Hi, I am Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and this is my last meal. Every person has exactly two things in common. We all gotta eat and we’re all gonna die. Today’s guest is the director of the Hayden Planetarium, the host of Star Talk Radio, and the author of more than a dozen books, the latest of which Just Visiting This Planet is out. Now. He’s your own personal astrophysicist, and perhaps most impressively, he finished second place in his eighth grade science fair. Neil deGrasse Tyson, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Of course, Neil, you’re 13 or 14 years old and you build a spectroscope from scratch to prove that moonlight and sunlight are identical. And you come in second, who’s the person that came in first? And what are they doing now? It’s some guy who like grew beans and I don’t, it had words that were very biological. Mm-hmm. I remember the word edin. None of my words were obscure. ’cause in my, in astrophysics, we call things as we see them. The Big Bang. Thank you. Okay. The beginning of time space. Big bang. It’s so understated. You, you, you, you fall into this region of space. You don’t come out. Light can, can, can’t come out black hole. Okay, that’s, there’s spots on the sun. You know what we call ’em? I don’t have a guess. Sunspot. Oh, oh my God. Steve, stop using lad nut. You’ve heard of Sun Spot? Jupiter has a red spot. We call it Jupiter’s red spot. So a, a spectroscope, that was maybe the only complicated word, but we had light. The red, orange, yellow, green, blue violet. I built the it from scratch, had a prism. We’ve heard the word, you know the word prism, so I don’t think it had complicated enough words in. To attract the, the judges. But regardless, I didn’t mind coming in second, but I, I have no idea what this other kid is doing today. Comment below if you’re that winner. I’m glad that such a show as this exists in the world. Not enough people spend time contemplating. Their own death. I’m two thirds of the way through my life. If you check actuarial tables, surely the actuarial tables give you an idea of how long you can live. But also there’s what I call the bus theorem, which is that you can get hit by a bus at any time. I’m not getting hit by a bus. Buses don’t. Sneak up on you. That’s a fair, maybe a giant predatory bird or something. But we’ll cross that nation when we get there. Uh, California condor perhaps just pick you up and whi you away. Yeah. They got big wingspans, those condors. Yeah. They really do watch out for those, if not buses. Um, have you thought about your last meal before? Yes, I have. Interesting. In what context? I asked myself would I order like the most expensive things that I can possibly imagine. Mm-hmm. But that would imply. I wouldn’t otherwise have that food in my life. Yeah. So my whole attitude towards a last meal changed upon realizing this. ’cause I care a lot about food. So does my wife. My kids love this fact. They’re the beneficiaries because they’ve eaten at other people’s homes. Yep. And they come into our house back for, for, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Why save your greatest meal for your last? Why not? Make at least one great meal a week, if not every day. And in doing so, when it’s time for your last meal, you’re, you’re chill. You say, I I did the, I’m good. Yeah. Let me have another reason for this choice of foods, other than it being the foods you’ve always longed to have. That’s beautiful. Make the most of your actual time on Earth before. Correct. You ready to eat? Let’s eat. Let’s do it. Neil. For your first course, we have the buttered corn on the cob with some extra butter on the side we have a homemade corn chowder with plenty of potatoes and maira POIs, black pepper and chive, and then a fully dressed Caesar salad with some fresh anchovies on top, homemade croutons and Caesar dressing also, we do have one more surprise. You are a noted in Aile and so. We got you this bottle. This is called Luce. Luce. I know Luce. You know Luce? Yes. Can I pour you a glass of Lu? That’s bottle, please. Is this etched or is This is a label that they glued on because the early bottles, it was etched. That’s good enough there. Of course. Lemme just see that. Yeah, this is, this is, this is a glued on label. The early ones. It’s actually carved into the bottom. Oh no, we shouldn’t have bought this from the street vendor. The guy on the street corner with a jacket that opened it up. He was selling Gucci bags and Rolexes too. Uh, but Cheers. Luce Luce Latin four Light. Yes it is. Cheers. Hey, super Tuscan. Where are we starting on this? Oh, wow. Okay. Can, can I just do this? Is this allowed? Oh, yes, you may. This is your last meal. Hmm. Wow. Good. Okay. Can I ask, is there a reason that you drink soup like that? ’cause I think there’s a scientific case to be made. I’m more civilized than I would normally use a spoon, but I was just testing it to see how I would then go at it. I think the slurping of the soup, actually the juxtaposition. Mix it with the air of the air. Yeah. Makes it taste better. Tell a foodie too. You can’t, like I know you are out foodie me here. I have fellow wine people who sip the wine and then they, they do that same thing with the wine, the chilling, the, yeah. I find that completely annoying. My favorite stunt is when they go, just swallow the damn thing, taste it and swallow it. Okay, so some are darker yellow than others. Uh, anything I should know about that? Not that I know of. I’ll try this one. Believe this is the varietals called Brentwood Corn. Brentwood, by the way, at my house, they never taught us to chew with our mouth closed. I love that. So we go to other people’s places and they want to. And we’re up that it tastes way better with your mouth open for sure. Because of air. Air. This is what I’m talking the OG foodie Ram. Mm-hmm. Wrestling from a young age influenced the rest of your career. ’cause I know with my athletic career, like I took a tremendous amount of value from it. What did you do athletically? So I did, um, shot put discus and hammer throw. But these, a full 16 pound shot booked. Hmm, yeah. Yeah. 16 pounds. But I have these tiny hands, so I wasn’t that good at it, but managed to do it at, at UCLA, the biggest lesson I learned. Lemme see your hand. Oh my God. Neil, you ever throw discus? No, I wrestled. Yes. So how did you hold the shot as best I could? Not that. Well, it didn’t just fall outta your hand. I was what we called a. The bronze medal athlete. I was, I was fighting for third in everything and I was fine with that first and second way out there. No, that’s fine. That’s an important humble place to be. I agree. Exactly. ’cause you’re still succeeding. Mm-hmm. But you don’t, you don’t have coming in first as a distraction. No. For you. Not at all. It was me against me. I, I’m proud of you. Thank, thanks, dad. I mean, Neil, uh, I. I learned very quickly how to be uncomfortable and how to be okay with that, which was something that was very valuable to me in the rest of my life. That you’re going to be uncomfortable and know that it’s for the greater good and the passion of you. Yes. What did you learn from wrestling? So wrestling, it is the hardest thing I’ve ever done with my body. Mm-hmm. And I wondered what others think this, so I started asking, I go to random people who were sports people. I say, what is the hardest sport you’ve ever done? If they have wrestled the answer is wrestling. Yeah. 100% of the cases. Lemme tell you how serious it was. I was I at the end of one match. I was so exhausted. I could not hold my pee and I’m flat on the mat and like the pee is coming out. I don’t, I have no muscle left. And you realize you need muscle to whole pee in. Okay? An incredible scientific discovery. In fact, when you die, uh, all your sphincters open up and mm-hmm. Then pee and poop comes, just slides out of you and. What’s that movie? 21, 21 Grams. Where they, where you die and they say you’re 21 grams less and that’s your soul. That goes up to wherever. I missed that one. Do you miss that movie? That’s the premise of it. You gotta get out more. I know. I swear. I do. You’re a kitchen here. Get out. Okay. Alright. So do you know how much 21 grams is? Um, 0.75 ounces? Yeah, that’s about right. Two, two thirds of an ounce of pee is in you. More than multiples, more than that is in you. At any given time. You die. It just spills outta you, and you’re gonna tell me you’re gonna measure 21 grams and then ascribe that to your soul. Going to heaven? Yeah. Or wherever. So, uh, now why am I talking about this? I don’t remember. Well, you’re talking about, uh, pissing yourself after Wrestl. Oh, thank you. Because it’s so exhausting. Yeah. Which is incredible. But I know muscle things. After at all. Neil, you have a new book out called Just Visiting This Planet, just visiting this Planet, and you’re writing from the perspective of Merlin, which was also your long standing column, and you have people writing in questions. Now you’re answering one of my favorites from the book is when someone asked You actually read people’s books. I read everybody’s books. Yeah. I take their shit. I’m of you. Thanks man. But the second time, this meal, I, I hope we can get at least one more. It’s rule of threes. I feel very paternal now. Being proud of you. I’m, I’m looking for a father figure. Okay. And you’re so far in the lead right now, but there was one question that asked if aliens could theoretically see our television broadcast. And you said that No is Merlin said this. Oh, Merlin. I’m so sorry. Merlin. Merl was a character. Now I’m a director. I’m just channeling Merlin. Merlin said that it is theoretically possible that there is an alien civilization that has viewed all of our society through the lens of one TV show. If there was one TV show that our society could be judged on, what do you think it should be? Well, we won’t have that option ’cause they’ll just get whatever TV shows are washing over their location in the galaxy. And the earliest ones would be. Howdy Doty. Mm-hmm. Uh, Amos and Andy. Yeah, you’ll be embarrassed that if you see Amos, you worry for us if the aliens see Amos and Andy. Yeah. And there’s the Honeymooners. You surely have seen Honeymooners. And in there they might learn how men and women treat each other. And occasionally he says to the moon, Alice gesturing that he will hit her hard enough to send her to the moon. So the aliens will wonder. Hmm. How far away is the moon? This is a real threat. Is this? Is this how the men and women treat each other on that planet? They will see all of these broadcast. Oh, you know what else they’re gonna get? They’re gonna get Hitler’s rallies ’cause that, oh God. That was on very high powered broadcast radio broadcast in the 1930s. Oh no. So got 1930s and forties and early fifties. That wave. That is what they’re gonna see, and I’m pretty sure they will conclude. There’s no sign of intelligent life on earth. Yeah. You know, that was a rough time for humanity. Most times were also rough times for humanity. Well, there are others. Here’s, here’s some saving grace. Okay? The show Beavis and Butthead. Beavis and Butthead primarily was distributed by cable. Mm-hmm. So that’s not, so it’s not in the airwaves. So there going out to space, the aliens will never see succession. That’s correct. That sucked. What a great show, man. I’m curious how you’ve seen your role as a science communicator over time change. Like do you think it’s more important now than, say, 20 years ago? Is there something that’s more pressing in society? Oh yeah. Your challenges are the same. Yeah. Getting to people to be scientifically literate on a level where they can make informed decisions about issues and policies and laws and legislation than who they vote for. Yeah. If you make decisions that are scientifically misinformed or under informed, then it’s not a functioning democracy. Yeah. In fact, it’s the seeds of the unraveling of a democracy. If everyone is voting in for what they think is true, what they want to be true, what their religion, their politics, or their culture tells ’em to be true, rather than what is objectively true, established by the methods and tools of science, if that’s what you’re doing, just, just. Pick up all your things and move back to the cave ’cause that’s where we’re headed. What do you think would happen if the scientists were in control of society or say of a single sovereign nation as opposed to politicians? I don’t really want that. I like politicians. Good politicians. I make decisions that factor what is objectively true with people’s emotions. For example, are you old enough? Maybe not to remember when we dropped the national speed limit to 55 miles an hour. This was in the 1970s to save gas if that’s your goal. And scientists were making rules ’cause we’re very goal-driven. Mm-hmm. You wanna save gas, drop it to 30 miles an hour. Yeah. I mean, I mean that will save even more gas. Sure. Okay. And there’s a speed below which you’ll start moving more gas. ’cause you’ll using lower gears that use more fuel. So you wanna go the lowest speed that’s in your highest gear. So I don’t know what that is. It’s different for each car. I think it’s slower than 55 miles an hour. That’s how the scientists would’ve figured this out. And they just picked this number outta their ass and just put it out there. And so that’s fine. But maybe no one wants to drive 30 miles an hour. They, you will absorb the risk Yeah. Of accidents because the death rate went down when that happened. And the risk taking is not something that lends itself well to a, to blunt scientific analysis, you must. See these things as like inherently illogical. You, you wrote in Starry Messenger about I a book from two years ago. Thank you. A book from Starry Messenger, uh, causing perspective on civilization did, I found it really, really meaningful. And there was a really interesting part about, uh, cougars and deer and children being eaten that I found just Do you remember that? I, I remember that. Um, I mean, if you wanna explain it, I thought it was fascinating. Oh, sure. So the question is, if you live in some suburbs in the Northeast, there’s a deer problem. The deer population is costly. To the county. Mm-hmm. Because there are car accidents. ’cause they jump out in front of you at night. There are, uh, so that’ll injure the car. It’ll injure you. People die. So you look at how many people die. Look at the total cost of all this. Say, is there a solution? We can hire a bunch of hunters and shoot ’em down. But that’s, that’s so harsh. So someone proposed this mm-hmm. Seriously proposed this. Why not introduce, reintroduce. The population of predator cats that was once in this region of the country. Cougars essentially. Yeah. They will call the herd of, so that there aren’t so many deer. However, they will eat a few babies out of your yard. The classic yard baby, which is another cougar, jumps in, eat the yard baby. And it’s the yard baby. You might, there’s some numbers they, they, they sketched what that numbers, those numbers might be. Mm-hmm. It was fewer deaths. Then the car deaths. The problem is if the state puts in cougars and the cougar eats your baby, the state killed your baby. Yeah. Whereas if a deer comes out and you die, then that’s nature. So somehow we are okay if nature kills you and we’re not okay. If there’s an audit trail back. To a governmental decision. Yeah. So that’s the kind of things pol decisions politicians would have to make. What you want is a politician who’s not necessarily a scientist, but one who knows how to listen to scientists and doesn’t just make their own stuff up and put it on the internet and no, listen to scientists. So will come out every now and then. Now knock on our door, we’ll come outta the lab. We’ll tell you what the latest result is. Then we’re gonna go back in the lab. Yeah, you, you run the fricking country. Okay. So scientists are less good at making a moral decision. But they can provide the data for you to make an informed decision related to the moral decision. Yeah, and that’s what I’m all for. Uh, tell me about the Caesar salad, by the way, when I was in college. There’s a pizza place you can order a pizza. EBA. I’m not familiar with this acronym, everything but anchovies. If you don’t want your anchovies, I’ll take it. I’m gonna give you these anchovies. I would love it, but at this moment you don’t know why. But I will give them to you nonetheless. Okay, well is it gonna change me wanting the anchovies or not? No, it is a properly J Caesar salad with anchovies. The ancho is a grab in the cheese, some of that cheese back. But yeah, take, take it. The cheese tax. Hey, so I happen to like Caesar salad. Uh, it’s always satisfying to me. Um, I once read that Parmesan was the, the king of Jesus back when people still gendered food. They don’t do that anymore. Have you noticed? They don’t gender the food anymore. It’s no longer king size. Really. It’s sharing size. Oh, interesting. Haven’t you noticed get out, would you? I feel like I don’t leave your home. Just these things. Does someone else do your shopping? No, I do all of my shopping. Go buy a big bag of potato chips. It’ll say sharing size, not king size. Well, it used to be party size on the chips, but king size was candy bars. Okay. Now says sharing size. But that was so that they could then have plausible deniability to say it was multiple servings in there. So that was purely a PR move. I don’t think it had anything to do with, um. Anti, I think it had everything to do with, with, with being woke. You think it was, you think? Yeah. Neil, you think woke took king size a hundred grand bars from this? No, no, no. Wait, wait, wait, wait. So you’re okay. You’re mixing the two, the candy bars. I get it. Okay. Sharing says, then they say it’s half the calories, but they did that anyway with large bars. They say, oh, this is six servings. You lying mofos, this is right. Yeah, I agree with that. Right. So I’m saying that happened around. When, when it was the woke thing to do. Yeah. And that’s it. It’s, that’s not gonna reverse. It’s gonna stay that way. Do you think that’s ultimately a good thing or bad thing, or do you not meddle in those affairs? Uh, Merlin has no gender. Yeah. There’s no reference to Merlin’s gender anywhere in this book, or it’s the first of it mm-hmm. Book, which came out last year. So I’ve been thinking about sort of gender free communication and. A world since the 1980s. Ready to move on to course number two. Isn’t this the second? Oh. Oh, this whole thing is a course. This is one course. Oh, sure. Let’s do it. Neil, for the main course of your final meal, we have the Moose wood lasagna. This is a very specific recipe that I’ll talk a little bit more about later. I’m sure you have a story about it. We have some garlic bread. We have green beans. With sliced almonds. And then we have your absolute favorite vintage Willamette Valley Pinot that you definitely asked for. Can I pour you up a glass please? Yes. We see the lighter color. The second word of pinot noir means. Black. Black. And yet this wine is much, much lighter than, uh, all of the Cabernet based wines. That is interesting. Yeah. I’m curious about this Moose wood lasagna here, because this is a very famous restaurant and cookbook. Yes. From Ithaca, New York. Ithaca, New York. Yeah. Did you go to the original Moose Wood restaurant? Never. I never did. How did this cross your, uh, cross your mind? Because my wife made many recipes from it, and I will be comparing this to her version of it. I’m so curious. Please dig in, dig in. I don’t wanna stop you. This has, uh, there should be spinach in here, other greens. There’s no meat. There’s no meat. No, that’s correct. No, Mosswood is an entirely vegetarian restaurant. That’s right. That’s correct. By the way, are you gonna put your napkin on your, on your lap? I, you tell me you’re a food person and you’re, you’re. Now I’m gonna be your mother. Put that, put on your napkin, man. This is the downside of finding a new father figure is suddenly it becomes a stern disciplinarian right away. Didn’t even play catch yet. I think you can directly trace the existence of this lasagna to the photo earth rise from the 1968 Apollo eight mission. Ooh. Because you write very beautifully in, in starry messenger. I’m, I’m bringing that back up. About the modern environmentalism movement and how a lot of that can be sort of traced to 1968 to Apollo eight mission, and people finally seeing this zoomed out view of Earth. And so Moose Wood, the restaurant started in 1973. The cookbook was written in 1974, and the cookbook became so popular. Your wife found that cookbook because of all the counter-cultural movements and cook was of the restaurant’s best dishes. Yeah. And we went to the moon from 1968 mm-hmm. To 1972. And we were changed. Yeah. And it takes a year to write a cookbook. As a culture, we were changed. Now I wouldn’t have necessarily connected these two ’cause the environmental movement was not specifically let’s all be vegetarian. Sure. But if the mood feels right and it’s, and it, and, and the firmware upgrade that descended upon us laying witness mm-hmm. To earth seen as only nature intends with oceans and land. And clouds, not the color coded countries that were on the school room globe. Yeah. Which in my later years, I’m thinking they color coded them to train you, to brainwash you into recognizing who your friends were and who your enemies were. Yeah. Political brainwashing, and I’m thinking earth is not that. These are mind shifting things. People say, why are we going into space that cost a hundred billion dollars? I say. How much is the universe worth to you? How much is it worth to you for those images to have changed the world? In our understanding of our relationship to each other, to all other people on earth and to earth itself seems cheap at that point. Yes, right. Affordable. If everybody got the ability to. Go into space and see the earth themselves. From a first person perspective. It’s not everybody just send all the, all the politicians. I mean, do you think the world would send the leader of every country into space and we don’t bring it back until they all agree of, so okay. Sending the kids to the room until they figure it out. Mm-hmm. I mean, you actually think that would change the world very, very deeply when you go out to the moon. That is a deep and true cosmic perspective. May I quote astronaut Edgar Mitchell. Paul 14. He died a few years ago, deeply moved by his lunar experience, interviewed in Time Magazine, 1971. He said, you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter million miles out. And say, look at that. You son of a bitch. Damn, better not, you know? He was feeling it sure was. You were feeling it right there too. I was feeling it. We’re all feeling it. Yeah. There’s another quote from a space walker, I believe Mike Massimino. He said, um, at first I looked down to the earth and I said, this must be the view from heaven. And then I thought, no, this is the view of heaven. There’s a beautiful blend between. Metaphor in science and like feeling and hard facts. How do you square? You know, whether you believe in the idea of a miracle. We still all have words for them to describe. What I would say are scientific phenomenon. How do you square those two things? Or do you have to, can you simply live in that world where, yes, this is heaven. And that’s a beautiful metaphor where it’s for some that’s very literal. You, you bring up God. Mm-hmm. Have you ever looked up God on the Wiki page? Nope. There’s a scroll. It goes on. Almost forever. How many gods throughout civilization, humans have worshiped? Yeah. So when you say, is there room for God? I might ask, which God are you thinking about? Do you have one in mind? The Cartesian blind clock maker, God simply invented the universe. Step back, let us do whatever laws of physics still apply. Uh, that’s more like Spinoza’s God. Mm. Spinoza a, a Jewish theologian. He imagined God just. It created everything set into motion, but that would include the laws of physics and everything. Mm-hmm. Gotcha. The blind watchmaker, that’s a different level. That’s William Paley, uh, wrote a book called Natural Theology to contrast with Natural Philosophy, which was physics basically. Yeah. Natural theology was an attempt to read nature and find God in the reading of nature. Mm-hmm. Which nobody is doing when they’re reading Biblical genesis in there, he references the book. A watch you, you’re in the woods, you come upon a watch. Did that just assemble from random forces or did someone make it and put it there and you know when your intuition tells you you’re not gonna make gears by accident. Yeah. And have them accidentally be blown together in a hurricane and have a ticking watch. Clearly there was intelligence behind that. Mm-hmm. He then claimed that nature was wr with examples such as that betraying or revealing an intelligence. What’s not fully explained there is he’s referencing things we didn’t yet understand. Mm-hmm. About the natural world is the term God of the gaps. That’s, that’s exactly it. There’s a gap in his if you don’t understand it. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t, this is kind of complex. This is an amazing, complex thing. I don’t understand it. I, I don’t know how it could have gotten there. Divine by Gods divine. By the gods. So the gods must have God or Gods must have done it. Yeah. That’s philosophers call it the God of the gaps. Mm-hmm. And it’s a, it’s a time honored tradition. No one invoked God to explain a rock, but the orbits of the planets, uh, one of my favorite quotes is from Tmy, so est, which is Arabic for the greatest. So in this work. He doesn’t understand. He, he, it codifies the geocentric universe Earth in the middle. Well, how do you do that? Well, planets go forward in the sky, slow down, and then they go backwards, and then they slow down and they go forwards again. And they were, what are you doing? What’s, no one understood this. So they invented epicycles. He didn’t really understand it, but he was trying to explain it. So in the margin of his book, he writes the following, what I trace at my pleasure. The windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies. He’s referring to the planets doing this. I no longer touch earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia. Damn. He was feeling it. He was feeling it, feeling it, loving my people. Who was feeling it? I was feeling it. Then Newton explains all that, but Newton comes with a heliocentric, sun centered system. But then there’s something he can’t explain. He said, well, God must step in and do that. Yeah. So everybody’s doing it. So you wanna talk about miracles if to you, miracles are things that we don’t understand. Mm-hmm. Maybe God suspended the laws of physics, or maybe it will yield to further scientific inquiry. Yeah. The history of science is one where science has never said, yep, God did this. Yeah. Which says, yes, this is actually magic. Yes. This is actually. You know, that’s nev that hasn’t happened yet. Sure. So I’m, I’m not going forward presuming it will, I mean, which is historically why specifically astronomy has been considered so heretical. Yes. You look at, I mean, g we looking up gods are in the heavens. We’re looking up into the heavens. Even like the metaphor of the heliocentric universe was something that was so heretical because we were no longer the center of it. That’s correct. And you yourself, I mean, you’ve tread in dangerous territory. Um, you killed Pluto. And you got Pluto had a comment. Get over it. And you got Neil. Hold on. We have a lot of people. This means a lot to, in this room, hoards of angry nine year olds sending you letters. In the early two thousands. Yeah. They were like eight year olds too. Yeah, yeah. In in, in two thou. Yeah, in two early two thousands. I have, I have a foul cabinet drawer. A pissed off crayon. Cra you’re not gonna say, why did you the blue, oh, my favorite planet. Now I don’t have a favorite planet. Here’s what Pluto looks like. Put it back in the exhibit. I mean, people were giving commandments, uh, to change what’s going on the next generation. They’re born into this fact and they’re cool with it. All of us do. All of us grew up with Pluto as a planet in this room. So you were in fourth grade when this happened? Actually, I have a letter from you. I think a lot of people. Took it as quote, I’ve heard an attack on smallness. I’ve heard from people in this room. It proved that everything I grew up with was a lie. Do you have to like worry about these heavy attachments to what? To you I’m sure are objective science. It’s fault of how science was taught. Interesting. You’re taught there are nine planets. That’s not how it should have ever been taught. Yeah, so, so there are rocky planets, there are gaseous planets, and then there’s this one odd ice ball called Pluto. We don’t know what that is. Well call it a planet for now, but surely it’s as big as the other planets. Right? Surely Neil, because I saw it, I’m on the thing that I made in third grade. It was as big as the other planet. Our moon. Has five times the mass of Pluto. Ah shit. Deal with it. Yeah, I’m trying. Do you know half of Pluto is made of ice? You bring it to where Earth is right now. Heat from the sun would evaporate that ice and it will grow a tail and there’s no kind of behavior for planets. Can I offer you some green beans? No, please. I’m really curious. Have you read a book called Seven Eve? S Eves by Neil Stevenson. I have been emailed by people who said, have I ever read s Eves by Neil Stevenson? Everyone says that I’m in it. You’re in it. Either me or someone like me or, but so I, so I confess, I read mostly nonfiction, almost exclusively nonfiction, and I wait for the movie to come out. If it’s fiction, I hope they make a movie. Seventies is not a movie, so I haven’t seen it yet. I hope you are in it. You are portrayed, uh, very well. You die a hero. Spoiler alerts. Um, what now? You don’t tell me that. My last Neil. Okay. But Neil Stevenson introduces a concept in that book that he calls am mystics relating to Amish people. The idea that in the future, humanity will have to intentionally roll back certain technologies because ultimately it would be too harmful to go forward with them. Do you think that is a valid way? To look at the future? No. Right. Not at all. It reeks, uh, the attitude that people have had forever in the presence of technology that, oh, it’s going too fast. We won’t be able to catch up with it. It’s gonna be the death of us all. We’re all gonna die. They said, oh, the population explosion is gonna outstrip the food. No one is saying, maybe science will figure out how to make more food on less land with fewer farmers than ever before. Has anyone considered that possibility? Apparently not, but that’s what’s happening now. Anyone who is starving in the world, it’s not ’cause the world does not have enough food, which was the prediction made by the, the, the, the doomsday people about the food and population. One outstripping the other. I saw, I’m, I’m, I find it unconvincing, but maybe I have to see the movie or, sorry, read the book. We’ll wait till the movie comes out. Mm-hmm. Neil, why’d you choose all this food until you put the two slivers? Of anchovies on my Caesar salad. Mm-hmm. All the food we’re eating today does not require the death of any animals. Interesting. Have you gone full vegetarian? Not in the least, but if I’m gonna die, I don’t need to take any animals with me. I’ve been an omnivore my whole life. The least I can do on my last meal. Is give ’em all a hall pass so I can still enjoy the meal and not kill any animal. In this except the tiny little anchovy that you slithered. That was brutal. That was disgusting. That was, that was No, I four anchovies died for this meal. Meal. Meal. For the final course of your final meal on earth. Whether you get hit by a bus or you get e coli from our show, you did sign the waiver. We have the blueberry pie with whipped cream. We have a strawberry malted milkshake, and then we have the Chateau Dem. So Tarn, can I pour you up some tn please. You know you are the third guest on last meals to request TN for their last meal. But did the others request Chateau Chem? Noted? They did not. And I’m really curious to hear why you don’t have to hear it. Your palate will tell you, wow, he was feeling it. Were there to be a nectar of the Gods. It would be this. Yeah, baby. God damn. That is dude. That is wonderful though. Yeah. Tell me about the blueberry pie. I like a really good apple pie. Mm-hmm. But there’s some apple pies that just don’t make it for me, whereas I rarely have a bad blueberry pie, so I want to just beat the odds here and order a blueberry pie. And I like blueberries. My wife picked blue. She’s raised in Alaska. Mm-hmm. And they’re blueberry, wild blueberry plants. And so, uh, I have a, a longstanding relationship with blueberries. I think they’re, they’re, they’re so. You know my favorite part of blueberries. Have you ever peel to blueberry? No. Who has that time? Who has that time of the one? Apparently I do. And you never get out. So now I have to explain. So it is completely colorless on the inside. Oh, interest. Like actually, I mean, like I said, completely cones, scientific. And you’re saying actually, I mean, okay, let me narrow my question here. Is it more translucent than the skin would belie? It is very pale green. On a level where you wouldn’t even say it had color. Gotcha. Close. So like scientifically not color. So all the color is in the skin. And if you had blueberry pancakes and you see where the blueberries were and you say, oh, wait a minute, the blueberry broke open and it’s blue on the inside. Before you cooked it, the blue was in the skin and the inside was just the fruit. So blueberries are kind of interesting that way. For me, I think the most interesting part is that they’re not blue at all. There’s almost, almost, almost no naturally occurring blue foods. Out there. We have some species of algae. Of course. We have blue corn. We have blue corn is purple. Actually, if you actually soak in water. Water. Oh, soaking in water. Who soaks their, who soaks their blue tortillas in water? Actually, if corn was not initially soaked in lime water, Neil, do you know that all of the meso American civilizations couldn’t have existed? I was gonna comment on the corn at the beginning, but you didn’t ask me. We just went through it. Damn it. Okay. Neil, why do you love corn? Okay, thank you. I thought I asked ’cause because these ears of corn are, oh my gosh. Not found anywhere in nature. They are products of science and they’re basically been genetically modified from their original stock. You see cobs in caves where our cave ancestors lived and they’re this big. Yeah, and we said that’s too small. So we said lettuce cross breeded. In the old days, that’s what they did. Now we just do it in a lab, but let’s cross breeded. And they kept doing it. The corn got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. It was not sweet enough. Cross breed it with a sweet one, not sweet and big. And everybody said, I love my natural corn. There’s nothing natural about it. In fact, in a grocery store, hardly anything exists that existed that way in the wild. And so people just don’t understand that the anti GMO people, do you have any idea what you are eating in this world? It’s all been modified heirloom tomatoes. Yeah. Go find the wild heirloom tomato plant growing in. Go find the herd of wild milk cows. So for me, the corn was a testament to the role of outsmarting nature to serve our palate. That’s why, that’s why I wanted to begin the, begin it with corn. It was, I’m a scientist, how am I gonna get my bit of science in the food lettuce throw down with corn on a big old corn on the co. But it is kind of funny because one, drink the milkshake, drink the milkshake, it’s getting warm cilantro. So I think about this often. If I’m gonna go nine months to Mars. Mm-hmm. That’s about how long it takes. And I can only bring two foods. What would I bring? It would be New York pepperoni pizza and strawberry malted milkshake. I didn’t choose the pizza tonight. Mm-hmm. Because it has pepperoni in it and you have to kill animals for that. And it’s, this is a non and kill animal. No, no Kill animal zone. You would rather have. No, no pizza at all. Then a pepperoni, those pizza, yes. You could have gotten cheese a plain as, as, as you call it. No, I’m talking about gonna Mars. I want the pepperoni on it. Yeah. Gotcha, gotcha. And if you add up the ca the calories and the, the fat, carbohydrates, proteins, it’s a full meal. I might have to supplement with the vitamin every now and then. Uh, that’s what the malt powders for. That’s actually how I knew that you knew ball when it comes to food was the malt in the milkshake. Listen, I, I, I don’t do drugs or anything. I’m like the cleanest person you’ve ever met, not even on your last meal. We spiked everything with Ellaine Neil, we’re going to the moon. No, ’cause because our brain barely works. Just think about it, how wrong we often are about some life experience that just not how it happened. Now you wanna stir chemicals into it so that what it works even less so. No. I wanna be fully aware when I die, what started this was drugs. Mm-hmm. When I consume malt, I have to just pause. And I’m wondering, is that what people feel when they take drugs? Because, I don’t know, I, I, I honestly have never done drugs my entire life. I’ve been, yo you want me to answer? Well, I’m just wondering because the, the malt just, just moves into my bloodstream and I just, I, I just wanna pause and say nothing and hear nothing for at least a minute. So I can then you hear the doors start playing break on through. It’s almost like a drug for me, is what I’m saying. I drink the whole milkshake. Whoa. It was like a drug to me. Whoa. That’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life. This. This is why I would take it to Mars as you should. Do you think you’ll get to Mars? You think he can do it? Nobody’s going to Mars unless there’s a geopolitical reason to do so. I can think of several. Yeah. Elon wants to go to Mars. We’re not gonna Mars, let’s go to Mars. It be two plans that’s not happening. Sure. Unless it’s a vanity project. He’s got enough money. He’s got half a trillion dollars. Yeah. He plus some combination of Bezos can get to Mars as a vanity project. But I’d be pissed off if I were an investor in SpaceX and he’s using his resources that way. ’cause there’s no return on that investment. Yeah, so, so it’s a vanity project. How are we gonna get to Mars? China says We wanna put military bases on Mars. We’re in Mars in nine months. But NASA doesn’t have a vessel that’ll do it. Yeah. Guess what? Elon has a vessel that’ll do it. So if we ride Elon’s rockets to Mars, it’s ’cause tax money paid for it. And even like the commercial application of going to the moon in 69 was to beat global communism, so then we can move Pizza Hut into East Berlin in 1995, it was G Well, no, I mean if McDonald’s, but actually if you track it, right? I mean that’s kind of why we did it. No, no. We did it because we wanted to show the world. The path of freedom over the path of tyranny. And that’s a direct quote from a Kennedy speech. Yeah. And we can tell ourselves, oh, we’re Americans. It’s in our DNA, it’s a beautiful thing. Let’s, let’s go to, you know, we can say that and remember it that way, but that’s not what caused it. And so that’s why in 1972, we looked over our shoulder, no Russians. We’re done, we’re done here. We’re going back now with, uh, project Artemis. Why are we going back now? Yeah, we didn’t stay there in 72. Yeah, we didn’t go back in 80, 19 90 2000, 2010. Why not? China says they want to go back to the moon. So now we’re going back to the moon. We are being reactive, not proactive. Anyhow. So there you have it. Oh, and I, let me serve you, please. Thank, thank you so much. You know the German word for whipped cream? Schlog the best word ever. The best word ever you want from schlog. I like Clem ti. The French word. No, that’s too cl. You need No, I need more. More Schlog whip. That was a slog. That was a, I just slogged your, oh, we’re slogging over. We’re flapping on the slog. There you go. Thank. This is okay. Um, all of this space travel, all of this food, this is all framed by the fact that we are born and then one day we die and we have a lot. Of people. Oh, thank you so much. A lot of people with means billionaires, ultra high net worth individuals who are trying to prolong life indefinitely. Mm-hmm. And I think they’re making at least a little bit of progress in prolonging life. Mm-hmm. I know there’s something called like escape velocity. Mm-hmm. In terms of longevity, where if you can just keep prolonging your life one year by one year, eventually you’ll get to a point where science will have progressed so much that in theory, everlasting life. No, no. One year per year is. Escape velocity. Mm, correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you prolong it one year, every two years, and then as time moves on, it’s, it’s one year, every year and a half. Mm. The moment it hits one year every year, that’s escape velocity. Yes. If given the choice between everlasting life and dying, purely as hypothetical ex exercise, what would you choose? Death. Why now? Maybe on my deathbed, I give you a different answer. Sure. I have come to recognize in myself, especially given my advanced years. That knowledge I’m going to die gives meaning to every day that I’m alive. Mm. It gives purpose, it gives focus. If you live forever, why finish anything today when you can finish it tomorrow? Yeah. Also, if you’re gonna live forever, you would never cross the street. If you live forever, you’re gonna die of some accident. Yeah. Think about that. Hmm. You will die of an accident, not of natural causes if you live forever. When that bus just sneaks up behind you, it takes you out the 80 mile an hour bus. Yeah. Yeah. Wasn’t there a movie that kept going fast? The bus went fast. Speed. Speed. The honor rear Sandra Bullock. Mm-hmm. When your mother passed away, I believe she was 92 years old. No, 92 days before her. 95th birthday. Fifth was her 95th birthday. By count her as 95 in my actuarial tables. But she was a practicing gerontologist. Yeah, she was a housewife. With a high school degree by prior arrangement with my father through empty nest. Mm-hmm. Mostly empty nest. And then she went back to school, studied dermatology, got her master’s, and then worked for the feds and administered money to nursing homes and Yeah. Programs. So yeah. And my father was active in the civil rights movement. And I’m their son, the astrophysicist. I mean, that was just a little, but they kept me anchored in fundamental and important ways. Yeah, I think that’s one of the reasons your, your work means so much to me, and I think to so many other people, is that you do take all this from the heavens and you do distill it down into people very, very well. There was a moment when. You’re talking about the overview effect, and these borders don’t exist in the world, but you had an anecdote about flying an airplane in South Africa and looking down and seeing what you thought was a lake, but it wasn’t. It was Soweto. Yeah. The Southwest township. Yes. Yeah. The townships had no electricity, so at night there are no lights. And it was like, whoa, this is, I’m in a different part of the world here. Not all of the inequities of civilization. Or invisible from space. Yeah, there are, I think you said there are a few exceptions. Another one is the Korean Peninsula. Mm-hmm. You look at that at night. Oh my gosh. South Korea is a blaze with light. North Korea is dark and there’s an exact line between the two. So you get those kind of signatures. There’s a highly disparate, uh, GDP per capita Mm. Across a border. You said flying over Soweto in South Africa was the first time that you felt that maybe mankind doesn’t have the maturity to keep civilization going. Do you still feel that, or is that kind of just younger, less wise? Neil being a little bit dramatic, I am a hopeful realist. Mm-hmm. So. I have strong skepticisms about our wisdom, but I have strong confidence in our ability to realize it, even if it’s a little bit too late, too late to have prevented harm or death or bloodshed or starvation, but not too late to end civilization. So that’s what I feel. That was cautiously optimistic. Mm-hmm. I’ll settle for that. I didn’t say I, I was cautious. Did I say cautious? And I just said, um, no, no, no. You said, uh, um, hopeful. Hopeful. Realist. Hopefully a hopeful realist. Mm-hmm. Not cautiously optimistic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very different. Mm-hmm. I know there’s a Horace Man quote that you’re quite fond of. Yes, I am. Be ashamed to die. Oh, wait, wait. You gotta, there’s a sentence before that, which is very 19th century. And I gotta, you gotta add that in because it, I think he uses the term heed, right? It, it, it elevates. It is like, damn, they had some extra words back then that something didn’t make it into the century. It’s all like, come forth, inhi, y’all it, that ACL’s here, it’s right. I beseech you. There it is, beseech. We need that work. They love beseeching. Back then they had a lot of beseeching, beseeching all the time. A lot of beseeching back then. I beseech you to treasure up in your hearts. These, my parting words, be ashamed to die. Until you have won some victory for humanity. He was feeling it. Now, here’s an interesting fact. Had there been podcasts 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and had you invited me on the podcast, which you wouldn’t have, I would not have been ready for a last meal because I would not have fulfilled that edict of Horace Mann. Hmm. I feel that while I have much more to contribute to this world. That I have already, in fact, satisfied that criterion killing Pluto. Is that big for you? What was the great, what was your greatest victory for humanity? I, I don’t rank it that way. I just think there are people who care about learning, care about science, care about the universe, care about how all that matters. To us all as a species, as a civilization, as a nation. There are people who care and feel that way because of things I’ve said and written. Yeah, absolutely. And I know that ’cause they come up to me and told me, so I’m not just imagining this and what it means, two things. It means somebody’s paying attention to what I put out there. So that’s, that’s fulfilling and it means. I can have a last meal and not feel like, and not feel like I didn’t succeed at that. That’s a double negative. So let me just say, I think at this point in my life I have succeeded so I can die. Yeah. But I don’t want to die. I hope. Yeah. I hope you have a lot of ears left. Well, I know you need to wait for the movie for seven Eaves to come out. Gimme at least that. Gimme another 30 years. How old are you now? 33. Okay. So. A few years ago, you lived your billionth second damn. It happens between your 31st and 32nd birthday. I didn’t even celebrate. I did not mine. You celebrated your billion second tiny little glass of champagne. ’cause it’s just one second. It’s very quick. I can expect to live 3 billion seconds if I die a natural life. That takes me to 94, the age of my mother. Okay. 95. And so that’s when I’m sort of budgeting for my life. And when I’m gonna take social security and when I’m gonna retire, when I’m gonna do that. So that’s, that’s the plan. But I could get hit by a silent bus. You’re all electric. Silent, invisible bus, cyber bus. Okay. Science does it. It’s not linear. We can’t, there might be silent, invisible buses. We don’t know. Uh, what do you think happens when you die? Both from a physical perspective and I suppose the philosophical perspective? For me, it’s easy. We know from stroke victims. People have had mini strokes. Mm-hmm. You slowly disappear. You, you don’t recognize people, you lose your language. You, you don’t remember how to do anything. So everything that we knew, who you to be is just being hacked at by the loss of brain function. So it’s not unrealistic to think that everything about you that matters to anybody. Are is neurosynaptic in your brain? Yeah. And so when you die, all metabolism stops including your brain. I’m not given any reason to think from human physiology and the physics of energy that anything happens to you in death other than a state of non-existence. Is that so bad? I’ve never done it. No, you’ve never done it. Okay, so here it is. I haven’t even tried. Really. Is your state of non-existence before you were born any different from your state of non-existence when you die so different before. Before you were born, you weren’t a year before you were born. Where am I? I gotta be somewhere. Well, how come I, yeah, it was, it was a state of non-existence. But it wasn’t my state of non-existence. It was merely a state. I think once the MA is established is the problem, we fear death because we know only life. That is a quote from Enter the Dragon. Is that Brucely? No, it was Han. Oh. Said it get out more. I know the quotes. I dunno. The movie, if you recognize that if you’re born knowing only life, then in death. You die knowing only death. Yeah. I’m prepared to have no awareness of anything and I’m not afraid of that. Mm. So malt do people know? It’s a, it’s a one of the many sugars maltose. I didn’t even realize that. You’re you, you are foodie. Yeah, but Malta, well hold on, but Mal No, no, don’t have to hold on. No. Malta doesn’t refer to Maltose. Of course it does, but it’s the maltose that have been created from fermenting grain, whatever it comes, I don’t care. It comes up it, I guess so. So guess so. So you have sucrose, dextrose, maltose. It’s one of the, one of the sugars, fruit, you know, fruit toasts from the fruit. Um, and so of those sugars, the maltose affects me like chemically. I said someone, someone Google that I’m pulling, I’m invoking the Joe Rogan closet. Jamie, can you look up? Okay, you have to watch out because can you look up ancient mummy, alien statues? Sorry. Because now when people Google things, it goes to ai and 85% of the time I do that, it’s correct. And about 15, 15% of the time it’s got its head up. Its as, and I only know that ’cause I know what I’m, what it is I’m looking up. Yeah, okay. If you don’t know the answer to what you’re looking up, it’s just the answer. Yeah. But try it for answers. You already know. And so do you think people’s fear in ai or their hope in it being the savior of humanity, do you think either of those are going too far and AI is merely just a helpful tool? Yes, probably. It’s a very helpful tool to everyone. And there’d be some nefarious nedu. Do gooders, what? What’s the word? Nedo? Wellers. No, dwellers not good. Um, we need some guardrails likely in those domains. But we couldn’t do modern natural physics without ai fundamentally participating in the acquisition data reduction and selection of targets. Neil, you ready to get to the lightning round? Oh, sure. Neil was right about maltose. Of course, Neil was right about maltose. It’s been a while since Someone says, I don’t trust what you said. Let me look it up. This is, uh, no, I’m not saying I’m never wrong. I’m just saying it’s, I’m charmed that. Things I might tell you are so extraordinary that you need backup to verify it. What’s the most mind blowing thing right now? Right now? Cards on the table. What’s the most mind blowing thing you can tell me? That’s true. In one centimeter slice of your lower colon lives and works more microbes than the total number of humans who have ever been born, which means to them. All you are is a darkened vessel of anaerobic fecal matter, yet we tell ourselves that we are in charge. If you upset those microbes, they’re in charge. Because you know your distance to the nearest toilet mm-hmm. When that happens, eaten a lot of airport cob salads. So, so this is I a cosmic perspective of a biological sense where you want to think you’re important and you are not as important as you want to believe you are. However, the ingredients of life itself, the hydrogen, the oxygen, the carbon. The nitrogen, they’re forged in the Big Bang and in stars themselves. The fact that we are carrying the elements, we are not just figuratively, but literally stardust, and it’s not simply that we are alive in this universe. The universe is alive within us. That’s the most mind blowing fact. I know. I thought you were gonna talk about corn again. Neil, who’s the one person dead or alive you’d want to share your actual last meal with? I, I’ve recreated in my head of what a conversation with Isaac Newton would be like after a minute of it. I’m so frustrated. I just wanna send them back to where he came from. Uh, and so, hi Newton, welcome. He says, oh, what are those? What are those things outside? I say, oh, those are horse drawn carriages, but without the horses. Well, how did they move? Oh, well, we use gasoline. What’s gasoline? This is stuff nobody knew about In 1686. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then who? Who knows? At the end of it, he might say, oh. Who owns you? Yeah. At which point is that? Get the fuck outta here, Isaac. Yeah. Most people just choose their spouse. A safe joy, you know? Sorry, I curse word there. Uh, what song do you wanna be played at your funeral? Come Sail Away By Sticks. That song’s about an alien abduction. Really? Yep. Oh, sick. You were born on October 5th? Yes. What’s the most Libra thing about you? Wow. The most Libra thing. I have to know what Libras are like. I don’t know. Well, it’s whatever you dar, I, it has scales. The most Libra thing about me, here it is, the, the two brightest stars in the constellation, Libra have the longest names of any name star in the sky. That’s the most Libra thing about me. That’s very Libra. Don’t you wanna know what those names are? What are they? Zubin Nubi and Zubin Ali sounds sexy like a vlog, and I’m betting most Libras don’t know that. What’s your biggest fear? I fear that the human intellect. Is insufficient to completely comprehend the universe. Mm. And we’re just sort of clawing at the side of an elephant, not realizing that it’s an elephant. And I will quote Isaac Newton. I’m gonna mangle this quote, but you’ll get the sense of it. It’s sometimes I imagine I’m just a little child, a little boy on a seashore picking up one shell and one rock because it’s shinier than the next. While the great ocean of undiscovered truths lay before me, as brilliant as he was, he’s wondering whether it’s just a drop in the bucket. Finally, Neil, are you happy? Based on conversations I’ve had with many people. I am one of the happiest people I’ve met. This, this, it’s all relative. There’s some unhappy people out there. Neil, this is the pleasure of a lifetime dude. Truly, if you wanna deliver your last words to that camera right there, I remain insatiably curious in life and in death chair. Everyone check out just visiting this planet. You got anything else to plug, Joe? Where’s the book? But, oh, I have the, the book. He’s sitting, sitting on the book. Holy shit. I was using the book as a toast the entire time. Everything else, everything else is, I got the strawberry, the, the malt. Hey, do you know what’s maltose is actually the sugar that makes Mal tastes like that. Wow. Thank you for that. Join the Mythical Society, third degree quarterly or annual now to get the mythical clue game.