Welcome to Star Talk.

Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

Star Talk begins right now.

I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist.

And this is Star Talk.

The topic is sociology.

So, to anchor some of the academic foundations of this, I want to bring out the woman who is the first appointed dean of the division of social sciences at Columbia University, Professor Alondra Nelson.

Come on out.

It is my great pleasure to bring on a very funny man. He was the first partner on the daily show.

Wyatt Sinak.

And who else but the five-time New York Times bestselling author of all manner of sociological phenomena?

Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm, come on out.

Malcolm, I love your storytelling. You highlight things that go on in our culture, in our society, you make us think, and this is always good.

So, I don't think at any point you say you comment on sociology.

So, since we have someone who does that academically, Alondra, could you just tell us what is sociology?

So, sociology is a study of social life, how culture develops, how social communities evolve.

So, not the individual.

Not the individual in sociology, although in the social sciences, there are people like social psychologists and psychologists who are very much interested in the individual.

But sociologists, the scale of life we write about is the group, the family, institutions, organizations.

So, Malcolm, one of your most talked about books was titled Blink.

It's an exploration of the effectiveness of decisions that people make on the spot, depending on what their life experience is behind it.

And there's a story in there when you talk about your hair.

...