Cosmic Queries – Scars in Spacetime

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Introduction to Cosmic Queries

1:05So Paul, thanks for doing Cosmic Queries Grab Bag with me. I love these always great questions. Yeah, some of them came from deep space. Very deep, which means they're either really smart or really drunk. I got a headache from some of the questions. Check us out and find out what gives Paul a headache on Star Talk. Welcome to Star Talk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. Star Talk begins right now.

1:37This is Star Talk. Cosmic Queries. I got with me Paul Mercurio. What's up, my man? Good to see you again. Welcome back. Always great to be here. You collected the questions from our Patreon members. Always great. We got some really fun ones. Good mix. And I never see them in advance. No. Oh, okay. This is like Karnak, where you hold the envelope. Karnak? Now you're going to say you're dating. Karnak from 50 years ago, Karnak. You know what? It's okay for viewers to not know something and then know something.

2:10That's like saying I'm only going to teach science that goes back 10 years. I am fed up with this. All right, go ahead. Let's continue.

Reflection on Privilege

2:17I want to just take a moment to just reflect on the privilege it is to have you in this role. You're a multi-Emmy winning comedy writer. Yeah, comedian, comedy writer. Emmys. We're talking about actual Emmys. And Peabody Awards. And Peabody. Yes. That's the best one, Peabody. Yeah, it's small, but it's large, if you know what I mean. Thank you for taking time out of your day. Are you kidding? I love doing this. It's so fun. By the way, you also work on Colbert and his days are numbered.

2:47Yes. So taking time out of your day might not be such a test. Yeah, what are you going to do, fire me? I'm already fired.

2:55It might not be so stressful to take time out of your day. No, we're counting down, and I am available for kids' parties. I can do balloon animals. Pretty much I can do a dachshund, but just the body part. And no head, ears, or tail. Or legs, or tail. Or legs, or anything. And on this show, you've been knighted baron. Yes, by yours truly. So I'm honored. I'm honored. I did that with my Excalibur sword. You did. You did. You cut my juggler, but I'm okay now.

Grab Bag Questions

3:27So you brought questions in, and this is a grab bag. This is a grab bag. This seems to be a fan favorite, grab bags. The fans are amazing. I mean, I always say this, and it's worth saying. They're smart and curious. You know what? It's a borderline annoying. And by the way, I judge how smart someone is not by how much they know, but by the depth of their curiosity. Yes, the level of curiosity. Yeah. Yes, and that's the only thing that matters. That's the hungry mind in search of enlightenment. And I always say, if I had you as a science teacher, I'd probably be doing something in science.

3:57Your enthusiasm and everything else. All right. I don't care that you're taller than I am. That's annoying. Monopoly world. Hello, I'm just curious about where the differences end. Who is this? It just says monopoly world. Monopoly world. That's all it is. You know, the person wants to be secretive about this. All right, bring it on. I'm just curious about where the differences and or similarities are between wormhole and a black hole. Oh, yeah. I mean, just because the word hole shows up in both. Just, you know, chill out.

4:27Don't overthink it. Don't be a hole about it. No, for me, one of the fun things about a black hole, because our word hole is a two-dimensional idea. Think about it. Right. There's a hole in the ground. You fall through the hole. Right. Okay. It's depth and it's... No, it's a hole. It's that circle and you fall through. Mm-hmm. Okay? Right. Whereas a black hole is a hole in every direction you approach it. Which is why once you get sucked into it...

4:58Yeah, you do not. There's no path out of the black hole. Right. Right? And so it's a region of space where gravity is so high that the speed of light is insufficient to escape. And just to put this in context, sometimes I make too many assumptions about what people might know. So let me back up just a little bit. Okay. All right. You know the old saying, what goes up must come down? Yes. That's bullshit.

5:23Sorry. And did you write a paper on bullshit? No, I wrote a whole paper. And that was the conclusion of your dissertation? So I learned early, how is it that we can go to the moon if you're going to say what goes up must come down? Right. Okay? So it turns out there is a speed above which if you leave Earth, you'll never come back. And that is sensibly called the escape velocity. Right. From Earth's surface, it's seven miles per second. So grandma's adage works for anything anybody would have thrown.

5:55Right. You throw it, it goes up. But if you have rockets, you're not beholden to grandma's adages. With some kick-ass boosters and everything. Right, right. No, you're not beholden. Right. So it will never come back ever. It'll go to the edge of the universe before it thinks about coming back to Earth. So you can ask, if it's seven miles per second on Earth's surface, you can imagine objects, planets with higher gravity, where the escape velocity is higher than seven miles per second. Right. Everything would weigh more. So that makes sense.

6:26Continue this line of reasoning, you get to a point where the escape velocity is the speed of light itself. The speed of light is insufficient to carry the beam out of the black hole. So you fall in, you ain't never coming out. Yeah, you ain't never coming out. Light's not coming out. Is there a better term for it than black hole? The black hole. Exactly. No, I think you're right. But both come from general relativity, right? And both involve extreme warping of space. What's the other one, the wormhole? Yeah, the wormhole. So the wormhole, I had some early ideas about what that could be or what it might be.

6:56Right. If you look at the math that gives us a black hole, the solution, there's a second solution to it, which is the mathematical opposite of a black hole, which you might call a? Wormhole.

7:10No, go ahead. Say it again. I really wasn't paying attention. If you were to name the mathematical opposite of a black hole, what would you call it? A white. Thank you. A white hole. That's a solution to the equations, and it's the mathematical opposite of a black hole. Right. All right. So a black hole sucks everything in. A white hole would probably do what? Push everything out. Push everything out. So we said, let's look for that in the universe. Couldn't find anything that resembled anything remotely what a white hole should look like.

7:41Okay. So we don't think they exist. But how would they connect? We say, would they connect with a wormhole? Connecting the black hole and the white hole. But since black holes are naturally formed from collapsing matter, is there any sort of known process in the universe that could naturally create some kind of a wormhole that's known? We don't know, and we don't think so. We think you're going to have to make one on your own time.

8:08Okay? We know how to make a wormhole. Yeah. We just don't have the right ingredients. What we need is negative gravity stuff. Not the same as antimatter. Antimatter has ordinary gravity. Mm-hmm. Okay? An antiproton has the same gravity as a proton. Negative gravity stuff. Because what does gravity do? It collapses space-time. Right. A wormhole, you're trying to pry it open. Right. So you want the opposite. And travel through it. Yeah. That's a whole lot. You do that for free. Once it opens the hole, you just step through.

8:40That doesn't require... Just open the hole. And you get sucked through. There's no sucking. It's just step through. If you can pry it open. But if a black hole is millions and billions of miles away from another location, doesn't a wormhole connect? That's a tunnel in a way? If they're connected by a wormhole, watch where you're stepping when you go through the other side. Because you don't know where... Get one of those mirrors.

9:04Do you need... Like one of those look under the car mirrors. Do that through the... Oh, I know that. I'm Italian. I know that. Stop. Stop. Do you need easy pass in a wormhole? And what do they charge? I bet some municipality will put one up in the first wormhole. But you can naturally create a stable wormhole? So aliens, for example, if they have access to materials that we don't, and they discover a negative gravity thing, then they, if they're smart, will know how to configure it to pry

9:37open a hole through the fabric of space and time. You step through, and you land in another place and another time. So it's sort of like wormhole versus black hole. It's like you... Black hole, you check in the hotel, you ain't checking out. It's what they call the Roach Motel, so check in, you don't check out. And wormhole, you're checking out of the hotel, but you end up in a worse hotel with a lousy buffet breakfast. Speaking of checking in and out, I think a lot about wormholes. And you know what the closest we have to wormholes in our civilization? It's an elevator.

10:07There's like, whatever's out here, you walk into this room. It's a box. It's a little box. Someone pushes some buttons. Right. And then the doors open, and it's a whole other place. Right. But what people don't explain, and science will never, is why I have to make small talk during that wormhole travel where I want to kill myself. The universe brims with mystery. So, I think of that all the time. Plus, if you're coming from an elevator that opens to the outdoors, and you come in, and then you're not outdoors anymore.

10:38You're in some other place. And if I don't tell you where you are, you have no idea. If I bring an alien into an elevator, it'll have no clue what I just did with it. Because it's moving through time, and it doesn't know. It doesn't know what I just did with it. There's no spatial wrecking. As far as it's concerned, it'll be a wormhole. Just to finish this up, we'll move on. The stuff that you refer to. We don't know what it could be, or what it is, or even if it exists. Are we close to something? No. Nothing close. Negative gravity? Come on now. If we had that, we wouldn't need rockets. Do you think we'll ever get there? Nothing in the universe looks like it's operating under negative gravity.

11:10But I know the way science operates, keep your mind open to every and any, all possibilities. It is, and we're looking in the universe, we don't see any. Open is, oh, we can't explain that. I wonder if it's negative gravity. That would be a way to think about negative. There's nothing out there that needs negative gravity to account for it. So I'm skeptical. But it's nonetheless fun to think about. It is. And maybe in the end, we just need magic like Doctor Strange. Okay? But I kind of want to solve it with Rick, of Rick and Morty, because he uses real science.

11:43It's sort of, yeah. We've talked about that. Yeah, it's completely real science in Rick and Morty. Wormhole, it's theoretically possible, but science is like, we're on our coffee break. Don't ask us to do it. Natasha Shawl Davis. Hello, Dr. Tyson. This is Natasha from New Mexico. I'm currently at band club with other medical students, and our mics are broken. So... With that at where? She's at band club. Band club? Band, B-A-N-D. That's a thing? She plays it. Yes, there's a club. They play in a band. And people admit to this. Yes.

12:13I'm a band club. Yes. She was writing this while she was getting beaten up.

12:19Well, they can't beat them up too much, because then they can't perform for the game. Not the fingers. Not the fingers. No, this is literally hilarious to me, because she's writing this as she's at band club, and she's a medical student, so apparently you have time in medical school to be in a band, which is troubling to me. I am not coming to you, Ms. Davis, for any medical treatment, because I don't want you to play your flute while you're working on me. Okay. So, I'm currently at band club with other medical students.

Whispering to Quarks

12:46Our mics are broken.

Whispering to Quarks

12:46So, while other instruments are cool, I must yell, how quietly should a singer whisper to affect one quark at a time? What about just one atom? Any good uses of my nonsense? Thank you both. I love this question. Okay. So. I mean, it's not about whispering quieter. It is. You can divide the universe up into four forces. So, the obvious one is gravity. We all know about that. Another one is the electromagnetic force. That's what holds all our model atoms and molecules together.

13:19The third is palmicurial charisma. That's a force. No. I checked. In fact, I double-checked. It's not there. That's negative gravity. Then there's the weak nuclear force, which operates within particles that describes how they decay into other particles. And then there's the strong nuclear force in the nucleus of an atom. We don't have access to the strong nuclear force. You've got to be like 10 million degrees to get in there. But we have quarks that make up atoms. Hang on, hang on, hang on.

13:49We don't have access to that. Right. The weak nuclear force, we're not really messing with that either. We can interact with gravity, and we interact with the electromagnetic force. Mm-hmm. All right. Whatever you do, that's what you're doing. Okay? Now, we had someone in that chair. Did you take a hit of acid before you came here? What am I supposed to do with that? Whatever you do, that's what you're doing? We had someone in this chair, Betul Kachar, who said something I'd never heard before. I had to pause and reflect on it and say, wow, that's deep.

14:22The world is simply electrons looking for a place to rest. Wow. And I didn't want to embrace that until I kept thinking about it. And it's like, yeah, that's what's going on at all times. That's what happens when atoms get together with atoms to make molecules. The electrons are finding a place to hang out. Okay. I have this pen. This is a solid state. It's held together by molecules and the electrons that bind enabling it.

14:53First of all, did you wash your hands before you touched that? I licked my hands. Clean. Okay. But no, you're saying electrons are in motion within that? At all times. At all times in everything. So there's the electrons. That's the electromagnetic force. Uh-huh. But she's talking about quarks. Right. You ain't getting into quarks. Quarks are, they're locked up inside. Right. So it's like Legos make up a brick building. Within the Lego, you've got atoms and you've got, within the atom, you have the quarks. You're not getting into the quarks without higher power than what we have access to.

15:24But she wants to still influence it. And it's kind of a metaphysical question. Whatever you do ever at all, you're invoking electromagnetic fields and forces. But the issue here is wavelength. And it's not about loudness. It's about the fact that the collective wavelengths are too large. Are too large to localize into a quark. If she breathes, that's true. That was good. Come on, huh? That was good. I have Peabody Awards.

15:53The point is, she wants to whisper at some volume level that will somehow tickle quarks. The fact that she- Which, by the way, is a fun parlor game. Tickling quarks? Yes. If you do anything at all, you are moving around electrons and you're bringing the quarks with you in the nuclei of the atoms that are parts of the molecules that comprise you. So you cannot do anything without setting into motion electrons and quarks.

16:31Either bound into the molecules that move, because as she whispers, vibrations go into the air. And the molecules of the air vibrate, carrying it to another location. So a whisper doesn't target anything, it just bothers everything equally like the human resources department. Right? They're there for your own protection. Yes, that's true. We have to worry about this in science all the time. If the mics are down and everyone is screaming at each other, and she wants to be heard, the background level of conversation creates what we call a noise level.

17:03Okay? That's the random sounds that are out there. If she wants to be noticed, she has to break through that noise, either in frequency or intensity, in order to get noticed by anybody else. So you define intensity as loudness? Loudness. Volume. And frequency is, if she comes at it with a frequency that no one else is communicating with, everybody will hear it. Right, so you have a deep voice. If everybody's higher, your voice is going to cut through. Yeah, my voice is going to cut through. Right. And if I come in in a high-pitched voice, that'll get heard in the din of other noises.

17:34Well, but at the atomic scale, does sound stop being a precise tool and become more of like a shove, like a statistical shove of some kind? No, it's always just, it's a pressure wave moving through the medium. Right. At all times. Right. Yeah.

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Water Pressure Question

21:33Hello, Guardians of the Geeks. Nice. Mikel from Canada. All right. If I submerge my arm in a sink full of water, first of all, you need to get a hobby, or get in a swimming pool. Damn, you cold blood. Come on now. People coming in out of their honest home experiments, and you're going to talk smack about them. Screw you and the cork you didn't ride in on. If I submerge my arm in a sink full of water or get in a swimming pool, I don't really feel squeezed by the water.

22:04However, if I do the same with rubber gloves, say, on washing dishes or get in a river wearing a waterproof fishing wader, and I hope you're fishing and it's not some weird thing, I feel disturbingly squeezed. What's up with that? Shouldn't I feel less having something rigid in terms of material around me? If he put on mittens and then submerge, it's not going to – he's putting on latex gloves. Of course they're going to squeeze it.

22:33Okay. That's what I mean. The guy needs a hobby. If you're putting on rubber gloves, they're going to squeeze your hand. Well, because it doesn't feel like it's squeezing you. It's just pushing your body. No, so here's the thing. Air pressure is created between the skin. Right now, you're in equilibrium with the air pressure. You know how I know that? Because you're not shrinking and you're not expanding.

22:56Thank you. So all pressure is equal on all parts of your body. Right. I know that. Okay. Right now. Okay. Here's a cool thing you can do. If you're sitting in a pool – we're approaching summer now – just sit at the edge of the pool up to your neck. Yeah. Sit on a step up to your neck. Then inhale a very deep breath and your body comes up a little in the water. Oh, I was a swimmer growing up. Because you're getting less dense. Why does my bathing suit get air in it and it just fills up?

23:28Because you're farting.

23:32No one told you that. These are practical questions. I've been a swimmer my whole life. Because you're wearing Speedos and there's no air exchange. Oh, you know I am. And it becomes a – I don't do waders, man. I just do a Speedo. Everybody take that in at home. Drink that in. So here's the thing. The glove traps air. And when the air gets squeezed, the glove tightens. Okay. And that's what he's feeling. If you have something underwater that is squeezable, the water pressure will squeeze it.

24:04If you have a plastic bag and put anything in it, okay? A head. It doesn't matter. It won't matter what you put in it. Okay. That's what the word anything means. Okay. The air inside the bag is in equal pressure with the air in the atmosphere. So the bag is just the bag. We don't even think about it. Right. If you take that bag and immerse it without letting water get in. So you seal the bag. No, don't seal it. Don't seal it. Leave it open up top. Okay. And lower it into the water.

24:36Before the point where the, to stop where the water doesn't get in. Correct. Okay. That bag will collapse completely around what you put in it. That's air pressure. It is water pressure winning out over air pressure. Air pressure between the head. And it's going to take all, between all the heads that are in the duffel bag. It will, it will, it will, it will squeeze out all of the air that's in that bag. Okay. Then you zip it and now you have a, basically a vacuum sealed bag. So like water itself is chill.

25:08There's no pressure, but you put a glove on it. No, no, no. I didn't say that. I'm working my way to that. I'm just saying that if you have a glove, typically there's air between your hand and the glove. If you put your hand in the water, the water is going to press the air out and it'll feel like the glove is squeezing on your hand. Right. But it's not. It's just taking the air out. Right. Okay. So now watch. If you go deeper, then water pressure becomes significant. And there's a point where your body cannot resist the water pressure and your eardrums

25:40will pop. Your, your lungs will collapse. And if you go deep enough, you just implode. It's like you're, you're, it's like the, the water is the mafia and your body owes the water money and it's squeezing you. Is that the exact analogy to what? I don't. I think that works. You said earlier, you're Italian. I am. I'm talking from experience. And we were talking about heads in a duffel bag. I know a guy who knows a guy and I owe somebody money. All right. So, so it's fun to watch this happen. Just take a bag, like a Ziploc bag, but leave it unzipped.

26:12Yes. And just dip it into the water. Just watch all the air come out. It'll be snug onto what's in there. Then zip it up. I get a Ziploc. It's how to get all the air out of it. I get a, well, I get a Ziploc sandwich bag. I put something in it and if I squeeze the air out, what it does is it forms, the bag forms pretty closely around that object. Correct. You can get water to do that for you for free, but you have to set it up to make that happen. Okay. Yeah. So that's water pressure getting the air out, but five inches into the water, that's

26:43not enough water pressure for you to feel that as the pressure on your body. Here's what'll happen. As you submerge, there's pressure on you. You have skin, right? So your skin is pretty good, but your eardrums, they are sensitive to pressure. Right. So your capacity to breathe against pressure is, will be challenged. It's still fighting pressure. As you're fighting it, as you get lower and lower. Right. So it's fast. Pressure is a fun, not fun. It's a fascinating feature. It's a little unsettling, but I'll keep it in mind.

27:16Lee Robertson, greetings, gentle folk of the universe.

Roche Limit Question

27:20Lee from Florida here. What is the determination for an object to be affected by the Roche limit? I know Saturn's rings were likely made by one of its former moons being destroyed by the planet's Roche limit, but how are we able to maintain orbit around Earth with our own Roche limit? The Roche limit matters for objects that are held together by the force of gravity. If you're just a solid object, the Roche limit is irrelevant to you. Okay? You're a solid object. You are not held together by the forces of gravity.

27:52Wait, if I push the bounds of the Roche limit, aren't I going to be pulled apart? You can just walk across the Roche limit and laugh in the face of gravity. Which I've wanted to do for a long time. Of objects that are gravitationally bound, you could just laugh as you walk by them. So why the distinction on solid objects versus non-solid? I'm going to tell you. So let's distinguish solid objects that are rigid and solid objects that are held together by gravity. We think of Earth as a solid object, but it's held together by gravity.

28:24All right. How do you know if something's held together by gravity? It's spherical. Always. Yes. Pretty much. Yes. Why does it have to be spherical? Because that's what gravity does to something when it is in charge. I'm going to go back to this pen cap. Isn't this held together by gravity? No, it's held together by electromagnetic forces, which swamp the effects of gravity.

28:47That's why that's not falling apart, even though we're within the Roche limit of Earth. You can walk around and not get torn apart. Because crossing the Roche limit, Earth is not really tearing you apart. It feels like, it looks like that's what's happening, but that's not what's happening. I'm going to tell you what's happening. You ready? Yeah. Okay. The closer you get to an object, the stronger its tidal forces are. And tidal forces go up as the inverse cube of your distance. If you are one-third the distance to an object that you used to be, what's the inverse of one-third?

29:22Three. Three. Cubit, what do you get? Three times three times three. What do you get? 27. 27. The tidal forces are 27 times higher if you're one-third the distance than they used to be. If you're one-fifth the distance, it's 125 times higher. So these are tidal forces. All that means is it's pulling on one side, the side closest to the planet, way more than it is on the other side. But so at the Roche limit, the tidal force simply exceeds the gravity.

29:57And what is that point? How do we measure that point? So you calculate where that is. If it exceeds the gravity. But it's different for every object. If it exceeds the gravity of the object that's holding it together, then gravity loses. The tidal forces win. And so mountains just float up because they're not held down by gravity anymore. Rocks float up. And the whole thing just breaks apart. It doesn't break. It just lifts apart from itself.

30:29Because the Roche limit is kicking the ass. And disassembles is the better term than break apart. I like kicking the ass. Because nothing breaks. A rock is still going to be a rock. But if the rock was sitting on Earth, it's no longer attached to Earth. Because the rock is held together, not by gravity, but by electromagnetic forces. And you have this fetish about your pen. So your pen would survive a crossing of the road slope intact. Hang on. I love you, Ken. Oh, I love you. Fetish is a little strong.

30:59I mean, really. But so is it sort of like pulling bread apart and at some point you're pulling it apart to the point where it becomes disconnected from itself and then that's the way it's exceeded the Roche limit at that point? If the stretchy part of the bread is what we're thinking of as gravity, then there's a point where your force exceeds the gravity and the bread just pulls apart. So like the Roche limit is like the ultimate relationship boundary, like where you're getting closer and closer. It doesn't mean anything because you just want to turn your relationship into confetti.

31:31Well, up until that point, you're both independent, strong entities. Within the Roche lobe, you get torn apart. No, I use a different word. You get disassembled. Everything you once were is now in pieces. So it's like you're in a bar. Things start to happen. There's a guy. You get a little close. Roche limit's like, let's take it outside. I'm going to dismember you. Only if you're talking to his woman does that happen. Exactly. It doesn't just happen. No, I'm in my Speedo in the bar.

32:03There you go. And she's checking me out. I'm not asking for trouble. And the Roche limit kicks in and we have to go outside. So the Roche limit sort of exceeds gravity, power, strength. Exactly. And so it's a very natural place where that would happen. But anything that's held together electromagnetically is intact. Rocks, boulders, no problem. Your pan cap, you, and the electromagnetic force is 40 orders of magnitude, 40 powers of

32:3310 stronger than gravity. Therefore, Roche limit has no effect on something that's held together by electromagnetic forces like rocks. Right. But if you're a rubble pile that's all held together by gravity and you come near the Roche lobe, it'll totally disassemble it. The rocks themselves within the rubble will stay. Will stay. But they'll break apart. Correct. So another two rocks here. We don't know whether some asteroids are just rubble piles or whether they're solid, which matters if we're going to deflect them en route to hitting us.

33:06Oh. Because you're going to push it out of the way. You're going to need like 20 Ben Affleck's. Ben Affleck? Yeah. Is that the right... He was part of that. Was he? Yeah. He goes on the thing with... No, but he's with Bruce Willis. Bruce Willis. It was Bruce Willis. Come on. Bruce Willis is the old salty guy and then Ben is like loose, but then Ben doesn't be in the guy... And then Liv Tyler, she helped out too. Oh my God. You need something to come back to. Yes. Exactly. I don't know if you know, but we recently did an explainer on the Roche Limit. Oh, perfect. So anyone who was confused by what I just said or by what you said...

33:39Well, the reason this question got asked after your explainer is the buzz on social media is your explainer was eh. It was Roche Limit bad. So you just catch it in our archives. Okay. I think we do well on our explainers. So check it out. You do well on everything. Are you kidding? All right. When you care. Bev, happy galactic gumbo to you, Dr. Tyson. If you could delete one overused sci-fi movie trope, what would it be? Thank you for keeping the educational eternal flame strong.

34:11Bev, a one syllable name from Alabama. I've given up on this, so I'm going to mention it, but not that I think it'll ever happen. You should stop hearing explosions in space. It would be completely silent. Because? There's no air in space to propagate the sound. The waves. From wherever it is to where you are, completely silent. So it makes for much less drama if it's just... Okay, that's all good and technical. Can I have one now? Yeah, what's yours? Can we delete the speech where they save humanity?

34:41Have you met humanity? It's annoying. We don't need to save it. Well, how about the one where the astronaut is like, are they lost in space? Are they going to save somebody or not save somebody? And there's always the video of the kid that was just born and they're touching the video screen back on Earth. Yeah. You know, really? Come on. Can we move on from that, please? Exactly. And anybody who has like a nine-month-old kid, keep him on Earth. Yeah. You don't send him into space. No, and he doesn't need to be on a video at nine.

35:12He's going to be doing that the rest of his life. How about the fact that when they show up, the aliens, they immediately speak perfect English, okay? Meanwhile, you can't understand the guy from Glasgow, Scotland right now, all right? And suddenly, right now, seriously, like you've got an octopus alien. No, no, the aliens studied. No, the aliens studied. Well, no, it doesn't wash for me. They're smart. They can learn. They're smart. Why are we always assuming that we're dumb and they're smart? Because they... That's another trope. Because they arrived here. Well, but...

35:42And we cheer on people who ascend 100 kilometers above Earth's surface, which is the equivalent of two dimes above a schoolroom globe. They go up and come back, and we celebrate them as astronauts. We have an alien coming from across the galaxy. How do you know they just took them a long time to figure it out? Why do we give them credit? I'm just saying, they come across the galaxy. I'm thinking they're smarter than us. I'm thinking they have higher technology.

36:13I'm thinking they could read a dictionary and be fluent right after they read it. But do you... But they could read the dictionary and just say, this is a really stupid race and it's not worth it. They could do that too. In fact, they likely will.

36:28Exactly. So those are your tropes. Do you have any others that come to mind? Yeah, so those with the touching the screen of the newborn infant from your spouse at home and... What about some where they're floating in space? Where the astronauts are floating in space? That's fine. That's fine. That's fine. But then they're... But go ahead. All right. So there's another one. They have these sort of laser weapons. Okay. And again, they're making noise. Choon, choon, choon. Yeah. That's why I say I'm giving up. I let them make the choon, choon, choon noise. So you see... Too much, my noise.

37:00And you see the laser going from the ship to the target. Right. No! The laser's headed to the target. If you can see the laser, that means it's sending light sideways to you. Right. It means there's something there reflecting the light. It would be like the kid went like this with the chalkboard erasers. Okay, now do the laser so we can see the laser beam. That's not how empty space works. But wait, the laser beam has an end point that it hits the object. Yeah, you'll see it explode on the other side.

37:31But you're not seeing the beam. You won't see the beam at all. Because it's light. It's light. And unless you can reflect it out of the beam to your eyes... How do you know that there's not something happening in space, in time, that is doing that that you don't understand yet? You'd have to be in the middle of a big gas cloud to make that happen. And then you'd have particles reflecting it to you. Because that's sort of the chalk in the thing. Yeah, that's the equivalent of the chalk. All right. I don't think we need to save humanity. That's all I know. Okay. Kurt Guy. Hey, Neil and Paul. Paul, on your show, Permission to Speak, you spent years pulling the extraordinary out of ordinary people.

38:07From a cosmic perspective, Neil always says we're all made of stardust. After hearing so many different life stories, what's the atomic common thread you found that proves we're all part of the same human constellation? I love that. And so that reminds me that your stage show is not just you on stage. A fundamental part is you interacting with the audience. Yeah, I just born out of my stand-up and liking to talk to audiences and getting these amazing stories. So have people caught on and now they leave the front rows empty?

38:37Yes, it's like going to a Gallagher show where he's smashing fruit down. Gallagher, for those who are over 50. My job is to open people up. You act like you're young. You're 78. You have a swollen prostate.

38:53I know. I talked to your doctor. Leave my prostate out of this. So what you do only works if, because you never met these people before. No. Although I do get asked if it's pre-planned, if they've been scripted or any of that. I get you. I know you're talented. You don't need that. I get that. So you read the audience by whatever metrics and you know what thread will work through them so that you have a meaningful exchange of content and humor. Yes. And so is this because you know human nature so well?

39:25Because I have my counterpart to that just as an educator, but I want to hear, because the comedian is way closer than the educator is. I think that people want to be heard and I think people want to be heard in a context where they feel safe. I define safe as like not worrying about political correctness and what you can say and also that they're not going to be made fun of. That would mean emotionally safe, not physically safe. And then although they are, there are, we do this over an alligator pit. So there's a physical safety issue. And lava too. You need the lava. Of course. Hello.

39:55For me, what I've been told, and I can't speak to this, I do have this natural curiosity. I'm not just asking the questions as part of an act. So, and when you get to that second, third and fourth question, you get these amazing stories. And I think the reason that it works is because there's something that I call, we all have beautiful imperfection. And what I say in my show is we're imperfect and we should embrace that. You know, in other words, we want to think that life comes in nice, neat boxes and everything's black and white, but life would be boring.

40:25But in the imperfection, that's what's interesting. That's where you get crazy stories, funny stories, how far stories, because we're all making imperfect decisions all the time, but that's okay. And I think what happens is, and a connection happens with people in the audience that night because they're sitting there going consciously or subconsciously, oh, this guy's as imperfect as I am. And I feel pretty good about that. Maybe we should redefine those imperfections as perfections.

40:55If they're fundamental to what it is to be alive. Oh, wow. That's a lot deeper than I thought of it. But, and so- No, it's the, it's the, it's in the same vein of that is if everyone is special, then no one is special. Right. It's the same kind of- Yeah. But, but- If everyone has imperfections, then that's what the perfection is. Right, but Kurt asked about common thread. And I think the common thread is that people want to be connected, especially now. Things are divisive and they seem to only be getting worse, but it's not a political show. But I think people want to be connected and they get connected through these stories.

41:27And I think the other thing that happens is, I think it gets us out of our silos to be aware that there are other people out there different from us in a way that's good to know. You don't have to agree with it, like it, or understand it. But you have to know in advance that they're going to like that. They're not going to get up and walk out of the show. They do. Okay. I mean, I've had, I've had stories where you're like, oh my God. I mean, I've had two heroin addicts on stage, one recovering and one didn't want to recover. You bring them up on stage. Oh yeah, they come on stage. Okay. I bring them up in groups, like six, four, six people at a time. And then we just start. That's brave.

41:58I've seen you do that at the beginning of Colbert. Yeah. Yeah. And then what ends up happening. When you're warming up the audience. Yes. And what ends up happening is it really turns into like, we're hanging out in somebody's big basement, having drinks and telling stories for people who have never met before, because then people from the audience will start to yell out questions, which is fine with me. And then the beautiful thing for me is they don't leave right after the show's over. They come over to somebody and they'll say, oh, you're from Portland. I'm from Portland. And they'll start to connect with each other. Because they learn that about them. Yeah. Yeah. And they were drawn in by the conversation. So I think it's the common thread of sort of, we're all imperfect and we're all figuring

42:33it out. So we need to send you to the Middle East. Whoa. And bring peace to the world. Oh yes. Okay. I'm the one. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go in my Speedo. That'll make people throw up. They'll stop all action. Exactly. Nobody can fight because they're all throwing up. But thank you for asking that question. It gives me a chance to explain the show a little bit. Yeah. It's pretty awesome. So my version of that, I don't know if I got asked it as well. Yeah. I think it's for both. Yeah. I rely on an assumption that everyone is fundamentally curious at some level.

43:06And if they forgot how to be curious, there are embers that just need to be fanned that can then reignite in their adulthood, embers that were there as children. And there's nothing more satisfying to an educator than to watch an adult have a resurfaced feeling of wonder about the world that kids have every day. Because every day in a kid's life is new. So here's what you do. We talked about emotional safety in my show. What you do is what I'll call intellectual safety.

43:38Like I never feel stupid and I don't think anybody does. Really? I've been trying to make you feel stupid. I've been failing at that. Let me go back and try again. You really suck at that. No, you give intellectual safety and enthusiasm. I've never thought about it that way. And those two things together, you can draw people in emotionally with enthusiasm and not being pedantic and talking down to them. And you never make somebody feel. They don't fear displaying their ignorance. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. And so when, look, I mean, we've all.

44:10But I will attack you. I will attack you if you don't know that you're ignorant and are coming out. Right. Out of the gate strong. Right. Exactly. Because then you're in this place where. Listen. You know enough to think you're right. Right. And you don't know enough to know you're wrong. And then you're aggressive. I don't. You know. Yeah. Everybody watching.