If there's anything one can glean from talking with astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson, it's this: He's an extremely thorough fellow—and that's a good thing. One doesn't get the impression that he adds words merely to hear himself; he wants to make sure he explains things clearly for the listener—which may be part of his charm.
Tyson has been part of the national consciousness for some time now, in part because he has been a guest on shows such as The Colbert Report and has hosted the PBS series NOVA ScienceNow. Last year, Tyson hosted Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey on Fox, garnering him even more fans.
Recently, National Geographic Channel announced that Tyson's popular podcast, Star Talk, is coming to the network's late night, according to Deadline.
He is now talking at different venues nationally, and he will stop by Chicago Jan. 27.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Good morning. I imagine it's a little early for you?
Windy City Times: No—I've been up for a while. How about you?
Neil deGrasse Tyson: No; I'm very [much] a morning person. And if you ever travel around the world, here's a fascinating bit of advice: If you're a morning person, you should travel east around the world; if you're a night person, you should travel west. The time-zone shifts work in your favor, so it reduces jet lag. If you go the opposite way, you're totally hosed. [Both laugh.]
WCT: I will definitely keep that in mind. By the way, could you talk about the tour?
Neil deGrasse Tyson: It's a tour, but I've been giving lectures for the past 20 years or so. I think, post-Cosmos, people want to think of it as a tour—but I don't think of it as [such]. I think that I'm invited to come give a talk, so I give a talk.
I get several hundred requests a month, which is obviously impossible. If I honored that number, that's all I'd be doing—and the reason people would ask me to give a talk wouldn't exist. [Both laugh.] It'd be a self-limiting exercise.
In other words, it's not as if I have a new album coming out; there's no book, nothing—so it's not a tour. In fact, I don't even like giving book talks; I [already] wrote the book. If I give a talk, it's about something you can't find in print. That creates the relationship with the audience that's unique in time and place.
So I'll pay attention to things like age distribution and what part of the country I'm in, as each audience is different. For example, I like audiences with senior citizens because they have a deep timeline of life experience. When I talk about the universe and society and culture, and how it all folds into politics, I can reach back 70 years—and they would've been eyewitnesses to it.
The best way I can serve an audience is to describe how and why science matters in your life and your culture and in civilization.
WCT: With Windy City Times being an LGBT publication, I'm curious about your stance concerning genetics ( or epigenetics ) and sexuality.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Before I answer that, I want to speak more broadly about what I do. As a scientist and educator, I am at my most useful when I can equip an audience to analyze information so people can be empowered to arrive at their own conclusions. The message and tools of science don't tell you what the answer is; they tell you how to arrive at an emergent truth.
What I have found is that people have an urge to get my opinion on things. I don't have a problem sharing an opinion, but it's not my goal. Usually, I don't care if people share my opinion; if you require that people have your opinion, we don't have a free society.
I have opinions [laughs] on hundreds of topics. If you have time, go to my Facebook page under "Notes," and read me the title. [WCT reads: "Partial anatomy of my public engagement," which can be found on Facebook by seeking that title.] That's it—and that explains how and why I engage with the public. What I have found is that when I do express opinions, the people who like to argue opinions jump all over it. [I'm] just, like, "Wow ... it's just an opinion." [Laughs] Also, I will speak with some passion about information—which people often mistake for an opinion.
So back to your question: I have read literature that have said [sexuality] could be epigenetic, genetic or nothing at all. I haven't studied it enough to find out which of these studies is [most] reliable. I can tell you that if research does not converge on a single answer, that often means there is no phenomenon at all that is being measured.
If you have a group that has a particular interest in a result that is being conducted in the scientific world, what often is that there's a research project that agrees with what the group wants. Another group does another bit of research, and finds that the result does not match. Then, the urge is to show why that result is flawed. The conservative right wing has certain business interests that, in their judgment, are not served by legislation that protects Earth from global warming—so they deny global warming, and they find the one experiment that shows it's not happening when 99 percent of other experiments show it. So this fight ensues because there is not this emergent truth.
It's never about one study, contrary to what the press will have you think: "This is what's true now." No! It's not what's true. Truth is not any single research paper; truth is an emergence of an experimental and observational consensus of research papers.
So my argument is: Whether or not it's genetic, we claim we live in a free society. That should be the deciding force. If we live in a free society, what consenting adults do should be the most sacred thing we honor. That, for me, matters more than any experiment. Dress how you want, sleep with who you want—consenting adults should be able to do what they want.
That's a really long answer; I'm sorry. [Both laugh.] A really short answer is that I find it intriguing that people would ask if you're gay or straight without asking if it's more nuanced than that. I think it's a spectrum. People are usually more comfortable if there are two categories—and that shortchanges the diversity of what it is to be human.
WCT: For example, there are people who don't believe in bisexuality...
Neil deGrasse Tyson: And people who are not bisexual don't know what it means to be bisexual. So you bring in people who are. If you feel you're 100 percent one or the other, then you're not there. To say you need genetic support for something is to put your hopes on an argument that should never have to be made in the first place. If you want a quote, that's my quote.
WCT: OK. Switching gears, could you...
Neil deGrasse Tyson: By the way, I saw [the Broadway show] Kinky Boots [recently]. I don't know if it's in Chicago...
WCT: It started out in Chicago, and then went to Broadway.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Oh! They tested it out in Chicago.
For me, what was fascinating about it—first of all, it's a terrific musical, and I love musicals. What intrigued me is that it was all about drag queens as the driving theme—and there was not a single mention of homosexuality.
The dancers are all men dressed in drag, and there was not about who was sleeping with whom. It's just about a shoe company that's trying to reinvent itself by selling high heels that are strong enough to support the weight of a man. That's clearly a niche [laughs], and that becomes the business model for this shoe factory. They're saying, "This is how I want to dress, so accept people for who they are." I've grown fatigued of plays that try to hit you over the head with that message; I think we're past that now.
WCT: I'm definitely a fan of subtlety. I did want to ask you about this talk where you discussed climate change and the economic ramifications it could have.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: So, it comes down to the question "How do you get people to act?"
What history has shown is that people are more likely to act if it's shown that something is more likely to destroy their wealth, especially in a capitalist society. I always worry that if people don't have the foresight to protect the future with decisions they make now about our carbon footprint, maybe what will jolt them into action is when them beach homes float away.
Real estate matters to people, especially wealthy people—and beachfront property will be the first to be directly affected by climate change. As the world warms, you will melt water that is currently frozen on land, in the form of glaciers—and the main repository of glaciers is in Antarctica and Greenland. This is so much water that if you melted it and it went into the ocean, the ocean would rise to the elbow of the Statue of Liberty. Even if it just rises a couple of inches, an extreme storm could be the difference between a storm that just blows by and regional catastrophe.
By the way, we won't go extinct from this. It'll just be a very different world, with a very different coastline. All the [large] cities are on the water; they're essentially ports.
WCT: So those beachhouse owners have a direct interest in this now.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Precisely. They're not directly affected. By the way, when you're highly industrialized and know how to [deal with] nature, you're better off when you have science and technology to inform you. For example, this quake hit Napa in California; the headline I saw was, "Major earthquake strikes California—dozens injured." [Laughs] Think about those two phrases combined. Most of the photos were of wine casks that broke.
WCT: Robotics...
Neil deGrasse Tyson: I love it. The less work I have to do and the more a robot can do, the better. We think of robots as machines that look like humans, but a robot is anything that performs something you otherwise would've done. The cotton gin was a robot, [although] we think of it as a machine. I say, "Bring 'em on." I can spend more time at the beach. [Laughs]
WCT: But how do robots affect the economy?
Neil deGrasse Tyson: They're been doing that from the beginning. There was a guy named [Ned] Lud who, when the Industrial Revolution was coming on big and strong, created a movement to stop this influx of machines and gave rise to the term "Luddite." He didn't really see it through.
You have machines that make cars, and can make them more cheaply [than if people made them]. But now you need people to repair the machines, and you need transportation for the spare parts. All of a sudden, the machines creates whole industries that weren't there before. So you're caught without a job [if you're on the assembly line], but that doesn't mean there are fewer jobs. The challenge is to have programs in place that retrain people.
So the history has not shown that robots lead to mass unemployment. However, it is self-limiting. If robots do everything, no one has a job—and no one can buy what the robots are making.
Tyson is slated to speak at the Auditorium Theater, 50 E. Congress Pkwy., on Tuesday, Jan. 27, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $52.50-$77.50; visit www.auditoriumtheatre.org/shows/neil-degrasse-tyson/ .
