298. Neil deGrasse Tyson — Starry Messenger (1)
298. Neil deGrasse Tyson — Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization
1 (9s):
You're listening to the Michael Scher show. Hello everyone.
Wondrium (16s):
It's Michael Schermer and it's time for another episode of the Michael Schermer show brought to you by WDR WDRE is a series of college level, audio and video courses and documentaries produced and distributed by the teaching company. You know them. I always talk about them. I have two courses myself on skepticism, 1 0 1 and conspiracies onem brings you engaging educational content through short form videos, long form courses, tutorials, how to lessons, travel logs, documentaries, and more covering every topic you've ever wondered about. And many you've never thought you'd wondered about how about this one, the middle ages. Here's what I'm taking right now. It's called the medieval legacy.
Wondrium (58s):
Take it fascinating and eyeopening journey into the middle ages while you uncover the remarkable ways in which the medieval world still influences our thinking, our collective consciousness and our ways of life. Indeed, really? The dark ages, no one at the time thought they were living in the dark ages, right? I mean, be like somebody 500 years from now saying, oh, those people in the 21st century, they were living in the dark ages. Of course we don't have any idea what they're gonna think about us. But as you could tell, we don't think we're living in the dark ages. Okay. So here's a few of the lectures on this one. This is by the way, 36, 30 minute lectures. Of course the black death is featured prominently in there. The medieval invention of race, Western mark.
Wondrium (1m 40s):
Interesting since race is such a huge issue for us medievalism and modern racism. Ah, that's probably what's actually going on here. Same thing with rediscovering, medieval sex and gender with the people 500 years ago have asked the same kind of questions we ask today about race and gender. Interesting. We'll see medieval invention of purgatory. Write this place between your life now. And then when you pass, you go where heaven or hell may be purgatory. Well, that's not in the Bible. Exactly. So how did that get invented right there in the middle ages? So check it out. If you go to one.com/shermer, you get a free trial for two weeks and 20% off the annual subscription rate, the subscription, by the way, gets you access to all their content online, which is great.
Wondrium (2m 29s):
You just stream it. And while you're multitasking doing things, you can educate yourself through this great resource fond of saying that the podcast here is a free, in a sense, you have the entire episode without any ads in it. And so your contribution to this podcast would be to go to wadham.com/shermer and sign up. That's why they support the podcast because people do that. W O N D R I U m.com/shermer. Check it out.
1 (3m 3s):
All right. Thanks for listening. Here's the episode. Hi, everybody. It's time for another episode of the Michael Shermer show. I'm your host, Michael Shermer, the publisher of this skeptic magazine. Here's the print edition, which you can get in any fine bookstores everywhere. Plus skeptic.com. This is the previous issue. First one for the year on trans matters. Then the last issue was on abortion matters. The next one is on race matters, comes out this week. And then after that we have nationalism matters. So we're hitting some of the non-controversial topics in culture today.
1 (3m 47s):
For those of you watching this, you'll notice the rotating artwork behind me. This is from pat Lindsay's covers of the magazine from decades past here is the let's Copernicus in honor of my guest today. There's the cover for Copernicus. We did one on witch's tics and scientists and the whole scientific revolution tribute to pat. There she is. We paid tribute to her. She passed last summer, and that was the issue we did on aliens. Neil, we put an alien in an elevator there and there is there's pat Lindsay right there. So obviously my guest today needs no introduction, but I don't know why people say that because everyone deserves an introduction and you even read your own introduction in your book.
1 (4m 27s):
So I figured that's cool. Neil Degrass, Tyson of course, an astrophysicist and the author of the number one best selling astrophysics for people in a hurry among other books. He's the director of the Hayden planetarium at the American museum of natural history where he serves since 1996, Dr. Tyson is also the host and co-founder of the Emmy nominated popular podcast, StarTalk, and it spinoff StarTalk sports edition. I haven't heard that yet. I check that out, which combines science humor and pop culture. He's the recipient of 21 honorary doctorates, the public welfare metal from the national academy of sciences and a distinguished public service medal from NASA, pastor 13, 1 2, 3 Tyson is named in his honor and he lives in New York city.
1 (5m 8s):
Neil. Nice to see you again. I finished your book yesterday. Of course you read it and love your voice. And, and I have to say, you guys have the best covers, you know, when you walk into a bookstore, the astronomy books and book by people like you have the coolest covers. I, I think because of that, we totally
2 (5m 25s):
Do. And even just on the binding, you can, you can check it from a distance that that's the astronomy section as all the books that's right together. Yeah, yeah,
1 (5m 34s):
Yeah. Yeah. So starring messenger, this is something a different for you. You you're, you're kind of stepping into cultural, social, political issues. That's a little unusual for you. Are these essays that have been published elsewhere? Are these all original for this book or what's the story
2 (5m 50s):
Behind this book? Everything's original. And it was, it was just stating my entire life. Mm. The, the moment I became scientifically literate, well, it wasn't a moment, but it was over a period of time, but it was very early in my life beginning at age like 9, 10, 11, I would say I was fully scientifically literate entering middle school. I started noticing things about the world that were just not right behavior of adults. They'd say really do they really think that they really wanna do that? They really, and, and, and I, I started gathering these observations that have been sort of gestating within me and that all just got birthed a year ago.
2 (6m 30s):
It was, it had to come out. It was like, it was done. I was done simply observing it. And it was time to communicate what these observations are. And it's what the world look, what civilization society looks like when you are scientifically literate. And it looks completely different when you assess all the ways. And by the way, you're in the middle of it, of course, in the skeptics universe. And I, I sort of orbit your universe if I allow me to speak in those terms, and this book is a, I don't wanna quite call it a primer, but it's a, if you wanna see if you wanna step into the mind and body of someone who is scientifically literate and, and in my case also Astro, physically literate.
2 (7m 16s):
So you get a sort of a cosmic perspective folded in, you will now then see what the world looks like. And it tackles all the, the hot buttons, just like you, you gave in your, in your sequence of covers, you're just jumping into the fire with race and gender and abortion. And, and I can say that science has things to say about that, that people might be interested in.
1 (7m 39s):
Yeah. So let's see how far we can push with that and what the differences are. So for example, you go through examples from astronomy, you know, that we understand the age of the universe or how stars operate, whatever we have laws of nature. But to what extent can you do that in society and politics? So, you know, what's the right number for income tax. What's the right percentage of immigrants we should allow in, you know, is pro-life or pro-choice the correct position that seems to me radically different. Is, is it just quantitatively different? They're just harder problems. And we need to dig in farther in social sciences, art, or is it qualitatively different?
1 (8m 20s):
And we're really talking about different kinds of truths.
2 (8m 23s):
Yeah, that's a great question. That, so the run of chapters in the book are, are take you down that path, right? There's there's race and color, there's gender and identity. There's, there's even meat eaters and vegetarians. Those are waring factions. We've seen over the years and other chapters truth and beauty life and death, conflict and resolution. So I, what I wanna make it clear is that this book is not a, a trove of opinions that I'm handing people. What it attempts to do is say, if you think this, have you thought about it as deeply as you could have, or as broadly as you might have.
2 (9m 9s):
And if you did, would you then still think about it the way you do? And so it's really just trying to up the, the, the capacity for people to assess the world around them, a few notches in the realm of what science has long hard earned the methods and tools of science are exquisitely tuned to establish what is objectively true in the world. And that needs to be recognized at some level, if we're gonna make laws that apply to everyone you can't or shouldn't, I wouldn't think make laws that only issue forth from some people's understanding of a truth that may come from their religion, their culture, their, their, their, their meditation, whatever.
2 (9m 56s):
At some point, you're gonna have to say in a pluralistic society, I'm gonna create a law, whatever, whatever society needs that law to be, but that law must be based on objective truths without it it's, it's a recipe for the unraveling of an informed democracy,
1 (10m 13s):
Right? So the epigram from your book, I really liked, let me read that from Edgar Mitchell hall of 14, astronaut, you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation and 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 wanna grab a politician by this Scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter million miles out and say, look at that you son of a bitch. Okay. So, you know, national borders or national borders are obviously arbitrary. And yet maybe one group of people that says, well, you know, this is our country. This is our nation. And this is our policy on abortion.
1 (10m 54s):
If you don't like it, or immigration or taxation or whatever, you move somewhere else, you know, like we're in Norway, we want a high rate of taxation because we think we should have a, a tight social safety net and everybody's taken care of, and you can go live in America. If you want, where you have a looser, social safety net and lower taxes, just take your pick. So with those people,
2 (11m 13s):
Right, I don't, I don't pass. I don't pass judgment on those. There's there's in, in a, in a free democracy and free might you have to sit down and define that at some level, freedom might mean different things to different people, but let's take it in the sort of the simplest understanding where you're free to think what you want and behave in ways that do not subtract from the freedoms of others. I think that's a pretty standard way. We might think of freedoms in a free and pluralistic society. People should get together and figure out what laws they want to pass. And, but if you do pass a law, it should, for the, for the, as a foundation, be based on some kind of evidence to justify what it is you're doing, right?
