It required the sight of genitals on fire...
for me to arrive at this conclusion.
Quite a few people know that you used to be a wrestler in college
and there was a period of time when you did dancing, as well
Yeah
in a couple of dancing troupes
not the Bolshoi, like: college troupes
Look at those pins! Look at those pins!
There was one occasion, one occasion
when you very briefly, oh so briefly
considered becoming a stripper
Yeah
What happened?
So, I'm very disappointed in myself
because...
so are we...
...that you didn't pursue it.
I'm mean, c'mon.
OK. So, in graduate school they don't pay you very well.
No.
I was barely making ends meet and I didn't know another way to make money.
And so, some of my fellow male dancers said...
why don't you come dance with us down at the club?
I said, "What club?" They said, "There's a place women come to where the drinks are cheap."
"and they put money if your jockstrap."
So I go...
and the first dance, they come out
with asbestos-lined jockstraps
doused in lighter fluid and ignited, so there's flames
and they come out dancing to Jerry Lee Lewis' Great Balls of Fire
This feels like a portent of what's about to come
In that instant
I said
maybe I should be a math tutor
Have you ever considered what you'd do if you did go into space?
I would go back four and a half billion years.
and observe the formation of the moon.
That would just be cool
All the best evidence today, suggests that
A Mars-sized protoplanet side-swiped Earth
and the debris formed a ring
around Earth you would have had a ring temporarily
that itself would have coalesced to then become the moon
that would have just been a striking thing to have witnessed
How long would that have taken, from the strike to the moon?
So, some estimates differ, but shorter than you'd think
From multiple months to just a few years
The debris orbits in just a matter of days
and then, you just grow and grow and grow
and the rest will collide on you or on Earth
anf there you have the Moon
You've been quite vocal about criticizing cuts to science budgets in the US
But you've been very careful I've noticed to not call out
any particular politicians.
Why is that important to you to not name Trump as it were?
Thanks for noticing that, because it's not about the politicians
In an elective democracy, which most of the western world enjoys.
You choose who represents you.
So...
if there's a politician
who feels a certain way about anything
chances are the people who voted that person into office feel that way.
Yeah.
And as an educator I'm duty bound to educate the electorate
So that in a democracy they can make informed decisions about who represents them
Can I get you to go back to your collage years for a second?
Sure
You had a friend who something to you, you were on a wrestling team together
and it called into question for you whether you becoming as astrophysicist was the best thing you could do
for the African-American community
Do you remember that conversation?
Yeah sure
What was the conversation?
He's a fellow wrestler of mine, he's also black
He asked "How're you doing?"
I said "I'm working hard I hardly have time to go to the bathroom"
He said "What're majoring in?"
I said "physics"
"And what do you want to do in life?"
I said "astrophysics"
And then he judged in that moment that
the black community doesn't have the luxury of someone with my talents
to be devoted to something as esoteric as astrophysics
Meanwhile he was studying economics and enterprise zones
and he actually would win a rhodes fellowship
And so that was a heavy burden he put on me because
I was studying what I loved
I was not studying what other people wanted me to
I was not fulfilling what other people though I should do.
I was doing what I loved
My father was active in the civil rights movement
My mother went back to school became a gerontologist
These are caring people
And here's their son the astrophysicist, that's a little odd.
I carried this sort of albatross around my neck for
for at least ten years.
And I didn't shed this
It was a little bit of a guilt, little bit of a guilt trip
I didn't shed this until
I saw myself on television
There were explosions on the sun
solar flares
that were headed towards earth
And the local news was worried about this
they saw it come over the wire
back when the wire carried news teletype
That's how old I am
Ancient
Anciet Neil Degrasse Tyson
And they read it
so they called looking for some faculty member
but it was lunch time everyone was out, I was still in my office
And so the secretary sent it to me
cause nobody else was around
So I answered the question
"Oh it's just a blob of plasma headed towards earth"
"the sun does this all the time"
"our magnetic field will protect us"
"deflect it towards the poles"
Then I went home and saw the interview
And...
it was kind of an out of body experience
cause there I was eating dinner, but there I was on TV, how does that happen?
You've got to get over that first
your first time seeing this, but then
I noticed, oh my gosh
this reporter did not ask me
"How do black people feel about this radiation from the sun?"
"How does it affect your skin vs the skin of others?"
Nowhere in that conversation was my skin colour relevant
to the subject at hand
Science ruled that conversation
He was asking someone with dark skin, whether Earth was going to be safe
And I realised that since every other conversation I had ever seen between a news reporter
and a black person on TV
was either because they were an athlete, an entertainer or because they had some professional focus
on the plight of those less fortunate
that I had never seen a conversation with a black person that had nothing to do with being black
I'd just never seen that before
Can I ask you a science question?
Why is it important to you to be burried?
I want to rejoin the Earth
If you bury me I will then decompose to the flora and fauna of which I have taken so generously
If you cremate then the energy of your body converts to heat
The heat warms the air, the air then radiates that back to space
Your energy is still in the universe
it's just of no use to any other living thing
And so, I might as well
in death, serve the needs of those in life.
When you consider the vastness of space and time and Cosmos, what does that do to your sense of self?
I bask...
in how small we are.
Why should being big be what makes you feel good?
In one centimetre of your lower colon
lives and works more bacteria
than the total number of humans than have ever been born.
And we like to think that we're something special.
You know, all you are to those bacteria?
You are a darkened vessel of anaerobic faecle matter.
I've been called that before.
And much worse!
No matter what you think of yourself, that's all you are to the bacteria.
We're sharing the same vessel.
We are co-dependent
in our survival.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson, thank you so much.
Oh, sure! Sure!
I appreciate your time.
I love your NASA shirt.
Thank you, thank you. This is 'sucking up through fashion'.