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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, again, everyone. Neil deGrasse Tyson is with us now. The astrophysicist wants you to know that the universe does not revolve around the Earth and the world does not revolve around us and our opinions. Don't tell talk radio show host that. His latest book is called Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization. It's an attempt to present some of the fault lines of our time "in ways that foster accountability and wisdom in the service of civilization."

We'll talk about the new book and why he considers it a wake-up call. Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History and host of the StarTalk radio podcast joins me now. Hi, Neil. Welcome back to WNYC.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Hey, Brian. Thanks for having me back. By the way, that opening sentence describing the book, that's the whole book. We don't have to talk any further. You've encapsulated everything I would be saying in the next half hour.

Brian Lehrer: Which sentence? You mean about it being a wake-up call.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Well, no. Just the fact that the universe doesn't revolve around Earth and civilization doesn't revolve around any one of us. These are two important messages that we get, basically, messages from science, messages from the sky. The title Starry Messenger, it references insights that we glean from having studied how the universe works. It doesn't tend to be compatible with your ego. The ego does not survive under scrutiny of a cosmic perspective.

Brian Lehrer: Starry Messenger. The title is a Galileo reference. It goes back that far, right?

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Yes, it goes back 400 years. Galileo, he heard wind of a telescope, how people in the Netherlands, they combine two lenses instead of just one, as a magnifying glass. You combine two, you can get a telescope. Having heard of this, he built a version of his own far superior to that original one just within two years, and then he may have been the first to just simply look up with it rather than look in people's windows or whatever else. In fact, the thing was called a spyglass when it first came on the scene, just to give you a hint of how people might have been using it, but he looked up with it.

Brian Lehrer: People would never do that.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: He noticed that Venus goes through phases, Jupiter has what he called Jupiter stars that orbit Jupiter, these are Jupiter's moons, we call them the Galilean moons in his honor, that the Sun has spots, the Moon's surface is textured. There's a lot of information, knowledge, insight into the operations of the universe that was brought to you by this telescope. He wrote a book called Sidereus Nuncius, the Starry Messenger.

A lot of the contents of that book got him in trouble with the Catholic church of the day, which had a different belief, a different understanding of the organization of the universe. Oh, Sidereus Nuncius translates to Starry Messenger from the Latin. I chose that title simply to indicate for people that sometimes insights into your present condition, enlightenment, that you may need, that civilization may require, will come to you from looking up.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think that, as an astrophysicist, that the very fact that you've been engaged in looking up as your career, has made you a humbler person about yourself individually or about humanity?

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Yes, it's not just me. It operates that way for anyone who has-- I and my colleagues, we have the benefit of having made it our profession, so we think about this way all the time, but you can be baptized into it by simply going into space. You don't need a career having to think about it if I launch you into space, and especially deep space, so somewhere between Earth and the Moon, not only just in low Earth orbit, and you see Earth adrift there, alone, in the darkness of the universe, and you see Earth not as we had been trained to think of it in our elementary school classroom, the globe on the back shelf with color-coded countries.

In retrospect, I look at that much more cynically than I did at the time. Today, I think of it as we were being trained to know who our friends were and who our enemies were because there were lines in the sand, lines in the mountain ranges and all these ways we divide ourselves, tribalize ourselves.

You go into space, that is not how nature reveals Earth to you. At the risk of stating the obvious, all you see is ocean and land and clouds. That changes you because everything that fed your tribalism evaporates from that point of view. If you now return to Earth, you can't help but think differently about the strength of your opinions that we're feeding a "we versus they" mentality. You have to say, "Well, maybe we're all in this together. Maybe we have a shared fate. Maybe Earth should be our collective concern rather than all the laws and governments and forces that lead ultimately, in the limit, to war and bloodshed."

By the way, there's nothing wrong with ego in its simplest sense. You are who you are, and you feel good about yourself. I'm talking about the larger ego where my opinion is right and no other opinion can possibly be right if it differs from mine. That's an extreme ego that, like I said, is completely incompatible with the cosmic perspective.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, anybody out there right now who's ever been to space, hey, you never know, or anyone who's studied astrophysics and come to a similar revelation and want to talk about it from your own perspective as we hear Neil deGrasse Tyson talk about the ideas that drive his new book called Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization  or if you just want to ask Neil deGrasse Tyson a question and haven't been to the planetarium lately, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. I guess the closest thing that I've ever had to what you're describing is hiking to the top of a mountain-

Neil deGrasse Tyson: That works. There it is. That works.

Brian Lehrer: - and looking down and seeing some villages below, seeing 50 miles in all directions out into the distance, and thinking, "Wow, I'm all wrapped up in my little problems, my little life, and now, holy moly, look how small I am," that kind of thing. Then also, when I came back down, I realized, "Well, I still have these relationships I'm involved in, I still have the world that I'm involved in, I still care about democracy." You can't get detached from it just by saying, "Wow, look down from above." There's a line there, right?

Neil deGrasse Tyson: That's an important distinction that you're exploring. I would say that if you're the only one who has that experience, it's not very useful returning to everybody else. It has to be much more of a collective mindset. By the way, collective mindsets are not impossible to achieve. In one of the chapters of the book, the Earth and Moon chapter, I reflect on, let's call it, the second wave environmental movement. There's a early wave a hundred-and-some years ago where we started protecting the national parks and wildlife, and there was some concern about it offered at the time.

What happens? I can list some things. The founding of the Environmental Protection Agency, the beginning of NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that concerns itself with climate and weather and the intersection of the oceans and the atmosphere. We can talk about when leaded gas was banned. We can talk about when DDT was banned. We can talk about the first Earth Day. All of that occurred while we were going to the Moon. It didn't occur before, and it didn't take place after. It took place between the years 1968 and 1972.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, that's so interesting.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: DDT was banned in 1973. We were on a roll at the time. I call that a firmware upgrade that operated on people's overall attitude towards Earth and that began after Apollo 8. People forget Apollo 8. That was the first time we ever left Earth for a destination, December 1968. They're the ones who took that really famous photo of Earth rise from the Moon. The best way to think about this is we went to the Moon to explore the Moon and we looked back over our shoulder and discovered Earth for the first time. That photo changed us.

You can go to a mountaintop and come back and you could be all different and it would fall on unfertile ground, but if everyone has a collective experience, it is amazing how our attitudes can change. If you ask any of those people, "Why Earth Day now?" "Well, it feels right." I don't know that any one person would've explicitly mentioned NASA yet that's what it means to be a firmware upgrade, it's operating at the deepest levels of your thought.

Everyone is, "Yes, it's the right time," meanwhile we were still in a hot war in Southeast Asia, the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War. There is still all of these other problems that we needed to confront but we all paused and said we need to protect Earth as a planet not just the stream that might have been polluted in your backyard. We need to think more holistically about our fate. We need another one of these injections of sensibility to all citizens of the world.

Brian Lehrer: That's such an interesting connection and one I honestly should have thought about, I think, but never did, that we had the moonshot, let's say, the first time a person walked on the Moon, the most famous moment from that era of space exploration. Neil Armstrong, one small step, all of that, that was the summer of 1969. You're right. The main environmental laws got passed in the immediate subsequent years in the early 1970s. I guess, in a way, that was-

Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Add to it, by the way-

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Add to it, do you remember that perhaps one of the most famous public service commercials was the Tearing Indian, as it was called, upon observing people throw trash out their window and he turns and you see a tear in his eye. Of course, that actor was Italian descent, it turns out. Apparently, that was okay back then, but that with the native American in headdress, we all remember that that aired over that same time.

It's not like only then had we started throwing trash out the window, that was like an American pastime. You could have had that commercial in 1960. So much of that could have happened earlier. It just didn't. Check it out. Check out [chuckles] the birth of all of those-- By the way there are other things. I've seen people say, "Oh, you know what caused the Environmental Protection Act? There was an oil spill in San Diego." It's like, "Okay." That made big local news and temporary national news, but in fact there was an even larger oil spill several years earlier on the Mississippi River banks.

We measure this in terms of, of course, spilled oil. With the Mississippi River, because it was a river, it contaminated a very long stretch of terrain. No, that didn't cause the-- All I'm saying is whatever you're going to point to, at the end of the day everyone is pointing to whatever they think caused it, if they're not thinking NASA, whatever they think caused it all happened while we were going to the Moon. Just deal with it.

I'm in search of what could create another force of that magnitude that might be more compatible with peace, peace on a level where-- This is one Earth. As Carl Sagan famously said, "Air molecules don't carry passports, they travel as well as water molecules." We are in one ecosystem, Earth, and we are participants in that eco-- everyone. What happens in one place on Earth affects another.

I like to think this book contributes to that sense of responsibility but if anything, it'll just leave you a little more scientifically literate about decisions you make and opinions you have that you think it's so thought out that everyone who disagrees with you is clearly wrong, so it's an attempt to soften that posture.

Brian Lehrer: Neil deGrasse Tyson his with us with his new book Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization. Philomena in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Philomena.

Philomena: Hi, good morning. I don't have the economics to go to space. I would do it in an absolute heartbeat. [inaudible 00:15:33] for my 50th birthday 25 years ago because I jumped out of a plane at 10,000 feet. That experience, realizing how small I was and watching buildings and bridges grow, was extraordinary and I'll never forget it. My little piece is seeing us from space only at 10,000 feet.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Are you going to recommend that everyone, before they die, jump out of a perfectly good airplane at 10,000 feet? [laughs]

Philomena: Well, it's funny you say that, sir, because my husband said, "Who in their right mind jumps out of a perfectly good plane that's not on fire?" It was an amazing-

Neil deGrasse Tyson: That's not on fire [laughs]

[crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: I'm sorry, go ahead, Neil.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: No, I think we're all dancing around the same maple here because there's Brian saying he's on a mountaintop and you're describing being at 10,000 feet and then you have astronauts that are even higher. There's something about a perspective from above that matters here. We're also, I think, sharing the same theme as we proceed.

Brian Lehrer: Philomena, thank you so much. Jake in Toms River, you're on WNYC with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Hi, Jake.

Jake: How are you doing? Good morning, Neil. How are you?

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Hi. Good.

Jake: I had a question for you. I heard a phrase once that as human beings we know less about the human brain than we do about outer space, and I wanted to know what you thought about that statement.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: I think I posed a question in the book. There's a chapter called Mind and Body. The real question is, can the human mind understand something more complex than itself? That's a question I pose. If the universe is more complex than the human mind would we ever understand the universe? Then you can flip that around and say can the human mind ever understand the human mind? Can it study itself? There might be some sort of philosophical barrier there that cannot be crossed.

We like to say that the human mind is infinite in imagination and its possibilities of discovery and invention. I'd like to proceed thinking that, but at the end of the day I often wonder whether there's some other species of alien out there that's smarter than us on a level where they wouldn't even count us among the ranks of intelligent in the universe. If that's the case then no, the human mind, when studied by someone smarter, is actually quite trivial. [chuckles]

Again, this is a cosmic perspective that beats down your ego if you're thinking, "Humans, they're smarter than we are." All that attitude, it's not hard to imagine something much smarter than we are where our greatest achievements is [unintelligible 00:18:47] capable of. Say again.

Jake: I'm saying, to create this simulation that we live in, correct?

Brian Lehrer: Simulations. My screener told me you wanted to ask about simulations. What do you mean by that, Jake? Do you mean virtual reality goggles and things like that?

Jake: No, that there may be a smarter species out there that has us on some sort of petri dish. That's something I would [inaudible 00:19:19].

Brian Lehrer: Now we're getting into sci-fi hypothetical, right?

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Yes, the example I give in the book is if you look at the closest species to humans, which would be chimpanzees, we are 99% identical DNA, yet the smartest chimp, it can stack boxes and reach a banana which is what our toddlers can do. Your urge, our human ego, would say, "Well, what a difference that 1% makes," but maybe the difference between our art and culture and music and the James Webb Telescope, the difference between that and stacking boxes is as small as 1%.

Let's consider that for a moment. If that difference is small, smaller than we can want to think, imagine a life form 1% smarter than us in the same way that we are that 1% different from the chimps. What would we look like to them? I half-joke and say they would roll Stephen Hawking forward and say to their own people, "This human is slightly smarter than the rest because he can do astrophysics calculations in his head like our little alien, Timmy, who just came home from preschool."

Smart chimps do what our toddlers can do. Smart humans would do what their toddlers can do. If they wanted to, they could just create Earth as a literal terrarium, aquarium, and have us live there thinking that we all have free will and nature gave it to us when we could just simply be observed by a smarter species. Is that any different from ant farms that walk around in tubes on the table? They look pretty busy, and I don't know if they know people are looking at them, but they're living out their lives like they have no other care in the world.

Brian Lehrer: There were Twilight Zone episodes like that.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Yes, they were. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Janine in Flatbush, you're on WNYC. Hi, Janine.

Janine: Hi, Brian. Hi Neil. I'm a huge fan of you both.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Hi.

Janine: I'm currently taking an astrophysics class which having read all of your books, I thought was going to be a lot easier, but it turns out it's very hard. I'm doing my final presentation on the TRAPPIST-1 system, and I wondered if you had any favorite facts about the system that you could give me.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: If I remember correctly, that system has multiple planets orbiting around it. Is that the one I'm thinking of? Because there are many planets-

Janine: Yes, there's, sorry, seven Earth-like planets.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: I like going around it. If I'm in front of a big audience, I say, "Is anyone here born from 1985 onward?" Some people will raise their hand, and I say, "I now knight you generation exoplanet," because in 1995 was the very first exoplanet discovered. This became a cottage industry within my field, and now we're rising through 5,000. Some of those stars, some of those external stars have multiple planets. The TRAPPIST system you described is one of them.

What I would do, I would look for which of those planets are so close to their host star that they got tidally locked in their rotation rate just the same way the Moon is tidally locked to Earth? There's only one side of the Moon that faces Earth. There is no dark side by the way, but there's a far side and a near side. That happens over time. It's a very natural evolution of a system.

The nearby planets will be tidally locked. If you had life forms there, it might be too hot on one side, too cold on the other. Might they all live at the sunlight boundary on the edge? That'd be an interesting civilization to imagine. Also, if there's life on multiple planets, have they set up what our equivalent is of our highway systems or our airports? Do they just jet among the planets and vacation on one planet versus another? That would be fun. Those are the kind of things I would think about if I add a little science fiction element, but infused by the science of the system.

Brian Lehrer: Janine-

Janine: That's great. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: -thank you very much. One more. Rachel in Ramsey, you're on WNYC with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Hi, Rachel.

Rachel: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I'm laughing a little because my 18-year-old son, who I'm sending to see you at NJPAC, Mr. Tyson, on Thursday night because he's a huge fan, would be mortified that I'm calling in to say this, but here is my perspective. I have been a long-time meditator and yoga teacher and studier of scripture in all sorts of mystical things.

The perspective that you're talking about of that God's eye perspective where you're out in space and you have that or even the top of the mountain top, I'm also a rock climber, where you get to that top of the vista, God's eye perspective of things, can also be connected to through those more internal practices of meditation and of yoga. The same result can happen that you have this sense of the oneness of things. You have an awareness of the ways that we are all connected rather than the ways that we live in the world so associated with our own ego and our own story and our own dramas. It gives you this wider viewpoint of the world.

The particular type of yoga that I study, actually, we always say that physics proves the existence of this one energy in the same way that science says there's just this one energy that underpins everything. That's what the yogis have been saying for thousands of years. That was just my thoughts as I was listening. I appreciate the other side of the perspective, the more scientific way of looking at it, the provable way. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: I guess the question is, is there a point where astrophysics and going in, let's say, where exploration outside of our solar system and exploration inside of ourselves meet?

Neil deGrasse Tyson: I like the idea that in some cases it could have the same result. I think we could probably all agree even without doing the study, but maybe we would still have to do the test, that yoga people are some of the least violent people I've ever met. They probably have some perspective in there that is more mature or more compatible with the future of civilization than those who don't. You got no argument from me there.

The only difference I would cite is the actual view of Earth from space being scientifically accurate, objectively true, enables you to take action that is very specific related to our oceans, our land, our atmospheres if you're going to create legislations and laws to address it. If you're just visiting the inside of your mind and floating through the universe, it tends to be less actionable in ways that could affect laws and legislation. Sure, I think if everyone meditated, [laughs] we probably would all get along. That's way cheaper than putting you into orbit. I can tell you that.

Brian Lehrer: That actually leads to the last question that I want to ask you about the book, from the chapter about exploration and discovery, where you describe the value of both, when shaping civilization. We've had calls any number of times on this show from listeners who say, "Why are we spending money going to Mars or whatever the current space program is at the time, when we have so many problems to solve here on Earth?"

I think central to your argument is that the space programs become worth it because they help us have the perspective to solve our problems here on Earth.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: The way I look at it is a couple of ways, and this example is in the book. Imagine we're all in the caves, 30,000 years ago, we're in the cave, and this is a little contrived, but the point is made. We're all in a cave, and the cave elder is sitting in the back. You're a young whipper snapper, and you go up to the cave elders and say, "I took a peek out the cave door." This is some imaginary hinged door of a cave. [laughs] "The door was ajar and I peeked out and I saw rivers and mountains and trees with berries on it. I want to go out and explore that."

You go to the elder, and the wise elder says, "No, we have cave problems we have to solve first. Before anyone leaves the cave, we have to address those problems." That's exactly what someone sounds like to me, who says, "We have Earth problems before we go into space," which, by the way, space has unlimited resources. Rare Earth elements are common on asteroids. There's unlimited energy. There is unlimited all manner of things.

By the way, how much do you think NASA's spending? NASA money happens to be very visible because people write headlines about it. The James Webb Telescope and the Space Station and moon landings and things, but it's one-half of 1% of your tax dollar. Oh my gosh. You're going to complain about how that money is being spent when 99.5 percent of your tax money is spent on other things? You're going to target that and say, "That's why we have all these problems in the world because that money could be spent differently"? Really? Just think that through.

I can tell you, in addition to whatever the spin-offs and other tangible benefits, there's those below-the-hood benefits if I may use automotive reference, such as, like you said, Brian, it's how your perspective can change. It's hard to put a dollar figure on that if everybody thinks differently about the fate of the world, and this has implications for climate change. Anything you do, if you think, "It's not just me, it's the entire world that is touched by it," I'm not going to put a price tag on that. It's priceless. You should think about it.

Brian Lehrer: Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, host of the StarTalk radio podcast. His latest book is Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization. Thanks as always for coming on, Neil. Great conversation.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Thanks, Brian.

 

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