#919 Neil deGrasse Tyson on debunking Flat-Earthers, Astrology (from Joe Rogan Experience #919)

Hello freak bitches. You know, which is why, and Mary goes to the manger, the animals are not in the manger, so there's secondary evidence for that's probably happened in the spring. Now, with the advent of commercial space travel, it seems inevitable. Seems inevitable, right? Love your segues. Do you think that it's possible that maybe you can even offer up a flat earth believer tour where you take them, like at the very least, take them up to Alaska where it's light for 23 hours a day? So, do you have a flat earth just calling into you? Is this? Tweeting me constantly. Tweeting me constantly, yeah. Call me a sell out. I'm a sell out. I'm a round earth sell out. Like as if there's some round earth money. Wow. Yeah, like. You're on the payroll. I'm getting some checks. I'm getting some round earth checks to keep the nonsense going. I'm getting some payola. Round earth payola for your show. I'm sure you've seen the basketball player who graduated from Duke. From Duke. That was hitting the news the last couple of days. I saw that. And he believes that dinosaurs are fake and that the world is flat. Okay, so here's the thing, Joe. Okay? I've thought about this. I bet you have. As an educator, I've thought about this. Okay? Okay. So, here's what matters. We live in a free country. People should be able to think whatever they want. Whenever they want. Provided it doesn't subtract away from someone else's rights. Okay. So, thinking the earth is flat doesn't harm anyone unless you want to run for office. Or you want some position of power over other people. That's when it's dangerous. I'm thinking of elevator banks where they have numbers. I have a photo essay of what elevators look like inside. I know it's just... You mean the gears and all that? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not even that geeky. Just what are the numbers on the panel? Oh, without the 13 you mean? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, about 80% of buildings taller than 12 stories don't have a 13th floor. Okay? And so, this trixadecaphobia is... Again, in a free country, if you want to be afraid of the number 13, go right ahead. It just seems to me you should not be tasked with designing elevators if that's your fear. Find something else to do. Holding aside the fact that I'm a little scared that in this 21st century United States of America we have people walking among us afraid of the number 13. What does that mean? I don't know in the long run. But if you keep to yourself, don't harm others, think whatever you want. So the rubber hits the road is you now have power over others. And that's where the failure of the educational system actually manifests. Now when you get in a debate with a guy like the BOB guy... I don't debate people. Okay, well when you discuss, educate, right? Because that's the saying goes, when an argument lasts more than five minutes, both sides are wrong. Well, that's a terrible saying. It's mostly wrong and the other person's stubborn, you know, it could definitely last for hours. That's not true at all. It's true 80% of the time. Okay. Yeah. But you got into it with that rapper that thinks that... I'll tell you why, BOB, because in his Twitter stream he was saying he was invoking physics. And so I got to deal with this. And so he showed a picture from Bear Mountain, which is a mountain in slightly upstate New York where Manhattan is in the sight line of the summit of this mountain. And he says, given the curvature of the earth and this formula, you should not be able to see Manhattan at all. Okay. And... It depends on the height that you're viewing from. Well, thank you. Well, so you do the math and it turns out Manhattan, the island, would not be visible at all. That's true. But any building taller than 15 stories would rise up above the curvature of the earth and you will see it. And if you look at the photo, you see the tall buildings rising above 15 stories. It's exactly what the correct formula shows and not his formula, which was wrong and misinterpreted, claims to show. Well, it's just bizarre because snipers have been using the literal curve of the earth to plan where bullets go. That's how you plot it out. Yeah, you have to. When you shoot at a mile, when you're shooting well out over 1,000 yards, those factors... So let me think. A mile, I have to ask, how much curvature of the earth do you get after a mile? It's an interesting question. Well, you also get drop. You get drop in curvature. That'd be gravity drop. Yes. And then curve. Yeah, so both of those. Yeah. Well, here's the thing to say to someone. If you have a bullet in your hand and you shoot a gun, which bullet drops faster? Right. Generally, they get the wrong answer to that. Yeah, drop at the exact same rate. They'll hit the ground at the same time. Exact same time. And that blows people's minds. They can't believe that's fast. But you do that in Physics 101. It's a physics demo. So that's why physics is so important. People say, oh, let's take biology and this. Great. But don't leave out the physics because that's where the fundamental operations of nature are to be found, of the physical universe are to be found. So what you have is you have a gun at one side. It's like a thing that shoots out a projectile. I don't want to call it a gun. At one side of the stage. And then you have like a little stuffed animal at the other side of the stage held up with an electromagnet at the top of its head. And these two are exactly the same level. As the projectile comes out from this mini cannon, it trips an electric circuit that releases the electromagnet at the top of the stuffed animal. The stuffed animal begins to fall. The bullet moves horizontally but also falls because gravity is pulling them both. And you watch the projectile curve down. You watch the stuffed animal curve down and it hits the stuffed animal every single time. The only factor that would change that would be if you put wings in the bullet and it was dealing with the wind. Wind. Right? Yeah, wind would affect it. Do they have bullets with wings? I haven't seen that. No, they don't. Okay. No, but if they did, you know, if like you shot the bullet and then they figured out, I think, the wings came out and then it would fly the wind. I saw that on some James Bond movie, I thought. Probably. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's just got to be frustrating for you when these things come back around. Like there was no flat earth theory when I was in high school. So how the hell... Well, there are other things though. Think about it. When you were in high school, there was much more astrology going on. Oh, yeah. The President Reagan... Oh, let's talk about that. Nancy Reagan had an astrologer. Is that an all nonsense? So today, you don't see much of it. Unless you talk to Steve Maxwell. But it's still there. It's just not... It's not manifesting in public policy. Some people believe in it deeply. I agree, but it's not up there in public policy. That's what I'm saying. Okay. Well, Nancy Reagan was really the only one that made it in public policy. Sure. But then, at the bar, do you hear people saying, what's your sign? Oh, hell yeah. Is that still a pickup truck? Oh, hell yeah. 100%. No, no. Let it not be true. Listen, dude, you're married and you're an older man. I know, but I'm out of it. Excuse me. You don't understand. If you want to get laid, you got to talk nonsense to people. Well, I'm a Scorpio. If you're a Taurus, we should just stop talking now. Okay, sorry. I missed that. I misled myself. I thought it was fading. Oh, get the... But Nancy Reagan was the big proponent at the time, yeah. It's nonsense astrology now. It's not like someone who really understands astrological charts and can plot it in the moons and retrograde and you were born on Celsius was rising and all that crazy crap that they tried. I don't know what they're doing. I was on a talk show with an astrologer. A real one? Apparently, yeah. She's a real one or a fake one, right? How do you know? She says she's real. Okay. And I trust her because she talks about how fake other astrologers are. Oh, she's a hater. She's a hater. Don't trust her. And she was saying that the Kennedys all died during a lunar eclipse. Oh, scary. And this is a very checkable statement. She just says this and everyone's listening and believing and saying, wow, that can't be by accident. Well, I don't know when other Kennedys died, but I know when Jack Kennedy died and it was November 22nd, 1963. So I don't need to know if there's an eclipse then. I just need to know what phase the moon is in. Right. Because you can only have a lunar eclipse when the moon is full. So the moon was nowhere near full. It was like two weeks away from full. Even if there was an eclipse, it didn't happen during an eclipse is my point. Right. Okay. Of course, because it was daylight. Well, no, you can have a lunar eclipse at any time. Oh, man. You can solar eclipse at any time too. It's just not for you. It'll be dark. It's just not for you. It'd be for the other side of the Earth. Somewhere else in the world. Right. Don't be so centric. In fact, when there's a lunar eclipse, anyone on the side of the Earth that sees the moon will see the lunar eclipse. So by the way, lunar eclipses, you get several per year, by the way, partial eclipses as a minimum. And every couple of years there's full lunar eclipses. So these are not rare things to start. They're not rare. Okay. So I said, you know, he was shot when the, I forgot what moon was, first quarter moon. And she said, oh, well, this counts if they're anywhere within two weeks on either side of the eclipse. What? That's a month. That's a month out of 12. What? Let me just shut up here and let her keep, it was a, we were sharing the time. It was a Pharrell had a talk show. We were both on Pharrell's talk show. So and he liked science, by the way, and he wore a NASA shirt at the Academy Award group photo. So I got to give him some props for that. So I just say I have nothing more to say here. Hence, my argument with her lasted less than five minutes.