New Podcast release: Neil deGrasse Tyson
The next episode of "Lives Well Lived", the new podcast I am releasing with Kasia de Lazari-Radek, is now live.
In this episode, Kasia and I speak with Neil deGrasse Tyson. To give you a taste of what he said, here is some of the transcript, lightly edited for clarity. You can listen to the full episode now, live on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred platform.
On the importance of exposure to the cosmos:
"Having grown up in New York City where we don't have access to the night sky, we don't have a relationship with the universe - especially at the time I grew up there was not only light pollution but also air pollution and the buildings are very tall. So, sight lines don't land on the sky. They land on dirty buildings. And so, I'd live my life that way until a first visit to my local planetarium. And by then I'm nine years old and the lights dim the stars come out. And I look at all these stars and I said, ‘Oh, this must be a hoax’."
On the vastness of the universe:
"To suggest that life on Earth is alone in the universe would be inexcusably egocentric. You would need some religious philosophy, in order to sit there in comfort thinking that life on Earth is unique in the universe."
On the transformative impact of the 'Earthrise' photo:
"If we go back in time to 1968 and our first voyage to the moon - we all remember Neil Armstrong in 1969 but we went to the moon before that in 1968, it was Apollo eight in December. And they orbited the moon... And on one of their orbits they lifted up their Hasselblad camera and snapped a color image of Earthrise over the lunar landscape... That image was a reset, one of the first big resets, of our sense of self, our sense of place, our relationship to each other, to Earth, and to the universe."
On predictions for the future:
"I think by 2050 all cars will be self-driving electric... I think we will perfect lab-grown meat proteins so that the slaughtering of animals to produce the flavors of eating the flesh of a dead animal will be a thing of the past... We'll have designer drugs that are perfectly tuned to your DNA so that you will not have side effects."
On intelligent aliens:
"If the closest genetic species to us gives us that challenge for communicating, how can we possibly explore with confidence that with some other alien species, if they are beyond us in intelligence in the way we are beyond the chimp, we would have any clue what they're saying at all."