Happy Hour With Neil deGrasse Tyson

Summary

Podcast Summary: Kennedy Saves the World – "Happy Hour With Neil deGrasse Tyson"

Date: March 13, 2026
Host: Kennedy
Guest: Neil deGrasse Tyson (Astrophysicist, Director – Hayden Planetarium)

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Overview

In this "Happy Hour" episode, Kennedy welcomes famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson to discuss his new book Take Me to Your Leader. The conversation explores the possibilities of alien life, how Hollywood often limits our imagination of extraterrestrials, the cultural and scientific implications of alien encounters, misconceptions about UFOs, and how human biases shape our expectations of alien visitors. Neil and Kennedy dive into humorous and deeply thoughtful territory, mixing wit and wonder over an "alien-themed" cocktail.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Imagination and Alien Forms

• Hollywood's Limited Imagination [01:31–03:43]
  • Neil critiques Hollywood's tendency to render aliens as humanoid because "there's an actor in the costume," resulting in a lack of true diversity in alien representation.
    • "Most life on Earth does not look human. And we share DNA with most life... If you're a life form from another planet that has no DNA in common with us at all... it should look at least as different from humans as humans and bananas look from each other." – Neil [02:10]
  • The Predator example: Even the menacing "Predator" barely deviates from the basic human form.
    • "He's not even weirdly big... there are plenty of NBA players that are 6'10"." – Neil [03:43]

2. Physical Constraints of Alien Life

• Size and Strength in Alien Visitors [03:48–05:16]
  • Neil explains that alien visitors capable of space travel are unlikely to be very small, as being tiny limits physical strength necessary for building or piloting spacecraft.
    • "100,000 ants to bend a paperclip... this is not conducive to building spaceships and flying here." – Neil [04:06]

3. Childhood Fascination and the Quest for Evidence

• Personal Origin Story [05:16–06:35]
  • Neil shares how his fascination with aliens and the cosmos began at age 9 after visiting the Hayden Planetarium.
    • "As a kid, I wanted to be abducted by aliens... I want to know other ways of being alive." – Neil [05:25]
• Skepticism about Abduction Claims [06:35–08:30]
  • Neil respects personal testimonies but stresses the unreliability of eyewitness accounts, citing psychological suggestibility.
    • "I need a witness, said no scientist ever." – Neil [06:39]
    • "You know, the people who see Jesus on a tortilla, they're all Christian—Jews don't see Jesus on a tortilla." – Neil [07:11]

4. God of the Gaps / "Aliens of Our Ignorance"

• Substituting Supernatural for Unknowns [08:30–13:24]
  • Kennedy draws a parallel between "God of the gaps" arguments and the impulse to ascribe unexplained phenomena to aliens, with Neil coining "aliens of our ignorance":
    • "We seem to be very uncomfortable not knowing... You say, 'I don’t know what it is. Therefore, it's a visiting space alien.'" – Neil [13:09]
    • "So I came up with a different phrase—Aliens of our ignorance." – Neil [13:20]

5. Alien Probes, Social Habits, and Interpretation

• Cultural Projections onto Alien Motives [13:24–15:02]
  • Neil playfully mocks the idea that advanced aliens would be interested in "probing" human orifices.
    • "How important do you think your body orifices are to a visiting alien? What ego must we have?" – Neil [13:39]
  • He suggests Earth traditions, like handshakes, might seem bizarre to aliens, just as some animal behaviors do to us.
    • "Suppose the alien has just a little bit of dog in it... and the first thing they want to do is go around and sniff your butt." – Neil [14:39]

6. Sleep, Alien Perspectives, and Human Biases

• Alien Perceptions of Human Behavior [15:02–15:50]
  • Neil imagines an alien’s confusion at human sleep habits.
    • "You're talking to the alien and then you say, excuse me, I have to lay down over there and be semi-comatose for the next eight hours..." – Neil [15:02]

7. Alien Life Without Physical Form

• Energy Beings and Higher Dimensions [15:50–22:51]
  • Discussion expands into the possibility of amorphous, psychic, or energy-based aliens.
    • "If it has agency, you're a being. I don't care what you look like." – Neil [16:10]
  • Neil explains the physics and information theory behind why energy-based aliens would need internal variation to act.
    • "You need a place over here that has higher energy than a place over here... that's how things happen at all." – Neil [18:07]
  • Kennedy asks about higher-dimensional aliens, and Neil offers a geometric analogy to explain how beings from four dimensions might perceive us.
    • "A four-dimensional creature can see inside our bodies. Our skin is not a boundary... from a fourth dimension." – Neil [20:27]

8. Government Secrecy, Whistleblowers, and Skepticism

• Disclosure and Reverse-Engineering Myths [22:51–24:55]

  • Kennedy jokes about the government prepping us for aliens and whether Neil is involved.
    • "I'm not authorized to comment further on that. Next question." – Neil [23:08]
  • Neil debunks the idea that rapid 20th-century technological developments must be alien-based by highlighting human innovation.
    • "If you want to hand that to aliens, you are depriving our own species of how brilliant we are." – Neil [24:55]

• Cultural Narratives: Pyramids and Stonehenge [24:55–29:17]

  • Neil criticizes the impulse to attribute Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge to aliens rather than to human ingenuity.
    • "They're denying the ancient Egyptians the intellect." – Neil [25:24]
    • On Stonehenge: "If the aliens built it, why is it made out of rocks?... Give me some alien alloys!" – Neil [29:06]

9. Modern UFO Sightings and Media Hysteria

• Contemporary Sightings [29:32–30:29]

  • Kennedy and Neil discuss recent media reports of unexplained aerial phenomena and how the leap to "aliens" is often unwarranted.
    • "Drones have green lights and red lights. And this had neither. Therefore, aliens." – Kennedy [29:41]

• Public Readiness and Lack of Disclosure [30:29–31:43]

  • Neil believes official disclosure of aliens would now be anticlimactic, given the saturation of "whistleblowers" and media stories.

10. Human Nature, Fear, and the Aliens-as-Evil Trope

• Why We Expect Evil Aliens [31:43–34:28]
  • Traces the origin of the "evil alien" to H.G. Wells and Orson Welles's "War of the Worlds". Neil argues that this is a projection of human history, not a prediction of alien behavior.
    • "Our alien archetype, the violent alien... is based on what we know we would be to ourselves." – Neil [34:13]
  • "When a civilization that's more advanced encounters one that's less advanced, it never bodes well... It's not good for you." – Neil [34:08]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Hollywood Imagination:
  "Most life on Earth does not look human... It should look at least as different from humans as humans and bananas look from each other." – Neil [02:10]

• On Skepticism:
  "I need a witness, said no scientist ever." – Neil [06:39]

• On 'God of the Gaps':
  "You see something in the sky, you don't know what it is... But we seem to be very uncomfortable not knowing." – Neil [13:09]

• On Human Projection:
  "How important do you think your body orifices are to a visiting alien? What ego must we have?" – Neil [13:39]

• On Evil Alien Archetypes:
  "It seems to me our alien archetype, the violent alien... is based on what we know we would be to ourselves." – Neil [34:13]

• On Disclosure:
  "By the time they roll out an alien, it'll be anticlimactic." – Neil [31:07]

• On Scientific Friendship:
  "Everyone should try to acquire at least one scientist friend... Take [an alien] to your scientist. They'll know what to ask, how to interact better than a politician would." – Neil [36:01]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:10 – Introduction and alien-themed drinks
• 01:31 – Discussion of Hollywood’s limited vision of alien life
• 03:56 – Could aliens be very small? (Physics of strength and size)
• 05:25 – Neil’s childhood fascination with aliens
• 06:39 – Skepticism about abduction testimonies
• 08:30 – "God of the gaps" and "aliens of our ignorance"
• 13:24 – Why the obsession with probing and human customs
• 16:02 – Can an alien be a psychic or energy form?
• 19:12 – Higher dimensions and tesseracts
• 23:08 – Is Neil part of the government's "alien coverup"?
• 24:55 – Debunking alien credit for technological leaps
• 25:24 – Pyramids, Stonehenge, and the erasure of human achievement
• 29:32 – Modern UFO sightings and instant "alien" attributions
• 31:43 – Why evil alien tropes persist
• 34:28 – Cheers with the alien-themed cocktail; reflections
• 36:01 – Final advice: take aliens to a scientist, not a politician

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Closing

The episode blends deep curiosity, wit, and skepticism, urging listeners to expand their imaginations beyond stereotypes and to look inward at why we believe what we do about aliens. Neil deGrasse Tyson encourages scientific thinking in confronting the unknown and reminds us to celebrate human intellect and creativity, both on Earth and in our musings about the cosmos.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Welcome to this episode of Kennedy Saves the World. Joining me today for happy hour, we have made an alien themed drink. This is a collaboration with the world's foremost astrophysicist. He is the director of the Hayden Planetarium here in New York City at the American Museum of Natural History. He is a celebrated author, he's a TV host, and he is one of the very finest deliverers of difficult scientific information for normies like me. Neil Degrasse Tyson, welcome to Kennedy Saves the World. Thank you and cheers to you.

[A]

And this drink is clearly, whatever color an alien is, it's probably from this spectrum of green.

[B]

Yes. So reading Take Me to youo Leader.

[A]

Mm.

[B]

Which is your book about alien life. Curiosities. About aliens. Potential alien abductions, sightings. What are they? Like, where are they from? I learned a lot about potential aliens from your book.

[A]

I'm just saying we know laws of physics that apply across the universe. So while aliens could have far greater technology than we.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

They're still limited by the laws of physics. So let's think about what the aliens could be given the laws of physics, but allow them to be smarter than us.

[B]

Yes. So as you point out, because I was thinking about this as I'm reading this, because you invite the reader to open your mind a little bit. Like, don't just assume that the aliens are humanoids.

[A]

Yeah. Because yes, in Hollywood, there's an actor in the costume. So actors are humans. So they have two arms, a neck, a head, a torso, legs. Maybe they'll give them four fingers instead of five, a pointy ear instead of a round ear, and somehow that's alien. Excuse me. Most life on Earth does not look human. And we share DNA with most life, with all life on Earth.

[B]

Like earthworms.

[A]

Earthworms. We have 25% identical genes to a banana. So if you're a life form from another planet that has no DNA in common with us at all, might not even have DNA. It should look at least as different from humans as humans and bananas look from each other. Yes, that's. That's my point.

[B]

And you say, like, maybe when aliens get here, they're gonna look like bananas.

[A]

Well, bananas aren't sentient. So we have to figure what might you look like if you're sentient.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And so I'm just disappointed by Hollywood renderings and the.

[B]

The lack of imagination.

[A]

The lack of imagination.

[B]

They're really taking the same archetype they are and just either building on it or slightly modifying it.

[A]

Even. Even Predator. Yes, Predator. Remember the original movie With Arnold Schwarzenegger. Predator had two arms, a torso, legs, walked, his knees bent in the same way ours bend had a head and he had a mouth. And we learned at the time, somebody, I think, did some research to find that if you open a mouth and there's another mouth inside, that's more terrifying than just one mouth. So the predator had this, like, jaws that open and there were more jaws.

[B]

It's like shark teeth.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

It's like there's more than one row,

[A]

more than one layer roe there. So and that alien, that predator, you know, he was about a foot taller than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Peg. Arnold at about five' ten. That would put the predator at six' ten.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

There are plenty of NBA players that are six' ten. Sure. So he's not even weirdly big.

[B]

Yeah. He's not even Wembian or weirdly small. Yes.

[A]

Right. How about, where are those aliens?

[B]

And that was the other thing. I'm like, oh, that's a great point. I never thought about that. Maybe aliens are tiny. But then you pointed out it takes 100,000 ants to bend a paperclip.

[A]

Right, Right. So it turns out, yes. I don't think aliens can be. Alien life can be really small. But if you are aliens who build a spaceship and fly here, I don't see you being that small.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Because you're not stronger than your body weight.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I don't know if you ever knew that.

[B]

Yes. And you give the formula for that.

[A]

Okay. Yeah. So we can just bend a paper clip that's made of metal. Can an ant bend a paperclip? The answer is no. No matter what an ant does, an ant will not. So I did the. I checked. I checked what force is required to bend a paperclip. Looked at the weight of an ant. I forgot what number it was like 100,000 ants, you know, cheerleader style, standing up on the point of a paperclip to bend it. So this is not conducive to building spaceships and flying here. So. So while we can think of life of great diversity across the galaxy in the universe, the book is about life that might come here and visit us and request of you take it to your leader.

[B]

You are not so skeptical that you're like, it's never going to happen. It's never going to happen. You start the book saying, I would love for it to happen. This was. This was my dream as a child.

[A]

As a kid, I wanted to be abducted by aliens.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Not that I wanted to leave Earth, but I just thought it'd be so cool. Cause I was looking up Since I was 9, a first visit to my local planetarium. I'm a native New Yorker, so my local planetarium is the Hayden Planetarium, where I now serve as director. So I've got a lot of baggage there that I gotta hold up. Is it baggage? No, duty. Duty is the right word to all the next generations in case I'm among them.

[B]

If it's a colostomy bag, it's a different type of duty.

[A]

Yes. So age 9 was my first dark sky. Because growing up in the city, we don't have a relationship with the night sky. Maybe the sun and the moon. That's it. You look up, they're clouds. Well, when they're not clouds, even if it's clear, they're buildings. And at the time, there was air pollution and light pollution. Nobody has a relationship with the night sky in New York. And so my baptism was a first visit to the Hayden Plantain when I was nine years old. And that got me to look up. And then on I said, I want to be abducted. I want to know other ways of being alive.

[B]

So you talk about some of the people who claim to be survivors of alien abductions.

[A]

Yeah, I don't have a problem with that. I just think I need better evidence because there's all this eyewitness testimony, which in the court of law, you know, we all know the mantra, I need a witness. Right. And somehow that would make the difference in the court case. But I need a witness said, no scientist ever. But psychologists also know that we're quite susceptible to our moods and suggestible. And especially suggestible. I'll give an example. You know, the people who see Jesus on a tortilla, they're all Christian. Jews don't see Jesus on a tortilla. Okay? So the susceptibility is there.

[B]

You never hear about the guys in the halal cart seeing Jesus.

[A]

Jesus does not show up on their tortillas. All right? So it's a matter of what does your brain do with either incomplete information or something that's so different from your life experience that you can't compare it with anything. So you just invent what you think you're looking at. So I analyze that. But what I say, and I make this very clear, you know, we have all these testifiers in Congress, there was a parade of people, and there's a whole. There's, like documentaries, interviewing whistleblowers, people in the know. People who know about the aliens in the lock box. And I'm saying Okay, then we have aliens in the locked box. What do we do now? Yes, can we do it? Can we share the alien for study? Oh, no, they're in a locked box. So it's not helpful to just tell me you've seen aliens in a locked box.

[B]

And you also point out, which is very interesting, because I studied philosophy. And when you're studying arguments for the existence of God, you come up against the phrase God of the gaps, which is often what non theists, atheists, or non believers ascribe to believers. Like you're just inserting God where your timeline is incomplete and you say God was there and then he becomes God of the gaps.

[A]

Yeah. So God the gaps is a phrase that is born in philosophical circles. It's an excellent phrase. Very accurate, actually. So, you know, we don't understand why there's a storm ravaging the coastline. So Poseidon is angry.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay. There's a God of the waters or Neptune, depending on if you're Greek or Roman.

[B]

So the Romans stole. I mean, they just stole everything and renamed it.

[A]

They borrowed. Yeah, I was actually disappointed. I thought they could be more creative than that, but they just took it all. Yeah.

[B]

Romans. You're getting on my last Minerva.

[A]

Okay, good one.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

I see what you did there.

[B]

But you posit the alien of the gaps, which makes so much sense. That's what people are doing now.

[A]

So watch. So you go through time and where we did not understand things, typically in nature, it was immediately ascribed to deity. And the more serious one is if you. Even Ptolemy 150. Yes, even Ptolemy. Ptolemy, we're talking now, AD 150. Ptolemy, the. The father, if you will, of the. Well, it predated him, but he. He codified the geocentric universe. Earth is in the center. Everything goes around it. But he was still amazed by the paths of planets on the sky. They would go forward and then they go backwards. Why are they going backwards? Had a word for that. Retrograde. Oh, my gosh. Why is a planet moving back?

[B]

Mercury is in retrograde now. I think we're all feeling that.

[A]

Right, Right. So there it is. We had words for this. And so he penned in the margin of his greatest work, which is called Al Majest. That's Arabic for the greatest. When it was translated into Arabic and put and circulated in Islam in the golden age of Islam, it got named that because it was a great work of science and math. He penned in the margin, as I trace at my pleasure, the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies. I no longer touch earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia. He was feeling it, yes. He's feeling the God of the gaps.

[B]

He's there on Mount Olympus.

[A]

He's there and he doesn't. He doesn't know what he's looking at, but Zeus certainly does.

[B]

Yeah, Zeus made it. So whatever's going on, he can't describe

[A]

it, can't explain it, and Zeus is doing it. So another, more serious variant on this is go back to the 1800s and well, before someone falls on the ground, writhing and frothing, and you say, oh, clearly the devil is inhabiting this person. Let me go to get the priest. How big are towns 200 years ago? They're not so big that you can't just walk to the church. So you walk to the church, says, I think the devil has inhabited my daughter. And so the priest gets the robe, gets the holy water. And how long is this round trip while you ran there? And so it's 10 minutes, 15 minutes. They come back, the holy water goes over, the symptoms subside. So clearly it was the devil and the holy water got the devil out. The time scale of an epileptic seizure matched the time it takes you to get a priest in a small town back in the day. And so once again, a God of the gaps God, this mystery God solved it. So of course we know it's epilepsy and no one would do that today. So all I noticed was you see something in the sky, you don't know what it is. So that's the U in ufo. U stands for unidentified, unidentified. It's in the sky. So it's flying and you don't know what it is. So it's an object, unidentified flying object. But we seem to be very uncomfortable not knowing. You're not comfortable seeing it? I just don't know what it is. No, you gotta know what it is. You say, I don't know what it is, Therefore, it's a visiting space alien.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You just started with a U and then you landed with therefore, it's a space alien. So that's. I was gonna say alien of the gaps, but that doesn't have a resonance to it. So I came up with a different phrase. Aliens of our ignorance.

[B]

Oh, but there's. People are very quick and. And I believe there are aliens. I. I do not doubt that they have landed here. I don't think they're using the probe. I think the probe was one of those things, like someone said it and everyone else like, yeah, totally happened.

[A]

It's. How important do you think your body orifices are to a visiting alien? What ego must we have?

[B]

They can traverse millions of light years, but they're still standing up.

[A]

And they would still want to look up your butt. Okay. No, I do partially joke that, you know, we have certain traditions in a first encounter with an alien and we might extend our hand to shake, but they have some appendage sticking out. You don't want to just grab it. You don't know what part of the alien that grab it and shake it. You don't know. Plus, not everyone on Earth shakes hands. You go to China, they shake their own hands, sort of. And they bend as they touch their own hands. So if it's not Earth wide, how can you now think it's literally universal? So then I said, let's throw some habits on the alien. Suppose the alien has just a little bit of dog in it. Just a little bit? Yeah, a little bit of dog. Just a little bit of dog.

[B]

Dog's got great universal energy.

[A]

Okay. Not too much dog. And they land and the first thing they want to do is go around and sniff your butt. We would think that's weird, but we don't think it was weird when dogs do it to each other. Yeah, that's just dog.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So they're traditions, habits, rituals that we perform that the alien might have of their own.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And another thing that I just wonder. You're talking to the alien and then you say, excuse me, I have to lay down over there and be semi comatose for the next eight hours. I'll talk to you when I'm done. What does that look like to an alien?

[B]

Yeah, maybe aliens don't sleep. Maybe they don't have a regenerative.

[A]

So that was really weird to an alien.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's for the third of Earth's rotation where the sun is below the horizon. So what's up with that? You know? So I'm just intrigued by. So the book is an exploration, a test of our own biases and an exploration of what could thrive among aliens.

[B]

What if aliens are not. So you talk about the form not necessarily humanoid. Might be like a sentient banana.

[A]

But what.

[B]

But what if it doesn't take a form at all? What if. What if it is like psychic or mental energy?

[A]

Yeah. If it's amorphous, so you.

[B]

So here, does that count as a being?

[A]

I don't see why not. If it has agency. Okay, if you have agency, you're a being.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I don't care what you look like. Back in 1958, one of the better renderings of an alien was the movie Blob. The Blob. Do you have it?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Do you know this book?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Had Steve McQueen in it and one of his earliest movies. This blob came from space. It was this big transparent gel, and it just kind of moved. It was particularly scary because it could fit under doorways and through air conditioning ducts.

[B]

Wasn't a liquid, wasn't a solid.

[A]

Exactly. And it would just reconnect on the other side. And after it consumed its first victim, it was red for the entire rest of the movie. So I thought that was a good move right there. But it was not a vertebrate creature with eyeballs and head and nose and mouth. And so I thought that was highly creative.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And I don't know that it could build a spaceship. It arrived, I think, on a meteorite.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And so. So the question is, if it's amorphous energy, how is it getting here?

[B]

I mean, if you don't have a body, you. You don't ascribe to.

[A]

Yeah, but you gotta go. You gotta come across the. Well, no, you have. No, laws of physics still apply. So you have to cross. You're somewhere else.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And you want to come here. How are you gonna get here if you're a ball of energy? So maybe your energy just moves through space. Okay. I don't have a problem with that. And then you land. Okay. But here's an interesting thing about energy. If everything about that blob of energy is exactly the same temperature, then nothing can happen inside of it. Nothing moves. Nothing.

[B]

It's static.

[A]

So you need. So it's a part of this comes from information theory. So you need a place over here that has higher energy than a place over here.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Then you can do things. You can make things happen. Okay. So there's a glass down there. And I pick it up and I put it on the table. This has more energy here than it did on the ground. I gave it the energy. Where did I give it the energy from? From my muscles. Where the muscles get the energy from? Food. I ate the food. Had calories. Where those calories come from? Maybe it was from an animal. Where the animal get its calories from? From a plant. Where did the plant get its calories from? The sun. So all of this is energy in motion.

[B]

Transfer.

[A]

Transfer, yes. That's how things happen at all. Okay. And so we have to. You have to be. If you're Going to invent an energy field alien, it's got to have places in and among it where there's variation in what that energy field is so that it can do things.

[B]

So there are physicists like Lisa Randall who postulate that there are different dimensions. Would an energy based psychic being perhaps exist on a different dimension and, and

[A]

be able to love me some higher dimensional aliens? Yes, I talk about that. Yes, that'd be the, for me, the funnest kind of alien to interact with because. So consider this. If you draw a two dimensional being just on a sheet of paper, well, it'll have organs inside, but it's just an outline because it's flat. So you draw an outline and stick an organ in there, heart, lungs, whatever. You can't cover them because cover has no meaning in two dimensions. It is covered by the outline of the alien itself. That's the COVID And everybody else in there can't see inside your body because you have this line preventing it. We higher dimensional beings, three space dimensional beings, can look inside the body of two dimensional creatures because we have access to another dimension. So a four dimensional creature can see inside our bodies. Our skin is not a boundary to our innards when viewed from a fourth dimension.

[B]

What is an example of a fourth dimensional being?

[A]

It's hard. I can't, I mean the only way I can communicate this is to give you the example of the three dimensional being looking at two dimensions.

[B]

Right, so what do you imagine the four.

[A]

Okay, so now, so now, so take a sphere and well, let's go back to our two dimensions and we're gathered around and we're just hanging out and then a dot appears out of nowhere. Say, what is that? Then the dot becomes a circle. Circle gets bigger and bigger. We're staring at it and then it gets smaller and smaller, becomes a dot and disappears. And we have all these hypotheses and theories of what, you know, what is. I'll tell you what it is. It's a sphere passing through two dimensions. A three dimensional sphere passing through two dimensions is a circle.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay, yes.

[B]

And then when it goes, and you

[A]

go from the tip of the, of the sphere to the other tip, the circle gets biggest to the big diameter and then it drops back down to smaller and smaller circles until it's the dot, that last bit of the sphere that is passing now out of your two dimensions.

[B]

Is that like a pinhole camera?

[A]

No, that's a different thing going on there. That's a different thing. So all I'm saying is we can ask what would a four dimensional being look like to us? We would only be able to interact with the part of it that's visible to us in three dimensions. So a four dimensional hypercube in the Marvel Universe is a tesseract?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Thor, the tesseract is a four dimensional cube.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay. If you take that and pass it through our three dimensions, it's an ordinary cube, but to them it's got more going on. So the fun thing would be if aliens pass through our dimensionality temporarily, and then we would see different shapes and things. We could in principle infer what their four dimensional version looks like, but I don't see evidence of that yet. Okay.

[B]

Have you been sent by the government to soften the civilian beach to get us used to the idea of reaching out for the possibility of aliens? And is the government using you because you may be the actual leader that the aliens will talk to?

[A]

I'm not authorized to comment further on that. Next question. So I think this. This idea that aliens are the government is stockpiling aliens and they're hiding it from us.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I think that ship has sailed in the following way. If the government is so. So we can ask, why are they hiding it from us? So one reason given was that the aliens have special technology that we can reverse engineer and give us a geopolitical military advantage. And I said, what do you base that on? Well, look at the laser and all these inventions that have happened in the 20th century. Surely that's reverse engineered. Do you know?

[B]

I mean, there's your alien of the gaps. It's like, it seems like it's a big leap forward us, therefore it's gotta be alien.

[A]

So what? Do you realize we broke the sound barrier three months after the Roswell incident, where they found a crashed flying saucer. That was the headline. Three months after that Land of Wheat broke the sound barrier. There was Chuck Yeager in a. In, I think it was the X1 for the Air Force. And within two years of that. Sorry, within 10 years of that, 12 years of that, we were in space. Okay, 10 years. 10 years. So Sputnik was launched. Within another 12 years, we're on the moon. So this advance is like, whoa, dude, aliens had to have helped that. But I'm a scientist and I know the pace of discovery, of scientific discovery and the attendant engineering marvels that derive from it. If you want to hand that to aliens, you are depriving our own species of how brilliant we are.

[B]

Yes, and I'm not ready to make that point with the pyramids.

[A]

Oh, don't get me scarred.

[B]

People are like, well, it's got to be aliens. There's no way.

[A]

Oh, Europeans go to Africa and they find the pyramids. Let me remind you, Egypt is in Africa and they find the pyramids and they say, oh, my God. Oh, my gosh. I don't know how they did that. We don't have that. We couldn't do that. They must have gotten help from the aliens. They're denying the Egyptian. The ancient Egyptians. The intellect.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And in the end, it is kind of just a pyramid. It's not like some masterminded machine, you know, that teleports. Right. It's still stones made of hay. Whatever was the ingredient that put it together.

[B]

Don't go anywhere. More Kennedy Saves the World right after this. This is Ainsley Earhart. Thank you for joining me for the 52 episode podcast, the Life of Jesus,

[A]

A listening experience that will provide hope, comfort, and understanding of the greatest story ever told. Listen and follow [e-mail] or wherever you listen to podcasts. So when I. When I was last in Stonehenge, just a few years ago, we.

[B]

You did some of your graduate work there, correct?

[A]

Oh, no, no. I was in high school and did some research for my high school journal. You had a physical science journal? I was editor in chief. I went to a geeky high school.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

Was a geeky kid from way back.

[B]

What geeky high school? Bronx Science.

[A]

The Bronx High School of Science. We have nine Nobel laureates among our graduates.

[B]

Amazing.

[A]

That's more than the country of Spain. Wow. That's kind of out of control. That's kind of. But it's a fertile place. Not because the school is fertile, but the people you have to take a test to get in.

[B]

Yes. The Shazat. That's what it's called.

[A]

Yeah, The Shazat. Yeah. The science. The specialized high school admission test. Yeah. Anyhow, so we're there. So while I'm in high school, I'm on an expedition, a summer expedition, to study stone monuments in the British Isles to explore what their astronomical alignments might be. Because not all of them are as famous as Stonehenge. The point is, while we were out there, I was there with my podcast, StarTalk Podcast. We happened to be there during the summer solstice.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

It was just an accident. Happened to be in London. And I said, it's the summer solstice. Let's go to Stonehenge. Okay. Now, that day was summer solstice. The next day was the Day after. So, no.

[B]

Were you like Taylor Swift? There were people losing their minds. Neil Degrasse died.

[A]

Hold on, hold on.

[B]

Stonehenge at summer solstice.

[A]

Everyone knows the solstice, but. But it only occurred to me on the solstice. So. But solstice means stationary sun in Latin. Sol is sun. Stis stationary, like armistice, stationary arms that ended the first World War. So solstice. So that means the move, the. The. The rising point of the sun on the horizon moves day to day, and then it slows down, it stops solstice, hangs there for a couple days and then comes back. So it's still there the day after. But no one thinks this. They think there's just this one magic day. We went the day after, nobody's there. The day after. There was some druid types.

[B]

Yeah. Cosplay.

[A]

Yeah, they were. They were in robes, you know, looking very monk like that were walking among the stones. That's the day after. Anyhow, so we hired a little people mover. There were like ten of us, and. So it's a driver. And he was tickled by this, that he gets to drive out to Stonehenge with some scientists. And he. I said, what do you think Stonehenge is? And he said, I think aliens built it. And it's a. It's a portal to visit the aliens. And I said, well, why do you think that? Well, because there's nothing else like it around here. And then I said, if the aliens built it, why is it made out of rocks?

[B]

I'm thinking, why not some cool alien alloys?

[A]

Give me some alien alloys. Give me some alien technology. Not a bunch of rocks sticking out of the ground.

[B]

At least carbon fiber.

[A]

And then I'd. So I posed this to him, and he had no rebuttal. He said, yeah, good point. Yeah, it's a good point. So, yeah, to credit aliens for things we don't understand. It's a pastime. We do this.

[B]

There was an article in the New York Post today about there were three objects in the sky, and they came close to each other and then they flew away from each other.

[A]

Aliens.

[B]

Yeah. And the guy they're interviewing is like, I have a drone. Drones have green lights and red lights. And this had neither. Therefore, aliens.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. It's a. So I embrace everyone's enthusiasm for this topic. And we. And I think, well, so here's what point I was getting to a moment ago was I think the ship has sailed about whether we're stockpiling aliens. Sorry. The ship has sailed about weather. The Government would be resistant to revealing that we're stockpiling aliens because one reason is, oh, we're. We're reverse engineering. But I'm thinking. I'm saying, no, that's just the. The pace of the exponential growth of science and technology.

[B]

Because all this work happened. It's like an iceberg. Like, all this work.

[A]

It's all there. Correct? Correct. This foundational. And it just keeps going. Yeah. And it will continue to keep going. Okay, so another reason given was that the government is afraid of how people might react.

[B]

Yes. Like we're just gonna run into the streets. It's 1961, and we all made a fainting couch because we won't be able

[A]

to handle the fainting couch reality that

[B]

has been drilled into our heads.

[A]

So here's my point. That ship has sailed because we already have whistleblowers saying we have aliens.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We have so many people who are eyewitness to aliens that by the time they roll out an alien, it'll be anticlimactic.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What? We have all these people who are highly regarded, and they say they've seen aliens, they've interacted with aliens. One of them said they were harmed by an alien. And. Okay, so we have aliens.

[B]

I think so.

[A]

Davey. See, one that's not the occasion to freak out. The occasion to freak out is now that everyone is saying they've seen aliens. You're not freaking out now. We're not gonna freak out when you show a real alien.

[B]

I'm not gonna freak out. I'm not gonna freak out. I mean, walking down the hall, I'm like, oh, they're probably going to do Bret Baer show. It wouldn't surprise me at all. But in Starry messenger you were talking about, I believe it was Starry messenger you were talking about. If they had built the crafts and come over and they were looking at us like they have the technology to emulsify us. There are hundreds of thousands of years ahead of us. Like, if they wanted to kill us, they would have killed us.

[A]

And all I can imagine is people go get their. Get their, you know, get their guns, start shooting at it. Can you imagine, like, you're an alien just came here in a spaceship across the galaxy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And of course, there's America. We shoot and then ask questions. I spend time in Texas. I couldn't believe it was a sign. Texans, you know this in Texas, there's a sign saying, trespassers will be shot, survivors will be prosecuted. Yeah, that's Texas. Right. So alien powers would be so Much more vast than ours. But the idea that they would be evil, where did that come from?

[B]

No, I'm with you.

[A]

I. Why?

[B]

Why?

[A]

Why are aliens evil now? The first evil alien was the War of the worlds.

[B]

Oh, yes. 1938.

[A]

No, no, no, no. That was the radio play of War of the Worlds.

[B]

The book really sent people, especially here

[A]

in New York City because they landed in New Jersey. Okay. Do you know water towers? You know, people were shooting at water towers, thinking those were the aliens. Okay, so. And some people, like, jumped off roofs because they thought there was the end of the world. That's how brilliantly executed that radio play was by Orson Wells, based on the novel by H.G. wells from 1930, from 1895, if you ask him. In fact, it's in his book, he says, you criticize these aliens for being so violent, wanting to exterminate humans. Yet that is, in fact, what humans have done to other humans.

[B]

Amen.

[A]

When a civilization that's more advanced encounters one that's less advanced, it never bodes well. Guns, germs and steel, it never bodes well. If you don't have the matched technology to the colonizing force, you either will be exterminated, enslaved. It's not good for you. So it seems to me our alien archetype, the violent alien archetype, is not based on what we think they will be to us. It's based on what we know we would be to ourselves.

[B]

That is heavy. And to that I drink and toast to you, our alien goo.

[A]

So this is. This is a blue curacao tinted pina colada. And those two colors together made, you said in the room when we mixed it. This is Tiffany green.

[B]

Yes, this is Tiffany box, Blue Tiffany box.

[A]

Sorry, I don't shop at Tiffany's. I'm sorry.

[B]

Well, if this book's a best seller, then I will. That's right. Cheers to you, sir, and all that you do for humanity and the heavens above.

[A]

Oh, well, thank you. Just trying to bring the universe down to Earth for who ever will listen.

[B]

And I. I love it.

[A]

Oh, and if the alien comes up to you and says, take me to your leader, think hard about that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm just saying, just don't take them to ICE agents, okay? Because who knows what they'll do?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I don't. Just find everyone should have at least one scientist.

[B]

I'll take him to HR because that's. That's the leader. That really scared me.

[A]

No, everyone should try to acquire at least one scientist friend. Yes. There aren't that many scientists in the world, not as many as medical doctors or lawyers and this kind of thing. Other sort of known professions. Try to have at least one scientist friend. An alien says, take me to your leader. Take him to your scientist. They'll know what to ask, how to interact better than a politician would.

[B]

And if you need some clues, just read the book take me to your leader. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, thank you for being here, my friend.

[A]

Oh, thanks for having me.

[B]

Always good to talk to you.

[A]

I love your show, too.

[B]

Thank you, dear. I really appreciate it. This has been Kennedy saves the world. He's saving the Universe. He's Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I'm Kennedy. Listen ad free with the Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple podcasts and Amazon Prime. Members can listen to this show ad free on the Amazon music app. Oh, go ahead and leave me a review while you're there. I'd love to hear what you have to say. You've been listening to Kennedy saves the world on the Fox News podcast network.