Listen to Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson on the March 18, 2014 Podcast by The Nerdist

Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Courtesy of The Nerdist.

The March 18, 2014 podcast by The Nerdist, hosted by Chris Hardwick, features astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson. In the podcast, they discuss the universe, the importance of questioning, and Tyson’s new show Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Here’s some of the details:

• Are humans too stupid to understand how the universe works?
• The universe may be a simulation, but there’s no way to test it just yet.
• We humans may one day, through nanotechnology, be able to create something even more intelligent then we are.
• The human brain is not wired to think about infinity, so we invented mathematics to help us understand the universe.
• Philosophers get distracted by abstract questions, therefore they all too often don’t find testable questions and answers, which is where science comes in.
• Isaac Newton asked many important questions that were able to be tested, including whether the stars were just like our sun, only so far away that they appeared dim, which we now know to be the case.
• Common sayings are often scientifically wrong, such as “We only use 10% of our brains,” “it’s always darkest before the dawn,” and “eats like a bird.”
• Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s show Cosmos and Seth MacFarlane’s involvement.
• The importance of a show like Cosmos, especially being on network TV, because if America is going to continue to be a world leader, it is important that science be taught and be made to seem interesting.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking here. It was a very interesting, and quite surprisingly hilarious discussion with one of the world’s leading scientists that stresses the importance of science and how it can be used to understand the world around us. I wholeheartedly agree with Tyson in that science is very important. It seems as though there is a major lack of interest in scientific fields, and it would be a shame for the United States to fall behind the rest of the developed world. Hopefully shows like Cosmos will spark a new interest in science.