#1159 - Neil deGrasse Tyson

Joe Rogan (0:07)

So, why aren't their flying cars?

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:10)

You're just jumping right in. You don't say hi, you don't say how's the wife and kids.

Joe Rogan (0:15)

How's everybody, man?

How's life? How's your book that's been on the Times bestseller list for how many weeks?

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:22)

Oh, the Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. That's been on the New York Times bestseller list for 67 weeks.

Joe Rogan (0:29)

That's pretty intense.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:30)

That's a lot for any book, much less for a science book. And so that tells me, while all these Trump books are wafting in and out, this is bobbing like a cork on the ocean waves as the book of the moment, that either praises Trump or criticizes him, come in and off of that list.

So this tells me that there is this unserved hunger that people have. There's a curiosity that this is serving. And to Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, that's very purposefully juxtaposed. It's like neurosurgery in four easy steps. If you saw a book with that title, you'd have to pick it up, because you'd wonder what's going on.

Joe Rogan (1:13)

Well, not to kiss your ass again, but I always say this about you, and I think it's important. You make learning stuff about astrophysics fun, and that's what's missing. It's not that people don't like to be educated, that they don't like to learn. They just don't want to be bored.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1:30)

That's a perceptive point, because think of the image we have of, let's say you're in a school where most people don't go to college. You're in high school. And then last day of school comes. What do people do?

They toss their papers in the air as they run down the steps. School's out.

What's the rock song? School's out for summer. Was it forever?

Joe Rogan (1:53)

And then ever.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1:55)

So that attitude must mean the school didn't train you to embrace curiosity.

That learning was a chore.

And now the chores are over. So I think the educational system needs an adjustment. Forget whether or not you go to college, because you're going to spend more years not in school than in school, even if you do go to college. What you want, I think, are lifelong learners, lifelong curiosity.

Where once you are trained and your curiosity is stimulated, the curiosity we all had is children.

Children don't need to be taught to be curious. They are curious to the point of destruction, of whatever it is they touch. Oh, what is this egg on the counter? What is this glass? What is this plate? What's under a rock? What happens when I pull a leg off a daddy-long? They are experimenting with the world. We don't think of it that way, but that's what it is. They are all born scientists. And I say this often. You spend the first years of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk, then you spend the rest of its life telling it to shut up and sit down. This is the wrong combination. So speaking as an educator, I think a missing component of school is is it the teachers? Is it the curriculum? I don't know. But when you get out of school, you should say to yourself, damn, I want to learn more.

Joe Rogan (3:14)

It's almost universally accepted too that that's when your learning ends. When you get out of college, it's over.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (3:19)

Then you say you're done. And if it doesn't, you're ossified in life. And that's how when the job market shifts, you're not ready for it because you don't know how to think. You don't know how to learn. And it's the difference in the workplace between the person who gets an assignment.

Joey, Janet, I need you to do this.

That's not in my job description.

I'm not trained for this. That's one kind of person in a workplace. Another kind of person is, here's a new task I need you to do. Wow, I've never seen that before. Great, let me figure it out. These are two completely different species of human being. And what the world needs more of is the second case, where you take a new task, and you say, wow, I get to learn. I'm going to learn on my own. I'll ask people who know more. You just embrace the act of learning to satisfy your curiosity. And I think this book is capturing that in the public.

Joe Rogan (4:12)

Well, it must be doing something.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (4:13)

Yeah, yeah.