Club Shay Shay - Neil deGrasse Tyson Part 1

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (0:00)
Humans' origin is in Africa. Africa. There is no dispute about that. None. At all. You know, they'll say, well, what are you? That's a come, well, I'm Italian. Well, where are you born? America. Where are your parents born? Brooklyn. Where are their parents born? Italy. So I'm Italian. Right, and they stop there. And if you keep going, we're all African. There is an ancestor of yours that is African. If you go far enough back on the tree, but you stopped in Sweden, and you stopped in Italy, and you stopped in Poland, keep going back.
Hello, welcome to another episode of Club Shay Shay. I am your host, Shannon Sharpe, also the proprietor of Club Shay Shay. We would first like to thank Double Barrel and The Whiskey Shop for having us today's episode of Club Shay Shay. If you're in Beverly Hills, come by for a drink in this elegant lounge. Now, on to today's episode. Stopping by for conversation and a drink today, he's the protege. He's one of the most brilliant and respected and influential minds of this generation. He's a renowned science communicator, famous for popularizing astronomy and astrophysics, bridging the gap between complex scientific concepts and the general public. He has a BA in physics from Harvard, a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Columbia, and he also taught at Princeton. A highly intelligent educator, an accomplished director, and an Emmy-winning executive producer, an acclaimed television host, a popular narrator, a sought-after public speaker, an influential entertainer, and a prolific writer. His book just debuted, number three on the New York Times bestselling list. He's awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, a science icon, Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Now, I got to live up to all of that? You already have. I would hate to come back here in five or six years and have to read this again. Just keep going. All right. Well, thank you for that very warm introduction. Thank you so much. And now we just got the news before we started taping that your new book, Take Me to Your Leader, just debuted at number three on the New York Times Best Seller. I learned that five minutes ago. Five minutes ago. Just then. We learned it together. Together. So you know what? Here you go. We're going to toast. This is my cognac, shaved by La Portier. You got it. It's a VSOP. It's your cognac. It's actually my cognac. OK. We're going to send you away with some. Oh, I could do that. Thank you so much. All right.
VSO, very special old. Very special old pale. VSOP. There you go. Yes. It drinks like an exodo. Thank you for stopping by. All right. It is such an honor to have someone as brilliant as you are to help us, to help explain maybe the unexplainable. Well, yeah, I mean, if you're a scientist and you operate on the frontier, half of what you're looking at doesn't have an explanation yet. That's the whole point. Because if you're, the research science community, they got one foot in what is known, ideally, and then one foot in what, if you both, you don't want to put both feet out. You don't want both feet in the other one. Because they need to float away. So one feet in what is known, that anchors your understanding. And then you tiptoe out there and see what's new to be discovered. So when news headlines say, well, scientists have to go back to the drawing board on this, we're always at the drawing board. It's a misconception that we're sitting with our legs up, basking in a mastery of the universe. No, no. So when someone says, some things are best left unexplained, when you hear that, what do you say? Said, no scientist ever.
In fact, if we see something that has no explanation, we're drawn to it. It's a magnet. You're trying to figure out why. Why? That's, that is, that's, so there's a famous line. Okay. The German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, wrote a book called Letters to a Young Poet. Okay. And I'm gonna mangle it a little bit, but I'll get it mostly right. It says, be at peace with all that stirs in your heart. Learn to love the questions themselves.
And you can love the questions, but that means if you're a scientist, you want to figure it out, and then another question pops up, right? So you love the sequence of questions that are the product of research that gives you a new place to stand and new vistas to see beyond the walls that used to be there. Take me to your leader.
Tell us about this book, it's Aliens. And I want to talk to you about that because for the longest time, we have this of what has been drawn or what has been presented to us, of what an alien is and what it looks like. And so you're here to explain, offer us a better explanation of what actually aliens are, if they exist. And are we going to meet them or have we already met them? I'm not authorized to comment.