids sacrificed virgins, whatever.
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So I said, "Well, the least I could do for the city is just find the day of the year where it lines up with the street grid."
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Cuz as we know, all of Manhattan is an a rectilinear grid but rotated from true north about 30°.
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So I rotated this way about from true north.
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So I said, "Let me just calculate that, take a picture of it and publish it." And that's what I did.
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So the So my first picture of this was published in January 2002, a special issue of Natural History magazine.
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And there it is rising exactly on the Manhattan grid and it's Manhattan Henge.
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The buildings are the Henges and there's the sun lined with it.
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And I And And it started out real slow and now there are thousands of people blocking traffic.
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And I ask you, if you had to have traffic blocked, isn't it best to be blocked by the cosmos itself rather than by Con Ed digging a hole?
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That's my question to you.
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Whereas you get your traffic blocked uncountable numbers of times by uncountable numbers of other causes and effects.
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Let the universe has its own two damn days in the sun. I'm shaking it up.
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You're probably wondering why. I'm wondering why. All right.
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Well, it's tradition around here to dab the last wing with a little extra.
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You don't have to if you don't want to, Neil deGrasse Tyson, but I would say this, you're holding up pretty well.
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Just a little Just a little something for the people.
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You don't have to if you don't want to.
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Blair's mega, like I said, they need to up that to giga and tera. Lots more deaths, yeah.
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Each is a factor of a thousand greater.
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Mega Death Sauce with I can't even pronounce this, lig- Oh, oh, sorry, Liquid Rage. I was going to say.
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I was like, I got that one for you. Liquid Rage. So, here we are. Mhm.
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Careful, Neil, little This is some slow-moving sauce.
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Yeah, but once sometimes it kind of tidal waves you. you. I got you. You ready? Let's do this together. You ready? Ready. Cheers, both. Cheers, Neil. Wing bump. Wing bump.
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The liquid now has act- cuz liquid The Liquid Rage.
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The liquid The liquid So, now I have the liquid is going up into my olfactory cavity.
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And now I don't have the sniffles at all.
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So, now that you've eaten 10 scorching hot chicken wings on YouTube with a bald guy, I think this is now as good a time as any to talk about how insignificant we all are in the scheme of things.
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With the Liquid Rage digging into your soul right now, I do wonder, can you explain what our current suffering means in the context of a potentially infinite galaxy? No. No. Well, here's my thing. Yeah.
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Um we have come to define significance as I'm special and everything else isn't.
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Religions thinking they're special, cultures thinking they're special, individuals thinking they're special.
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The top four ingredients in life, in your body, top four atoms in order, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen. Those four atoms.
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Do you know what the top ingredients are in the universe?
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The top four chemically active atoms in the universe?
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Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen. I am the universe. Yes.
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So, upon learning that you're not special because you do not contain special ingredients, is the same fact that includes that the idea that while we live in this universe, the universe lives within us.
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We are special because we're the same. There it is.
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There it is, Neil deGrasse Tyson.
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And you cleared the board, you made it through the hot sauces, you did it with Look at all I'm still He's going He's going for another bite.
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He's going for another bite. What a legend.
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This camera, this camera, or this camera, let the people know what you have going on in your life.
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So, I'm not entirely what I seem.
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I'd rather just stay home.
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But you know what happens?
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The universe gets under people's skin, and they want to know more about it.
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And then I get the phone call. Hey, home. What's this one?
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We need we need a comment.
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Will you come give a comment?
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Well, this is like the bat signal.
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This is like the cosmic signal.
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And I'm a servant of your cosmic curiosity. That's what I am.
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I'm not a I'm not force I don't want to force it on anyone.
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I respect that and that's what you have to do to look That's what you have to do to look in the mirror, but as a talk show host, what I have to do to look myself in the mirror is I have to make sure that I come through for the guest. So, I'll do it. I'm going to do it.
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The book is called Astrophysics for people in a hurry and it really does work for people in a hurry cuz I slammed right through this thing in a weekend. THERE YOU GO.
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SO, YOU'RE EATING THEM ALONG WITH ME. RIGHT ALONG WITH YOU.
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We're going on this journey together.
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I think these are all rolling.
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So, what is your evidence for me that you are tasting the same sauces on your wings?
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I'm open to whatever you want to do.
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If you wanted to switch boards, we could switch boards. I love this already. I love this already.
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Hey, what's going on Hot Ones fans?
25:47
If you like the video, maybe meet us halfway. Throw us a subscribe.
25:50
If you didn't like the video, don't subscribe. I don't want you.
25:54
I don't want you in the tent.
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But, if you like the video, subscribe. Thank you very much. I appreciate you. I love you. More than a friend.