Exploring the Cosmos of Curiosity and Empathy w/ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

😃 🙌 We are thrilled to have the renowned astrophysicist, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, join us for a fascinating conversation. Today, we will be exploring some thought-provoking topics that are sure to ignite your curiosity and inspire your mind. From mining curiosity within yourself to the role of science in civilization, we'll delve into some important and timely issues. Neil will share his insights on how to get anchored in empathy, an education on communication from an astrophysicist, and how we can all wake up to the challenges facing our society. We'll also discuss the importance of searching for truth and how we have more in common than we think. So sit back, relax, and get ready for a cosmic journey into the depths of our collective consciousness. This is an episode you won't want to miss!

🤔 What We Discuss with Neil:

 - Mining Curiosity Within Yourself

- Getting Anchored in Empathy

- An Education on Communication from an Astrophysicist 

- A Wakeup Call for Civilization

- Empathy from a Cosmic Context

- The Role of Science in Civilization

- Searching for Truth

- We Have More in Common Than we Think

🌟 About Neil:

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and the author of the #1 bestselling Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, among other books. He is the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, where he has served since 1996. Dr. Tyson is also the host and cofounder of the Emmy-nominated popular podcast StarTalk and its spinoff StarTalk Sports Edition, which combine science, humor, and pop culture. He is a recipient of 21 honorary doctorates, the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences, and the Distinguished Public Service Medal from NASA. Asteroid 13123 Tyson is named in his honor. He lives in New York City.

🙏 Thanks, Dr. Tyson! Reach out, connect, and follow Dr. Tyson:  

-       https://twitter.com/neiltyson

-       https://www.instagram.com/neildegrassetyson/

🌟 Resources Mentioned in the Podcast: 

⁃       All of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Content, Books, and Podcast can be found on his website HERE: https://neildegrassetyson.com/

Pre-Order my Latest Book: "Unbreakable Alliances: A Spy Recruiters Authoritative Guide to Cultivating Powerful & Lasting Connections" HERE

Unlocking the Power of Trust: Keynote Speaker Robin Dreeke Shares Secrets to Creating Allies - Robin is the former Chief of the FBI's Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program. With over 30 years of experience in recruiting spies and building trust, Robin is the world-renowned speaker you need. Don't miss out on the opportunity to learn from a true expert. Contact us now to book your event! Click HERE to book a time to chat.

🤔 Take Robin's FREE YouTube Keys to Communication Online Course HERE.

😃 Check out Robin's Speaking, and Training Services HERE.

Transcript

Neil: 0:06

So yeah, so my, my motivation is why do anything unless you can improve at it, and I, I'm a servant of the public's cosmic curiosity.

Robin: 0:20

I am thrilled to have the renowned astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson join me for a fascinating conversation. We explore some thought-provoking topics that are sure to ignite your curiosity and inspire your mind. From mining curiosity within yourself to the role of science and civilization. We'll delve into some important and timely issues. So sit back, relax, and get ready for a cosmic journey into the depths of our collective consciousness. This is an episode you won't. Want to miss? Welcome to the Forged by Trust podcast. I'm your host, Robin Dreeke, professional speaker, executive coach, former US Marine spy recruiter, bestselling author, and your trust and communication expert. Coming up next on the Forged By Trust podcast.

Neil: 1:00

What, what is civilization, if not the collective effort to overcome what would otherwise be primal, basal instincts of survival of our species. We have civilization to overcome that and why not put in some effort to, to embrace those forces that lift us from the gutters, the gutters of evolution. You claiming something is true. Is it really? How about from this direction? From that way from above, from from the side. We do that with each other's ideas and hypotheses and theories that are put forth out of respect for each other. We do that. We don't just take it for granted that what you're saying is true. I wanna make sure what you're saying is true.

Robin: 1:50

The Forged By Trust podcast is a show where we explore the essential skill of forging trust for building an innovative culture and exceptional leadership. Join us as we delve into the behavior, skills and communication techniques required for success and learn from the best in the industry. Our guests include spies, spy recruiters, master interrogators, bestselling authors, thought leaders, and innovators who will share their insights on building teams, partnerships, and exceptional leadership by 4G Trust. As your host, a global behavior expert and master spy recruiter, I will guide you through the process of building authentic connections based on trust. Stop settling for less and learn how to master communication skills you need to move beyond transactional relationships and into mutually beneficial collaboration and partnerships. Whether you're a student entrepreneur, c-suite executive, or parent forging trust is the key to unlocking your potential. Today's episode, exploring the Cosmos of Curiosity and Empathy is with the world renowned astrophysicist, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and the author of the number one best-selling astrophysics for People in a Hurry among other books, he is the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. Where he has served since 1996. Dr. Tyson is also the host and co-founder of the Emmy nominated popular podcast, StarTalk and it's spinoff, StarTalk Sports Edition, which combines science, humor, and pop culture. He is a recipient of 21 Honorary Doctorates, the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences, and the distinguished public Service medal from NASA. Asteroid. 1, 3, 1 2, 3. Tyson is named in his honor and he lives in New York City with his wife. During the episode today, we talk about mining curiosity within yourself, getting anchored in empathy and education on communication from an astrophysicist, a wake up call for civilization, empathy from a cosmic context, the role of science and civilization searching for truth, and we have more in common than we think. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Wow. If my face is just exploding with smiles, I apologize. I can't, I can't thank you enough for

Neil: 4:00

joining me. Your face is distorted with smiles. Don't the way. That's a

Robin: 4:04

good way to put it. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your profound wisdom on the universe at at large. You know, and we have a very small window of, of time on the cosmic calendar, as you'd love to say. And when you said you'd be honored or honored. That's I'm putting words in your mouth when you said it was okay to come on the show, and I read Starry Messenger. It profoundly impacted me because here you are, this world renowned astrophysicist, one of the world's greatest communicators of complex knowledge for all of us. And that was the most profound book on empathy I think I've ever read. Hmm. And I've read a lot of behavior books and I, your ability to give context to humanity through that cosmic perspective and become that Starry messenger was really profound. So I have my one question I'd love to start the journey on, so you talk about the Big Bang. Very much in your life. And so I'm very curious about the Big bang that went, ha what happened in Neil deGrasse Tyson's Life. And you've written about when you were nine years old and visited the Hayden Planetarium, I think it was nine that I read. And it kind of inspired you for this path and this arc in life that you took. What I'm curious about is what was going on at the same time? Cause we can have all the ingredients for life and then that soup as you called it, but without something extra, without something going on there, life doesn't happen. And so you, we had the event of visiting the Hayden Planetarium, but what else was going on in life that kind of sparked it at that moment? As well as combining that, not just with the world of desire to be this astrophysicist scientist, which is a very structured order mind. But then when and where did that combination of skillsets to communicate that to the rest of the world happen?

Neil: 5:56

Go. Yeah. So I want to back up for a minute cause there's a lot to unpack in that question. One of them is you are presuming that every important thing that happens in a person's life is the product of some assault on their life. Could be positive or negative, could be some, some immersion, some force operating. And some things happen smoothly and gently. And yes, they're tipping points sure. But at tipping points rarely happen in a vacuum. So my family, brother and sister and parents growing up would visit you know, we'd go on trips, I mean, small trips, big trips on the weekends. And it felt like every weekend, but it was probably, maybe only once or twice a month. And those trips would include visits to the cultural institutions of the city. I grew up in New York City, in the Bronx, so we would take trips to the Bronx Zoo, the aquarium, the art museum, the science museum, the Natural History Museum. We would also go to participate in the arts. So we would, we would see Broadway plays, Broadway musicals, operas the symphony and this as kids. As kids, we get like the cheapest seats there is in the back. I always wondered why the seats for us was always like, the back wall was right behind us. Why, why was there nothing closer? But this was, when we think about it, this was kind of a baptism, right, of exposure to what talented grownups do. And by the way, it included sporting events. Okay. So it was just, these were events I would later learn after I had kids that this was surely tactics to make us very tired by the time we got home. Took us outta the equation. No,

Robin: 7:58

no. Profound

Neil: 7:58

design behind it. Yeah, there's a whole, there's a grand design for sure, because you don't want kids on the weekend running up and down the house at 10:00 PM you want them flat out by eight at the latest. So, so I so the, the point is by, in doing so, if you do this during the period of one's life as a kid, where you still have a native curiosity by just being a human kid, then all of these trips, it's, you're not old enough to say, well, I don't like this, so I don't like that you're not really old enough, you're. To, to form a strong opinion. It's all just, oh, that's, I'd never seen that before. What is that? Okay. And in, so do I. The trip to the Hayden Planetarium, my local planetarium happened to happen to be singular among the visits that we were taking on week on weekends. Singular for me, but not for my brother and sister. My brother instead was deeply influenced by visits to the art museums. He's an artist today. He teaches art and paints and, and does artsy things to this day. All right? And by the way, while there, he had attended the high School of Music and Art New York City, something that was I don't know if New York City was the first to do it, but it did it successfully to have specialized high schools that can foster and nurture. Interests expressed by high school kids. If you happen to have such an interest that early in your life, I would ultimately attend the Bronx High School of Science, another public school that specialized. My sister wasn't particularly Interested in any of that, although she liked horses and she ultimately became a mounted ranger for Central Park cos for people. So this will affect where you like horses and you love the city. So you get on a horse and show people the city. I mean, just when you think of all the possible ways you can invoke combinations of talent, combinations of interests that you might carry in your life it's almost limitless. Provided you keep looking right, nothing's gonna knock on your door. So, so I don't, so my point is, it's not that, oh, this one time I went to the planetary, it was, it, no, we were going to institutions every weekend. So, so that, that's the soup. All right? And, and so the, that's the, the landscape on which my interest manifests for the universe. So in that sense, it wasn't a singular moment. Where someone knocks on my door or I get hit on the head and, and say, Eureka. No. It was part of a, part of a part of a, a, a portfolio of activities and one of which rose above the rest

Robin: 11:00

hears about your parents a little bit in this. That's unusual to have a, a couple of parents. Can you hit that curiosity spark in there? And a lot of times when we hit that age of nine years old and we ask a lot of why questions and and pa adults get tired of us asking the why questions. That curiosity starts getting stamped a little bit, but it doesn't sound like your parents were doing that. So what background did your father and mother come from that they kept allowing that to

Neil: 11:29

flourish? Yeah. So There that it nev that's not the relationship. So, so what you describe is of course, very common. Kids say, why is this mommy, why that mommy, daddy, da, da da, da. And then the, then the parents like, do their best until they can't. Right. And then it's like, shut up, kids sit down. You know, that's the old saying. You, you spend the first year of your kids' life teaching them to walk and talk, and then the rest of the lives tell'em to shut up and sit down. So, right. So you wanna put some so my parents, my interest in science was very different from my parents' interests. Mm-hmm. My father studied sociology and worked in the city government under Mayor Lindsay during the most turbulent. Years of the Civil Rights Movement going into the sixties in the big cities. That is, which included the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy and the campus unrest, this sort of thing. My mother was a housewife over that time by prior arrangement, so that she was home every time we got home from school. Right. And dinner was on the table. She did all the housewife things that Housewives did in the fifties and sixties. And by prior arrangement, once we were mostly empty nest, she would go back to school, which she did, and got a degree in gerontology and then a master's in that even. And then worked for the feds at the health and Human services department. Administering grant money to nursing homes and other sort of agencies that could benefit from programmatic. Support. So that was the household I grew up in, which meant that when I'm having problems with my math or physics or whatever, they're not. That's, that's the help is not coming from them. And my earliest questions about nature, the help was not coming from them. So what did we do? Well, my parents, my mother especially I didn't even know about this. In, in bookstores, there's a huge, back then, not so much today, but back then, huge table of remainder books, right. Remainder. What does that mean? Well, you know, the, the warehouse was too full. The, the publisher overestimated sales and so now it's taken up space. So they shake the tree and whatever books fall outta the tree, go onto this table and they're deeply marked down. They just want to get them the hell outta everywhere they are. So these are books, which back then might have been$15, but were on sale for 50 cents. Right. 75 cents a dollar tops. So my parents and like my mother especially cuz she had the time to do this, if she saw a book remotely related to anything, that was the expression of my curiosity. She bought it. She didn't know what was in it. She did, she just bought it. Wow. She bought it. So by the time I was in middle school, I am sure I had the largest library of books. Fulfilling my interest of anybody. I, I know this complete cause I visited friends' homes, right? I know there's no books. I had math books I had, and there were different levels cuz she didn't know, right? So I'd have to find the one that fit me, but I would grow within that. Right? And so, no, they were not answering the questions, but they were creating an environment in which I could find the answers to the questions. And if you tap the curiosity of someone in that way, While they're, have the energy to find an answer, then you can transition from the parents knowing everything to you, no longer being curious. You can transition to have that curiosity be sustained by all the other sources of information that can be supplied to you. Today, it's, it's YouTube, it's documentary, it's a lot of online material, but of course that's mixed with pseudoscience and, you know, and, and, and, and untruths and things. So you, you need some sensibility to filter what is real from what is not. Back then, of course, to get a book published was, it's a threshold, right? Not that there wasn't crap published, but to get through editors and everything that you, that took some convincing. So, so that's how, that's kind of my origin story there. And my, my interest from age nine was, was I was able to sustain it. And, and foster it and nurture it by further visits to the planetary where they offered courses. They offered you know, beyond, you know, you can go to museum a few times and you exhaust the, the, the exhibits, right? Cuz they're just static things. But if they're programs that are offered as many institutions do public talks festivals, this sort of thing that's what I participated in and it kept me going through high school right up before I went to college. So now until you just, you asked it, but I, let me bring it in right now because it would probably come up again. My, I was socialized by my parents, so they were, they you know, had dinner parties and if we were upper class, They probably would've appeared a lot in the social light pages, right? As host of a thing, but we were like middle class. And so with the middle class version of that, right? So every couple of weeks there was a dinner party and, and there was a full preparation of food and there was the conversation and who we were inviting and when and why and how often. And so I'm exposed to this, the, the human interactions. Plus if you're sociologist, as was my father and a gerontologist later as my mother, these are inherently fields that concern themselves with the human condition. And so whatever level of empathy, sympathy, like thinking, caring about the plight of others is entirely traceable to them. There's no way that could have happened by my reading my astrophysics books, right? So I like to say, yeah, my head was in the skies, but my, my, I was anchored. I've been anchored ever since.

Robin: 17:43

What a profound origin story and, and soup that your parents created. Soup.

Neil: 17:50

Primordial soup. Yes. Yes, it

Robin: 17:51

was. And one last question before we move forward. Your ability to have this awareness is also remarkable. Where do you think your ability to be that self-aware about this background and be reflective in this open, honest way where yourself came from? Well,

Neil: 18:07

that's a very important question for every, for anybody and everybody. For me, I don't claim to have always been self-aware. I mean, this is, you know, this is the role of counselors, right? To say, well, you did this, but did you really know why you did it? Or what's behind it? And that, you know of course there was a day when counseling was, what's wrong with you? You know, you got some illness and that would get in the way. Now it's almost a. A point of pride about that. If you're the only one in a group that hasn't been to a counselor, what's wrong with you? You know, do you, are you, are you in denial of so? But I can say that successful social interactions involves not only some awareness and sensitivity to the thoughts and feelings and emotions of who you're communicating with, but also to your own thoughts and feelings and how is what you're saying and what you're doing, how is that affecting other people? And are you self-aware of this? And if you're not, then you could be sort of this bulldozer through the world harming people and not even knowing. And what's interesting is if you harm people and don't know it, they will think you know it and that you're doing it on purpose. Right? And even if you're not. So your, your ignorance can be perceived as, as purposefully callous, and that creates levels of tension that are unnecessary if you were just a little more self-aware. So, so I can say what keeps feeding this in my later years is as an educator, I want to be effective, right? As my father said his whole life, and I didn't really understand it when I was a kid till I had to get a little older. He said, it's not good enough to be right, however you define right. It's not good enough to be right. You also have to be effective. And so, you know, you take a look at the, the cesspool that is today's social media and people righteously declaring things and, but doing it in a way that offends other people or makes them dig their heels in more strongly. So then what are you accomplishing? You're just being divisive. Is there some other way you can communicate your ideas that doesn't start a fight that this is Yeah. If might makes Right. You know, to quote a line from a film if might makes Right Then love has no place in this world. So at some point you have to have that conversation with some sense of awareness and empathy for who you're communicating with in some sort of tactical way to be convincing. Cuz if you're not, then go home. And so, so as an educator, I'm always thinking how are they receiving this phrase, this word, the tone, my gestures, particularly if I'm giving a public talk, my you know, my humor. If I think I. Something's funny and nobody's laughing, then it's not funny. It doesn't matter what. It's so, so, so like, let's get real here. All right. I can't tell them what's your problem? That was funny. No, that's, that sentence should never happen. Alright. And curiously, as, as I said, as much of a cesspool as social media can be, Twitter in particular, when I do post things there and I see instantly what people think of the post, that is hugely valuable to me. Yes. As, as a resource for communicating. Like I said, if I use a word and no one knows what the word means, I shouldn't use the word. I'm not communicating. I'm just showing off that I have a bigger vocabulary than you do. And what good is that if I'm trying to communicate right? So it shapes what words I choose. Like I said, the phrasing, it tunes what. I think is funny because I wanted to match what you think is funny. Otherwise, like I said, it's not funny. If it's insightful, if I I learned words. Okay. People will say so, or I learn the beginnings of a movement. Cause I'll see multiple responses. They'll say, Hey, wait a minute, that's anti whatever. I, what, what? And I Google it. Oh my gosh, there's a whole thing going on. So, so this is an active investment of time and energy, right? And part of me says, I'd rather just go to Bahamas, you know, but if I'm gonna be an educator, I can either talk to the chalkboard and have you meet me 90% of the way there, or I face you from the front of the room and if I face you, then I, it's incumbent upon me to gap that distance as much as is sensible. Given however number of people are in the room and what the subject matter is, only then can I really count myself among the ranks of the those who communicate rather than those who just lecture. What inspired

Robin: 23:13

you to take this scientific method and apply it to being an educator?

Neil: 23:21

No. Once you're a scientist, everything is the scientific, there's, yeah, it's, I'm seeing that There's no doubt. Let me take this and apply it there. No, it is a way of life. It is a way of thinking. It is a, it is a lens, as I say, I think in the preface right of starry messenger. It is a lens through which you observe all that unfolds around you. And my wife is, has a PhD in mathematical physics. And we have very at times we have very efficient conversations about testing whether something is true or not. All right. Or, or, or whether an idea has merit. Well, you test it, you don't argue about it. You don't slam a door because you are gonna be right for being louder than you're other person. That's not, that's not how you resolve disputes. You, you test it. So you go testing and you, you propose a test, do the experi, okay, you were right or I was wrong, or we're both wrong or we're both right, right. And so, so it's not, it's not a matter of taking a special tool and applying it. The tool is, I carry it with me in my utility belt the way Batman carries all of his I never knew how he always had the exact right tool for his. And I counted how many pockets are on his utility belt. Few were fewer pockets and occasion that he went into the pocket. So I knew there was some shenanigans going on there. But the, the principle is very real. You wanna be ready for whatever you confront. And

Robin: 24:57

what inspired the, the teaching aspect of your life to such a profound degree. I mean, people want to teach. And then there's, there's you.

Neil: 25:05

Well, thank you for that. I, I, it's, it's not so, you know, I wish I could say it's as noble as it sounds. It's not like I started a life saying I want to be a teacher. Right? I want to teach the, no, it's not that. Cuz like I said, I'd ra I'd really just would rather stay home and go to the beach. Okay? That's what I'd rather do. So you guys, why do I do it? All right. I think that's what it comes down to here. Sure. And part of it is that my field is primarily supported by tax money. All right? So much of what we do is fed through grants from NASA or the National Science Foundation. These are branches of budget established by the White House, approved by Congress, approved and modified if by vote, by Congress. And so at some point, I have an obligation to you, the taxpayer, to let you know what I'm doing, and you have the right to expect one or more of us to deliver it to you. So a part of me is driven by the duty and the obligation of that. Now, if I'm going to do it, why not be as good at it as I can be? Right? All right. So it's not like just because I want to be on the beach doesn't mean I don't want to be good at what I do. When I'm not on the beach, I'm really good at just laying on the beach. I'm perfect at that. But if I'm tasked for other things it doesn't. So, so I'll give an example. I'll give a public talk and two common responses. One of them is, oh, you are having a good time up there on, you know, at the front of the room or on the stage. Okay? That's one. Another one is you are working hard up there to a person. That's second comment comes from teachers, right? They see the effort involved, they understand how much energy I'm investing in that effort. And that is my highest compliment when the teacher comes up to me and says that. So so I, I try to be good at it because why do it at all, right? If, why do anything at all if you don't do it with. Intensity or with a goal to be as good at it as you can be short of it's subtracting time and energy from other things that you want to be better at. Of course there's a life balance there, right? So but the people who say, oh yeah, I'm going to do this and I gotta go appear on camera, whatever. And, you know, if they don't make eye contact or they're not enthusiastic, as enthusiastic as I know they can be, and they're all just stoic on ca, it's like, what do you, what's the point? Why are you even doing this and work at it. Look at yourself in the mirror. Get someone to film you and test yourself. And, and by the way, these are capital investments in. Who and what you can be. You only do that once you say, I can improve this. Right. Let me smile a little more often in front of the camera. Raise my eyebrows. Show that you are enthusiastic about your own work. Cuz if you're not, or you don't come across as being, so how do you expect anybody else to be that way? Absolutely. So yeah, so my, my motivation is why do anything unless you can improve at it, and I, I'm a servant of the public's cosmic curiosity. I love that.

Robin: 28:45

All right, so we'll gen, we'll venture forward a little bit on the cosmic calendar. Okay. In our, in our pinpoint of it, one of the things I, I, I love and now, and thank you for that too, I understand a lot more where the, the combination of the empathy, the teaching, and the, and the science comes from. One way you kicked off the book, I thought was really good, and you called it a wake up call for humanity and civilization. Before we start diving into some of the content, what's, what do you mean by the wake up call? What do we need A wake up call

Neil: 29:17

from? A wake up call. You know, what is that anymore? Let me remind people. There's a day before smartphones where you can, you imagine you'd be in a hotel room and the hotel room might have an alarm clock, but every alarm clock is different and you never get it right. So you'd call the front desk and say, I'd like a wake up call. And they say, what time? I say it's seven 30 or at 7 45. And some of them it's automated. Others at an actual human being is there. But the phone would ring in your room, it would wake you up. You would, and then, so you might sometimes ask for a second wake up call in case you slept through the first. So that's a literal wake up call that used to be common for travelers. So now we have a figurative wake up call for. Civilization. And we can ask on what path is civilization? Where is it taking us into the future? And there are several wake up calls one could cite, but the one featured, the many featured in Starry Messenger, subtitled, cosmic perspectives on civilization is what are you doing in civilization? And is it in the best interest of your health, your wealth, your security, or the health and wealth security of a nation or of the species? Is it in the best interest? And it turns out in this, the 21st century, things that are in the our collective best interest tend to pivot on scientific issues, on energy and climate and pollution. And you know, so how about poverty? Well, does poverty lend itself to a scientific solution? Maybe, maybe. I'll give you an example. If a certain percentage of homeless people have mental illness and science can address mental illness in ways that eradicates this, then you have lifted some number of people off the streets, right? Just by curing a mental illness that may be a kind of mental illness that might be prevalent among those who could not hold down a job or had other kinds of socially regressive conduct behavior within our society. So, so science, I think, ultimately can benefit everything based on what science has already done to benefit civilization. So the wake up call is, you're doing this. But you realize that if you looked at it through this science lens first, what you thought was a problem isn't, and if you knew the consequences of your actions, you wouldn't do it because it'll affect, if not you, the next generation to be born. And your grandchildren will hate you for decisions you made that were out of the ignorance of your selfishness rather than out of the foresight of the science you could have applied. And on top of this, for most scientific discoveries, there's a risk. The risk is if it gets in the hands of bad people, bad actors. What? Every time I say bad actors, I wonder if in Hollywood they're saying, no, we're good actors. Why does their profession get brought into this? But we'll see what we post. Nuclear weapon is a bad actor.

Robin: 32:41

We'll see what we post. Whether this goes viral on that or not. And then we know I had another science experiment done.

Neil: 32:47

We need a different word cuz it, it, it, I don't know bad players, I don't know. So for almost every scientific discovery, there are ways to abuse or to use it in nefarious ways. And so we need a, a level of wisdom in tandem with the scientific developments to properly harness the power that we wield. And without that civilization, teeters on the brink of disaster. And you know, there are many concerned about AI today. I'm less concerned, but that's fine. The as Ray Bradberry said once upon being asked, well, the science fiction author, why do you write about future apocalypse is like, what do you think? That's where humanity is headed. And he says, no, I don't write about it. Cuz I think that's where we're going. I write about it to make sure, you know, to avoid it. Right. So I thought that was brilliant. So a scientific lens can highlight for people where their steps are leading if you do not otherwise have the vision to see that far ahead. And so that's the wake up call. And just to be clear, starry Messenger as the primary title of the book, that's a, that's borrowed from Galileo. One of his first books was Starry Messenger, and it doesn't refer to me. I'm not the messenger. I know the mess These are. How much have we learned about the universe stars? Basically, the universe is composed mostly of stars of stuff you can see of stars and this dark matter, dark energy and cool other stuff and black holes. But stars is a nice metaphor here, hidden in starlight that took centuries and even millennia to decode is information about the past, present, and future of the universe and how the universe works and the laws of physics and the laws of chemistry and what especially what is our place in the universe that the molecules and atoms that comprise the molecules of our body were forged in the hearts of stars that exploded billions of years ago, scattered that enrichment into gas clouds that. Formed subsequent generations of star systems, including ours. So when you look up and you say, I am alive in this universe, that's true. But it's also true that the universe is alive within you. And you're not just a, a, a distant observer of the universe You are participant in a great unfolding of cosmic events. And so the power of a cosmic perspective allows you to transcend whatever tribal forces are leading you into conflict with others of your country or your, it is just somebody, a different reli who, who they worship, who they sleep with, what their skin color is, what their disabilities are, what their, whatever these on earth. When that's all you see. Feel like the most important reasons to not like someone. Alright. And then you step back and say, wait, wait. You're all one species on this frail orb, this third rock from the sun. That's a drift in the, in the vacuum dark of space. And you're down on earth killing one another for why is that? Really, really? Oh, okay. Have you thought about that? And the consequences of it and or the reasons behind it? And in the book, I think it was in the life and death chapter, I do try to offer some compassion. That's the word here. Compassion for when you might feel that way. Alright. You ha you hit a group of people and you, you all behave in the same way. And there's another group over there and they behave in a different way. Right. And this can happen virtually too. So it's not just physically who you're living near, but it's who you associate with in a world that's intercommunicating. And you basically choose sides based on who's different. And yeah, that's disturbing. But of course we promote that. That's what, that's what professional sports is. You know, why am I a Yankee fan? Well, I'm born in the Bronx, so I'm a Yankee fan cuz they play in the Bronx. Is there some deeper reason for being No. It's cause I'm born in the Bronx, but yet I'm cheering and, and cursing out other people who are rooting for Red Sox. Why am I doing that? And so sports reaches for something deep within US Tribal. Okay. It's probably the most fundamental expression of our tribalism, right? All right. You can get two people who are otherwise enemies, but if they're supporting the same team during the game, they're friends. Okay? Then the game is over. Oh, wait a minute. You have dark skin. I have light skin. You sleep with this person, I sleep with that person. So now we divide up again. So anthropologists and, and, and archeologists have, have suggested that this tribalism is, was an important feature of what our early survival, where you knew you, you can trust your own people because you knew them, but somebody else, they could have different social, cultural mores, different values, different. So you don't trust them and you don't even want to get to know them because that takes effort. Plus they might, you might become your friend, but then stab you later. You don't know this. So there was, there was safety in tribes, there was safety in tribal thinking, especially if you're competing for the same water hole or some other resource that's limited. So it's understandable why we have the urge to behave in these ways. It's, it's genetically understandable, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to overcome it. There's a lot we do overcome. What, what is civilization, if not the collective effort to overcome what would otherwise be primal, basal instincts of survival of our species. That's what civilization is. That's why you don't steal. You don't kill. You know, there, there are things you would do without laws for your own survival or survival of your family or your tribe. You would do it and there'd be no consequences to it. Right? We have civilization to overcome that and why not put in some effort to, to embrace those forces that lift us from the gutters, the gutters of evolution.

Robin: 40:15

No doubt. We have a choice to balance that dichotomy between self and survival and being about others so that we can flourish. As a species. it is such a profound point you made that we have the ability to lift up a homeless that is struggling mentally on the street. And employ and make productive and give, and have them have a sense of value for themselves. Why don't we do that? What do you think is in our way of doing that and taking science and applying it in this way?

Neil: 40:48

Yeah, I don't, I don't have a good answer for that because ultimately there's the intersection between the science that we know and learn in the laboratory and the, and the applications of that knowledge and wisdom and insight into public policy, right? Governance. And, and so that disconnect fascinates me anthropologically, it fascinates me because people have ideas about how they want the world to be, and they will create laws and legislation to enact it. And this sort of personal view of the world might not be good for others. So in a pluralistic country, the level of awareness, understanding, and compassion for people who are not just like you, has to be at its highest that has ever been expressed in a culture or in a civilization. Because otherwise you are invoking your tribal, your tribal system on others. Oh, by the way, we have examples of that in the past. They're called dictatorships, right? That's what a dictatorship is. I have a way that I know the world has to be, and I don't really care how you think about it, but I will make laws and everybody will behave in exactly the same way. And if you behave differently, I will in the old days, just excommunicate you or in some regimes kill you, right? Because you have views that are against the state, you're against the the government against. Well, I don't think that's the kind of country we want to have in the United States. I'm an American citizen land of the free as at least we tell ourselves that we can find phrases like that in our founding documents. So ultimately we need a very good conduit between governance and science. This was the goal of Abraham Lincoln, believe it or not. He signed into law the, the National Academy of Sciences in 1863 when he clearly had more important things to worry about. In 1863 he signed that in because he saw what role science was playing in the advance of the civilization that was growing in Europe. We'd known the value of engineering and, and, you know, the industrial revolution was already well underway, but science, that's the underpinning of all industry. And of, of all machines, there is no engineering without foundational science behind it. So this was an organization tasked to advise the government. It, all you could do is advise the government, what the government actually takes. That advice is another thing. And so yes, it's easy and they have the urge to beat your politicians on the head. But we voted for the politicians. So, so however they're behaving, really we should be beating ourselves on the head. Wait, you elected this person, then elect somebody else who then you don't have to beat on the head, right? Alright. Think, think about that. It's never about the politician. In all my social media posts, I never badmouth politicians because there's an electorate that put them into office, right? So I turn around, face the other way, face the, the, the country. And as an educators, the electorate that I'm talking to about science and it's vo role and its value. In a stable society in civilization. So, yeah. So we need systems in place to invoke the discoveries and, and somehow turn it into policy. And by the way, scientists are not trained to policy. That's not what we do. We're not rewarded for that. Right. So maybe we need a new branch of study purely it exists in pieces of different fields of study. But I do know for example, that the government does have what's called science fellows. So there's, scientists have certain expertise, early career scientists, so they're young and energetic and, and they're White House fellows. There are for all the branches of government, c Senate fellows, house Fellows, and the, the court. The Supreme Court. Yeah. Supreme Court legislative fellows. Right. Okay. So these are people who are professional scientists with PhDs who have some interest in governance, and they're in the meetings where something gets discussed that has scientific implications, but that needs to be much more than just sort of an interning program. It's gotta be some major way that this intersection occurs, and then we can benefit from the science for sure.

Robin: 45:44

It brings us to a, a good segue, I think, into one of my favorite chapters in Starry Messenger, and that is conflict and resolution, and at the heart of that is battling for resources, and I think that gets in our way. So what are some of the things that inspired you for that chapter and understanding the dichotomy of conflict and resolution?

Neil: 46:06

Yeah, the original title of that chapter was, Republicans and Democrats. I thought that's too specific. Once, once it was like two thirds written, I said to myself, even though there's a lot of discussion about Republicans and Democrat, right? At, I was two thirds of the way through, and I said, no, these, there is, there are lessons here for any sources of conflict. Sure. And the, my favorite quote that I found that I included was from Gilbert and Sullivan. Why would I even have a quote from Gilbert and Sullivan? Because I was taken to Gilbert and Sullivan plays they call it light opera, I guess. Right. And so these are things that stuck with me. Who would, who, who am I to know at that time that I'd be quoting it in a book? Alright. This is for the hm s Pini four sir Richard Porter song. I forgot the exact title of it, but in it, there's a line that's where the guy singing and he says I've always voted at my party's call. I'd never thought of thinking for myself at all. And it's like, whoa, okay. That's a self-awareness right there, right? That most people don't have. And of course it's comedic and it's, you know, it's an, it's, it's a song and it rhymes. But how often are you just doing what your party tells you to do? You, if in doing so, you're abdicating your ability to think as an independent individual. And I know you want to band together to get your person in to office rather than another, but does that actually require that you embrace everything they say? Could you put, are there enough of you that say, no, I like this, but I don't, we don't like that. So which would more fine tune who runs and who doesn't? I mean, so in that chapter, I explore. The occasions where people just give up their capacity to think about their own decisions. That's one. Two, how deeply have you thought about the tropes that you're lobbying onto your adversaries? And I unpacked a bunch of them in that chapter. You know, things like people on the right being pro-family values relative to people on the left. And this is, this is a talking point. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a stump part part of stump speeches. Right? Right. We have, and those, those liberal, loose liberal, whatever, and well, then you analyze it and just say, well, all right, did you know most of the top 10 states? Top 10 in divorce rates? Are red states. Okay? So how family values is that if you are divorcing more than blue states are and the single state, which far and away has the lowest divorce rate is Massachusetts, and you can get bluer than Massachusetts. Okay. So, so what are you saying? Oh, there are other metrics. How about out of wedlock pregnancies? Okay, once again, the red states top the list in out of wedlock pregnancies. Okay. The, these seem like the opposite of family values, so that's an accusation that does not hold up under scrutiny. Okay? Another one is the accusation that liberals are tax and spend, all right? And all they wanna do is tax you. And then you look at states where the taxing. There's an amount the state pays in tax and there's the amount that comes back to the state from the government. Okay. So this is the, the, this is the are you a net receiver of government money or a net payer to the government coffers? Right. That's an important question to ask. Is anyone really asking that question? I don't know, but I did and I put it in that chapter. Yeah. And most of the states that, there are a couple of interesting exceptions here, such, such as Virginia, which happens to have the Pentagon in it, which has huge outlay of cash from the government. So Virginia, there's, there's some interesting exceptions to this, but if you look at the states that have received more money than they pay out, it's dominated by red states. And the states that pay more money than they receive are dominated by blue states. So that's just interesting to me. That on a conservative platform, they would assert that blue folks just want to tax and spend, if red states are the primary beneficiaries of that tax base. Now going the other way, there's the accusation that republicans or conservatives are anti-science. Well, so then I've asked people that, and I've said, what do you mean by anti? Well, they're anti denying climate change and they're denying and Okay. Is there anything else? Okay. There's some denying evolution. Okay. Okay. Anything else? Not really. Not really. No. Those are big issues. Right. But not really. If Democrats are pro-science and Republicans are anti-science, that ought to reveal itself in the budgets for science. I remember this in, in the federal outlay, and if you look at post World War II spending for science. Under Republican presidents versus democratic presidents, with the exception of Johnson, where we went to the moon under his presidency, which was a huge chunk of money. Okay. So we can count that even if you want to count that, but I'm saying that was a singular outlay of cash Okay. That the whole country sort of bought into. But you, if you otherwise look at it through Reagan, through through Obama, through through Clinton and Eisenhower, Republicans have invested more money in science than the Democrats in terms of outlay of cash and government expend expenditures. And these are all the science agencies that are in the government line of budgets. The, the science. The the President's science advisor has a science budget. Now it's a cabinet level secretary of Science. And I, so when you, when you add it all up, I would say no matter what is the rhetoric, sit back and ask who's spending the most money on science? And it's actually been the Republicans, not the Democrats. So this is the kind, these are the kinds of things that unravel your strongly held opinion, right? When looked at through a scientific lens. And what's scientific about that? It's that I'm looking at it from every angle. That's what you do as a scientist, right? You claiming something is true. Is it really? How about from this direction? From that way from above, from from the side. We do that with each other's ideas and hypotheses and theories that are put forth out of respect for each other. We do that. We don't just take it for granted that what you're saying is true. I wanna make sure what you're saying is true. And you, it's better off that you did the homework and not have someone else check it and find out that you forgot to cross the T and dot the I, because that'll look bad on your research profile. Absolutely. So I just wanna put that out there. Okay. Are you saying that you have the high road in science? As a liberal and that, okay, so do you realize that comfortably living within liberal circles very comfortable? There are sort of most people who follow astrology because by the way, astrology and conservative Christianity don't mix. It's rejected by conservative Christianity. Look, there's astrology, there's crystal healing, there's feather energy, there's homeo homeopathy, there's, there's rejection of of, of mainstream medicine. It, in order to hold those views, they have to reject some or all mainstream science to hold them and they'll have their reasons. They'll say, I don't trust big pharma. They, but okay, you are living twice as long as your grandparent have your great grandparents did. Okay. Think that's an accident. Is that an accident of, of just cuz you, you, you're taking these herbs. Really? You think that's because, okay, so there's a New Yorker comic with two cavemen are sitting across each other fro from a fire, you know, a little fireplace. They're in a cave. And one says to the other, you know, the air we breathe is, is pure, the water is clean, our food is free range, yet none of us are living past 35. I remember that. Now, of course there's some came that did live much longer than that. But the average, when you bring in child mortality, infant mortality, it averaged basically to the mid thirties for cavemen. And now it's, it's rising through 80. Okay. By the way, it was in the mid thirties through the early 19th century. Very little was improved on the life expect world life expectancy of humans for, for tens of thousands of years. It's all basically in the last 150 years where that's made a major change. But, but these are distractions. My point is that to, to be in denial of the science that says that homeopathy is bullshit and to embrace it, saying, well, science still has yet to learn what? It's real property. You are in denial of science. Okay. Just say it but you don't wanna say it because you wanna hold that accusation for the conservatives. Right. Okay. And by the way, genetically modified foods is what's feeding the world today. Right. Just by the way. Alright. And it's a huge anti GMO movement in li in the liberal circles. Okay. And so it's a. It's, in other words, the claim that you have, the science high road by standing in liberal circles is not supported by the evidence. And so, no, of course climate change is an existential risk, whereas the herbs that you think are curing you does not have an existential risk to the world. So the endpoint consequences are very different. Magnitudes. And I don't mean to equate them, right, cause they're not, but don't claim that you are pro-science. If on the other side of that if, if you then go home and you know, and rub your crystals together, I should say it. So the, that chapter is filled with these tropes that are lobbed back and forth, that, that are unpacked and analyzed, and you realize that. The factions I'll call them, that have more in common than you think. And why wouldn't these be good places to hold hands and, and get onto the business of running the government or get onto the business of having a beer? You know, actually I don't really much like beer, but I like the metaphor let's go have a beer. Right? And so, or let's, let's have some wine. I comment that at a, at a bar, two people drinking Merlott and Chardonnay probably have never gotten into a bar fight ever. Right, right. I remember that.

Robin: 58:19

That was a good one. You're right,

Neil: 58:22

certain drinks lend themselves more to like whiskey Definitely. But whiskey definitely. But not a merlott. Yeah. It's like, you know You know, I would kick your ass, but I wanna finish this Merlot first. These are not nons scriptable moments in any, in any conflict. So so it's an attempt to have people not simply compromise on a position. That's a way of coming to agreement, of course. But to realize that your strongly held views, what you believed were foundations for your strongly held views are, are more tentative than you think. Yeah. Or possibly don't even exist in the ways you had imagined. And that's the run of that, of that chapter.

Robin: 59:09

And that was one of the reasons why I tute this as one of the best books on empathy I've ever read. Because it is so profoundly infused with the cosmic perspective. This, the scientific approach to all these big questions and challenges that people think we're facing. And if you give it that, You know, let's take a deeper dive and take an honest look at that and what that actually means of what you're saying. You're, it kind of falls apart. And that's why

59:38

it's,

Neil: 59:38

it's, yeah, that's, I mean, that's the idea. And as it falls apart, then you have to reassemble it in some way That makes sense. And it's the reassembly of those thoughts and ideas that is where, where and how and when you'll realize that you have more in common with your adversary than you might have thought. Yeah. And so that's, that's the goal of it. Again, it's not, it's not conflict resolution by compromise, it's conflict resolution by holy shit. I never thought of it that way. Yeah.

Robin: 1:00:07

One of the things that, this kind of strike me in the moment. I just had a gentleman on a show and he was a former white supremacist neo-Nazi that has saved himself and now is saving others. And one of the challenges that he faced was, and all people that he is extricating from these horrible hate groups is the assault on identity. And what really struck me with what you're, what we were just chatting about was a lot of these things, and I think some of the resistance to being open to, to the fact that you might be wrong about this or you might not have a total picture about where your party actually stands on whatever side it is, is there's on the identity because they're trying so desperately to hold onto the identity. How does someone overcome that assault on their identity to have that courage to

Neil: 1:00:57

move forward? Yeah. I, I don't claim particular expertise there, but let me tell you what thoughts I have. Yeah. That identity, I think, is less strongly held in the individual than it is in the group. So you will value that identity primarily because if it slips away, you will no longer then be embraced by the group. Right. And so you're, so this is the group think, this is the tribal thinking. This is the, the I want to think for myself, but in a way that's not allowed because the group is doing the thinking for us. And I comment on, in there, on, on the mob psychology where mm-hmm. You know, the mob, you know, is there, has a rational thought ever emerged from a mob of people carrying tiki torches and pitchforks? Is this, is this the place where you're gonna find rational discourse? And, and it seems that the larger, the number of people that adhere to an idea, the, the more diluted is the rational foundation for it. This, it's, I, I don't want to overgeneralize, but we know there's certain cases where that's definitely true. So, so there's no room for the individual, the group think. Predominates. Right. And there've been some research that I've seen where the, it's a sense of community, right? The community feels this way, and I wanna be part of the community. Therefore, I'm gonna feel that way. If that community happens to be a hate group that's telling you that all these people are against you, and you have to stand up for your own by the way you need it, you can, you can't be a hate group unless you believe the other people are trying to you know, could, could you have a hate group against some other group that you don't even see? Don't even know. No. It has to be somebody who's visible to you that you get to blame things on. Right? And without the blame, it's harder to sustain emotions of hate. And fear, and you go back to Nazi Germany. Yep. Jews are responsible for everything. There they are. And they're running everything and they're taking away your identity. And they, boom, the setup was perfect. Right. For the rise of Hitler and Nazim and, and all that came out of that because the campaign to, and I, in one of the chapters I talk about this, I, it might, I think it was the conflict and resolution chapter where, what might have been body and mind, where I talk about the susceptibility of our mind. Yeah. To, to banding together, to fight a perceived enemy, even if they're not really an enemy. They just, but it's, but the propaganda has made them that, and now you have something to band together for against, to band together with each other and go against this perceived enemy and. Yeah, you have to demonize them. And, and United States has not, has not been immune to this. If you look at the propaganda the anti-Japanese propaganda and the buildup to the Second World War and, and any war we fought, you've gotta sort of dehumanize the enemy so that you can all band together and feel justified in your actions. Right? So by the way, deep in there, which I get to in the color and race chapter deep in there, is it, you don't have to always think they're a threat. You can just think that you're superior, right? And these other people are inferior and the world would be better off without them. So you take a look at the eugenics movement which peaked, you know, early 20th century, but it was on the rise in the short decades leading up to it. It was. It was probably science at its most racist. It was anthropologists and related field geneticists and others who were just sure that they were doing the right thing by purifying the species. The species. Yeah.

Robin: 1:05:23

Let's talk about this, Neil, this was the greatest thought experiment you, I thought you did in this book.

Neil: 1:05:28

Right, right, exactly. So that was the thought experiment was. That. Oh, by the way, well, how do you get a racist branch of science? You get a racist branch of science when humans are the subject, the research subject of that branch of science and a b, the measurements made get ranked, and you have power over politics and policy. All of that happened during the eugenics movement. All of that. There were politicians that were listening, they were people voting and, and even back then, the Republicans who were the party of Abraham Lincoln who were anti-slavery in ways that the then Democrats were not anti-slavery, but the most vicious posed, pouring you know, sheriffs from the south during the civil rights move. They're all, they were all Democrat, by the way, just to be clear. Giving all the more reason to re re recite that line from Gilbert and Sullivan. I, I've always voted at my party's call. Never thought of thinking for myself at all. Think for yourself. You'd be surprised how liberating that can be. So anyway, so re even Republicans who are anti-slavery during the eugenics movement, we're saying things like, yeah, we don't want the the Negro to be enslaved cuz that's bad. But th they'll never be our equal. So we'll, but, and we still have to, we can't remove them from civilization because we need them to do the menial jobs. So we'll let them reproduce among themselves, but never reproduce with us. Cuz that'll dilute us and bring us down to there. There's all this, I have books on this. It's, it's, this was fellow Americans having these kinds of, and so if you look at. What was said about how to say who was superior and who wasn't, especially with the race element there by, there were others that had to do with mental illness or, or physical deformities and the like. Yeah. Get rid of them as well. In that movement was what the, the, the, the, the that was the, the broader eugenics movement wasn't just black people, white people. It was anybody who those in charge felt would otherwise contaminate the purity and the, and the, and the valuation of humans as a species, it's like, let's edit the species, right, so that we can get the best of our kind going forward. And of course, the people who made all those measurements are of the kind that they wanted more of. Right? Right. Generally, if you're doing the experiment, you, whatever the results is, you put yourself at the top. So the, the the thought experiment you're referring to that I. Came up with in the book was, imagine if the 19th century had black racist anthropologists instead of white racist anthropologists. What might then come up with to justify black people being superior to white people? And so I have, I devote three pages to what a black racist anthropologist might be thinking and what would go into their books. And by the way, everything there is could have been seen by the white anthropologist, but was ignored or swept under the rug or just. Was they couldn't even recognize it. Little things? No, just little things. The urge was to show post Darwin that black people are less evolved than white people. So you, there are all these pictures of like the chimp and then the black person, and then the white person and this, and it says Negroes are still evolving. Right? So this was, I I have books with these pictures in it. Right? By the way, these are highly motivating to me. Ok. When I look at, alright, it's like, alright, what am I gonna achieve today? Right? In the face of what people said a hundred years ago. So by the way, it's motivating instead of being depressing, right? If it was depressing, I'd probably be dead by now, right? Cause there's so much of this literature. So so all you have to do is show. That white people are closer to chimpanzees than black people are. And that would be a sure sign of that. They're less evolved and just put it in a book and then market the book. Alright? And so I just made a list of things. That's just for example, I'll just give three or four. The rest are in the book. I don't have to dwell on it. Yeah. But here's just some interesting ones. The hairiest human beings you have ever seen right, have been white people. Period. All right. Okay. Just look up Google. Hairy chess. Okay? None of them will be black people. They will be there are people with you know, hair up the chest, up the neck, coming out of the shirt, collar down the arms, down the legs. Black people are not remotely that hairy. Okay. Hit my why. See, my chest hit my chest right here. I don't shave that

Robin: 1:10:45

chest. Ok. Right there. Yeah, there's, yeah. Yeah. Mine's hair. Yes. Okay.

Neil: 1:10:51

So is there hairy, just the way chimps are, boom. So that one got overlooked, right? Right. How hairy your body is relative to chimps. Here's another one. By the way, chimps have extremely thin lips. They basically have no lips at all. Go take a look at, take a picture. Look at a chimpanzee. Okay. The thinnest lips you've ever seen on humans have been on white people. Right? Okay. So they, they overlooked that one too in listing similarities between humans and chimps. Okay? Black people have thick lips, not chimpanzees. Here's something else. You always see chimps. Going through their hair of another pulling out lice and other bugs perhaps. And apparently they, they're tasty cuz they eat it all right. That's fine. Right? I, I never knew that about lice, that they're tasty. But so there it is. So, alright. Have you ever heard of lice infestations among black children? You probably haven't. You know why? Because lice infestations are 30 times more likely among white children than among black children. So lice just likes laying its eggs in white people and chimps more than it does. In fact, there must be some similarity there that the lights know about. Okay. A couple of others. For most chimps, other than the hands feet and face, if you part their hair on their bodies, their skin is white. Not any shade of brown or black. So the skin is actually white. Most chimps, and this gets o, this gets overlooked. And the last one I'll leave with you and there's others in the book, right, is here's a sentence no black person has ever said, walking by a tree, they'll say, gee, I wanna build a house and live in that tree. This is my, I'm sorry, this is, even black children move into the suburbs. They're not saying, I want to move back into a tree. White people do this all the time. Right? And so the black racist would say the white people are just trying to return to their ape-like roots where we lived in the trees, right? You could just go on and on. A point is if you have a bias and you don't even know you have a bias and you have influence over laws and legislation, it can be disastrous for civilization and society. So half the book, not half the third of the book, Is trying to sensitize ourselves to our own bias. And I don't mind measuring things about people. People are different. And that's interesting. I, I'd love some people big or small or strong or skinny or overweight or underweight, whatever. I don't mind knowing that. But the moment you start ranking people and have that feed legislation, then you are dangerous. You have no place in a pluralistic society. No doubt.

Robin: 1:13:57

You know, I got like a million things I want to chat about, but I wanna hit

Neil: 1:14:00

one more, say, my answers have been so long, I can shorten'em up so you can get more questions in.

Robin: 1:14:04

Neil, I could talk to you for hours. I can't thank you enough for a one-on-one tutorage from you. What's one thing you wanted to make sure you shared that I might have forgotten to ask you that you wanted to make sure you left with everyone today?

Neil: 1:14:15

I, I don't think that way in the sense that I, I, I'm a servant of your curiosity, so I'm not here to tell you what you should care about or tell your audience what they should care about. I am, I'm, you know, your audience and you've asked questions of me, presumably through that, through that lens, the lens of your shows. Worldview. And so that's what I'm a servant of. I don't, there's nothing I have. Oh, make sure you tell. No, I don't, that's not how I think about my life.

Robin: 1:14:47

And of course you've just given the, the most unique answer I've ever gotten on that, so that's awesome. Of course you did. Neil, what are you working on right now? There's, you've put out such a tremendous amount of content. I know your assistant was out going to Long Island, I think yesterday or today to work on a new project. And so what's wor, what are you working on now that you're about getting ready to share with the world?

Neil: 1:15:08

Oh, thanks for asking. So this fall I have a book coming out with a co-author. It's the third. In our StarTalk series. Yes. So my, my podcast StarTalk I actually have a podcast star talk.

Robin: 1:15:21

We'll make sure that's in the show notes.

Neil: 1:15:23

Absolutely. It's, it's the merger or the intersection I should say, of humor, pop culture and science. Mm-hmm. So it's fun. My co-host is a professional comedian always. And we, we, we, we just have fun with science and that got the interest of publishers National Geographic. Books in particular. So the third book in a, in the StarTalk series is coming out, and this one is called please Forgive It for this title to Infinity and Beyond. Of course, I'm asking forgiveness in advance. So it's, it's an exploration of the fits and starts that we went through as a species to try to make technological and scientific discoveries about the world. So in other words, we, you know, the world is as it is, and you say, oh, somebody invented that or discovered it. Well, let's unpack that. How did they discover it? How did they invent it? What went wrong? And why? And so it's, it's a, it's a fun, but it's done through a StarTalk d n a. So it's fun references to pop culture and movies. And so I'd like to think it's a fun read. And I have a co-author who's one of our head writers on StarTalk Lindsay Walker. And she, she comes to this as a journalist. Actually her background is in biology and journalism. And so, so these star talk books are, are projects that come out of our staff and our collective interests. That's coming out in September, September, 2023. Awesome. So I'll be on the media circuit when that finally makes it. I cannot wait, but, and other than that is always other stuff. There, there are books I'm writing in my head that are kind of still in the oven, so that would mean they're actually half baked at the moment. Generally, I don't talk about half baked projects Sure. Before they're done because I'm still researching what others have said and thought about the subjects and whether I'm justified in saying what I do with the strength that I do must I buffer it. And so generally I don't go public on anything unless it's been thoroughly and highly triple checked and, and research. So that's why I generally don't talk about future projects. In any significant way.

Robin: 1:17:36

I love the, the release in September. That's beautiful. It gives some, it gives me at least something to really look forward to. And also checking out your podcast. Neil, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for coming on and sharing your wisdom and, and sharing your tr tremendous empathy and that cosmic context with everyone. So well, your,

Neil: 1:17:56

your, your, your, your podcast mission statement is has a sort of a uniqueness on the landscape of podcasts that I wanted to make sure that whatever you wanted to know from me, that it fit your where you're coming from and, and where you're going. And of course it, no matter where you come from, it always matters more where you're going. So and that's informed by all that happens in the present. So keep up what you're doing.

Robin: 1:18:23

Thank you. Can thank you enough, Neil. Have a great day and best of wishes on all your future projects. I can't wait to keep tuning in. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you for tuning into another episode of Forged By Trust. Remember, if you want to forge trust, it's not how you make people feel about you that matters. It's how you make them feel about themselves. If you're interested in more information about how I can help you forge your own trust, building, communication, and interpersonal strategies as your coach, speaker, as a trusted advisor for your organization or yourself. Please visit my website@www.peopleformula.com. I'm looking forward to sharing my next Forge by Trust episode with you next week when we chat with actor and bestselling author Robert Kerbeck as we do a deep dive into his secret life as a corporate spy.