164. Neil deGrasse Tyson — Cosmic Queries: StarTalk’s Guide to Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going
The Michael Shermer Show
Michael Shermer
4.4 • 921 Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2021
⏱️ 107 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this thought-provoking conversation on life, the universe, and everything, Neil deGrasse Tyson tackles the world’s most important philosophical questions about the universe with wit, wisdom, and cutting-edge science. For science geeks, space and physics nerds, and all who want to understand their place in the universe, this enlightening new book offers a unique take on the mysteries and curiosities of the cosmos, building on rich material from his beloved StarTalk podcast, along with dozens of his most popular tweets on science. Shermer and Tyson discuss: the universe, multiverse, big bang, big rip, dark matter, dark energy, gravity, gravitational waves, origins of morality, hard problem of consciousness, consensus science, the unknown, Fermi’s paradox, extraterrestrials, and artificial intelligence.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the Michael Sherman Show. |
| 0:07.0 | Before I introduce today's guest, our sponsor of the show is The Great Courses Plus. It looks like this is an app on your phone. |
| 0:17.0 | You just touch the app like that. It opens right up. |
| 0:20.0 | Here's a course that I took called the History of Secret Societies. |
| 0:24.9 | So you can watch these as video, or you can just listen to him as audio. |
| 0:29.2 | I just listen to him as audio. |
| 0:31.2 | This particular course has 26 lectures, each of which is about 30 minutes long and |
| 0:38.4 | if you listen to them at 1.2 speed, it's about a 20 minute lecture so that's perfect for commuting drives or a |
| 0:44.4 | workout or whatever you can knock off a couple lectures and do an entire course like |
| 0:48.5 | this in the matter of a few days to a week and so here's the deal. If you sign up for the Great Courses Plus app through me, you get a $30 |
| 1:01.0 | discount on the annual fee and a free trial. So if you go to GreatCourses Plus.com |
| 1:09.9 | slash Shermer, you'll get that free trial and that discount comes out to about 10 bucks a month. |
| 1:16.4 | It's a great deal. |
| 1:18.0 | So again, it's the Great Courses Plus.com slash Shurmer to get that deal and it's a great way to get access to a lot of |
| 1:27.7 | content. My guest today is the great Neil degrass Tyson. Neil is the host of the popular |
| 1:35.8 | podcast Star Talk Radio and Emmy Award-winning National Geographic channel |
| 1:40.5 | shows Star Talk and of course Cosmos. He's done two of the Cosmos series |
| 1:45.8 | rebooted from the original series with Carl Sagan. He earned his BA in |
| 1:51.7 | physics from Harvard and his PhD in astrophysics from Columbia. |
| 1:56.0 | The author of more than a dozen books including the best-selling astrophysics for people in a hurry. |
| 2:02.0 | Tyson is the first Frederick P Rose Director of the Hayden |
| 2:05.9 | Planetarium in New York City where he lives with his wife and two children. |
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