Life existed on Earth for nearly four billion years before anything remotely resembling a human being showed up. And even then, when we started to branch off from other apes about 10,000,000 years ago, our ancestors looked pretty different.
Wow, monitor lizards are pretty gnarly creatures. I want to go with the monitor lizard. That's just weird enough to be true. No?
As important as the civil rights movement was, I think what will rise to the top is that we left Earth in that time.
Science, and its impact on a person's livelihood is the common denominator.
Part of what it is to be scientifically-literate is how you think about information that's presented in front of you. I think that's the great challenge. You have people who believe they do know how to think about the information, but don't, and they're in the position of power and legislation. You can't base a society on non-objectively verifiable truth. Otherwise, it's a fantasy land and science is the pathway to those emerging truths that are hard-earned and that some have taken decades, if not centuries, to emerge from experiments all around the world.
Science is not just a topic we can step around or ignore.
I try to educate the public and let them make the decisions for themselves.
I don't want to make a member of Congress do something that that member of Congress's constituents would not approve of, or would not agree to. So in that regard, I'm kind of the opposite of a lobbyist.
That's the point, to get the people who wouldn't otherwise think to eavesdrop on a conversation that involves science.
Not everyone is going to like science as a subject.
I don't even understand why I have 1.7 million Twitter followers. Every day, I want to remind them and say, "Do you realize I'm an astrophysicist? Do you know what you're doing here?"
Nothing is a thing: it's nothing. So I can imagine a place where there's not even nothing.
If I'm looking fit and I'm not, then I'm cheating.
When I wrestled, I would set aside the time to wrestle, so that in my mind it didn't interfere with my study time. If I'd say, "I'm going to study this many hours, then I'm going to go work out and wrestle," then when that time comes, you don't feel like you should be doing something else. That helped me psychologically. But otherwise? When I'm wrestling, I'm not studying the universe. And when I'm studying the universe, I'm not wrestling.
To get an Emmy nomination for a show that was the first-ever science talk show on television to us was an affirmation that there is an appetite for this content in the mainstream public, not just the erudite public. So we're all completely thrilled by it.
I don't require that the main guest [of StarTalk] have any science knowledge or background at all. It's just, I have a conversation with them, it's long and winding, and we find out what parts of what we learn about the person lend themselves to further scientific discussion with an expert who is brought into the studio. So that's how that comes together.
I as an astrophysicist, see the universe, feel the universe, smell the universe every day. Every day. And for people to say, I'm cool, I'm right here, it's all I need.
You can get an Egg McMuffin all day; you just can't get the hamburger all day.
The only accounting we had of the origins and the structure of nature was Biblical Genesis.
I'm an educator, and I'm a scientist, and I speak what is objectively true. And if that offends you, I can try to have a conversation with you to ask why it offends you, and tell you why objective truth should not offend you because that's how the world works.
I always wanted to be respected for my mind.
The universe is so amazing and so limitless, who wouldn't want to study the universe?
If you look at the history of unexplained phenomena that was first explained by spiritual, mystical forces, the track record is not very good for the mystical, magical explanations to survive against more quote "mundane" physical explanations.
When I was a kid, I thought that if everyone looked up the way I did then everyone would want to study the universe just like me - how could they not? This naiveté is what tells me that my interest was more a calling than a rational comparative assessment about what to be when I grew up.
With ticket prices, do you ask yourself, why I'm paying $70 to see the arts? You say, "No, that's what the symphony is costing me."
