>> hinojosa: he's been described as the carl sagan of the 21st century-- astrophysicist, hayden planetarium director, and nova science now host neil degrasse tyson. i'm maria hinojosa. this is one on one. neil degrasse tyson, thank you so much for being with us. >> it's about time you had me on the show. >> hinojosa: just in case people don't know who you are... >> okay. >> hinojosa: but of course, everybody knows. you are the most famous astrophysicist in the country... african american astrophysicist. you are the director of the hayden planetarium in new york city. you're the host of nova science now. and you write books, and you dance, too. >> i once danced.

not much anymore. that was an earlier chapter in my life. and odd that you would mention my ethnicity there. and i say that because i once thought about that. and i realized that i may be the most visible scientist of any discipline, of any ethnicity, of any skin color, in america today. and the reason why i went through that mental exercise was because there i am trying to bring the frontier of science to the public, and i said, "i don't want to do that alone. i want some others there with me." and i looked around to see who's there with me. you know, do we have a geologist there with me, and a biologist? and there are a few that are known-- you know, e .l. wilson and brian greene and michio kaku. but given the size of that science frontier, we need many more. and so i'm disappointed that i'm sitting there alone with that kind of distinction. >> hinojosa: so when i was growing up, the most famous scientist was carl sagan. >> yeah. oh, yeah. >> hinojosa: and you actually got a chance to meet him, hang out with him, exchange ideas with him. >> totally. >> hinojosa: you were extraordinarily inspired by him. >> yeah, i already knew i wanted

to be a scientist, so that's not the link that mattered there. there i was in high school, already knowing that when i grew up i wanted to be an astrophysicist, something i've known since age 11. and my application to cornell university, it was, like, dripping with the universe, because there's all... i had a telescope, i was in the club, i... you know. and so cornell accepted me, but then they want you to come if they accept you, right? but i hadn't decided yet. and they, little did i know, forwarded my application to carl sagan's office, and carl sagan wrote a personal letter to me. >> oh, my god. >> hand signed. >> hinojosa: you get it in the mail? >> in the mail. i said, "carl sagan? is that the same guy who's on the tonight show and the..." i said, "oh, couldn't be." and i looked, i rubbed my eyes, and there it was. and he invited me to cornell to help me decide whether i would ultimately attend there. and i said, "is he joking, is he serious?" and so i, you know, called to make arrangements, and yes, he met me out front of his building, out of his lab, invited me up, chatted about the

universe. he reached back, pulled out one of his books. i thought that was the coolest thing. he didn't have to look. he pulled back the book, it was the book he wrote, signed it to me. and this is cornell university in the winter, so, like, it began to snow that afternoon. and he drove me back to the bus station, because i took the bus up there from new york city. and saw that the snow was getting thicker, and he jotted down his home phone on a piece of paper, and said, "if the bus doesn't get through, call me, spend the night." >> hinojosa: oh, no. oh, my gosh. >> who am i? i'm just a high school kid. i'm 17 years old. he doesn't know me from anybody. i'm nobody to him. yet he was treating me this way. and i realized that if it ever... if i ever remotely became anybody like him as an adult, that i would sure as hell be treating students the way he treated me. and to this day, if a student wants to have time with me, or to meet me, or get career advice, all the other

appointments go on hold. i don't care if the president of the museum i work for, the provost, all the pe... doesn't matter. the student comes first, and it's because of that encounter with carl sagan. >> hinojosa: oh, how wonderful. here's what i want to know. how is it that at age 11 you even understood the nature of what astrophysics is, and you could say, "and that's what i want to be"? because honestly, i was pretty cool at 11, but it wasn't like i was, "yeah, i want to be an astrophysicist." >> i had already been imprinted at age 9, because my family, my parents, took me, my brother, my sister... every weekend we went to some cultural institutional organization every weekend. what i mean is, we went to the zoo, the... could be a baseball game, the museums. something in the city they took us to. and that formed sort of a weekly exposure to things you can do and professions you might be. >> hinojosa: but it was all family outings, right? >> family outings. and so at age nine was my first enounter with the night sky at

the hayden planetarium. and growing up in new york city in the bronx, my understanding of the night sky was, like, aco. so... >> hinojosa: and lots of planes. >> planes, yeah. so there's no way i could commune with the cosmos in the bronx. so i reached the age of nine before i ever had any understanding of what the true night sky was like. and it was that first day in the hayden planetarium-- the lights dimmed, the stars came out, and it was as though the unverse had poured... flowed into my body, and coursed through my veins. and i felt it. so to this day i think to myself, "it's not that i chose the universe. it may be, in fact, that the universe chose me." >> hinojosa: that's so wonderful. >> and it took two years to figure out that this is not only really cool to think about, that you can actually make a career of it. and so it was over that two-year period. and from thenceforth i took extra classes at night at the hayden planetarium, the museum, i joined the amateur astronomy club, i... >> hinojosa: you were a nerd. >> oh, completely.

card carrying, oh, yeah. oh, yeah. >> hinojosa: but here's something that... >> there's a slight difference, slight difference. card carrying nerd, because i could recite decimals of pi and all the sort of things that good old-fashioned nerds can do. i carried, back then, a slide rule, and the bigger the slide rule, the tougher you were, right? >> because i went to the bronx high school of science. and so what's interesting about the bronx high school of science is that it's a whole other sort of world of social cliques, but shifted to the nerd side. >> hinojosa: so there are, like, cool nerds and not so cool nerds? >> yeah, yeah, the jock nerds and nerd nerds. >> hinojosa: you were a jock nerd? >> i was a jock nerd. >> hinojosa: because you were a wrestler. >> i wrestled, yeah. yeah, so i was a jock nerd. so in the world of the bronx high school of science, i was the jock. but in the real world, i'd be nerd city, oh, yeah. >> hinojosa: okay, but this is what i love. you said... and for those of us who live in cities... >> which is most people. >> hinojosa: which is most people. and we don't see the stars a lot. and my own experience was in bolivia, actually, in lake titikaka, in 3:00 in the morning. >> there really is a lake with

that name? >> hinojosa: yes. >> thank you for confirming that. >> hinojosa: the highest lake in the world. went out, 3:00 in the morning, and i saw the sky. >> it's not higher than crater lake? >> hinojosa: oh, don't get me... oh, we're not going to do geography now. >> okay, no, i thought crater lake was pretty high, but go on. >> hinojosa: but as far as i know... >> maybe crater is the deepest lake, okay. >> hinojosa: saw all of the stars, and i thought, "oh, my god, there's dialogue. there is dialogue coming down from these stars." >> was that your first time seeing the night sky? >> hinojosa: no, it was my... and this was in my 20s. it was my first time understanding that the stars communicated an entire world. >> a universe. >> hinojosa: and that... a universe, you know? an entire universe. but you like to say the fact that you are an urbanist, and you said that when you go out and you see a big beautiful sky and the mountaintop you're like, "oh, yeah, this reminds me of the hayden planetarium." >> exactly, yeah. it's embarrassing, actually. >> hinojosa: but it's true, really? >> i was benchmarked. i was imprinted by the projected night sky in the hayden planetarium. that is my benchmark for what the night sky is. so when i go to mountaintops at the finest observing sites in the world, and i look up, the

first thought is, "it reminds me of the hayden planetarium." it's embarrassing, but i've come to terms with it. >> hinojosa: so your dad was african american, and your mom was puerto rican. >> yes. well, my father's ancestry is... both through the caribbean, so... but yes. >> hinojosa: and what was going on in the bronx when you were growing up? >> da bronx. >> hinojosa: da bronx. were people saying, "look at this smart kid who wants to be a scientist"? >> oh, no, no. >> hinojosa: "how cool is that"? >> oh, no. no, no. no one cared about your brains. could you jump high, could you run fast, could you shoot a basketball? >> hinojosa: all of your teachers, the community... >> oh, no. i'm talking about in the playgrounds where i grew up. no one... there was no intellectual conversation going on in the playground. and so to get respect of friends and of the community, you... athletics mattered. and i wonder if my athletic talents that i accrued over the years were entirely the consequence of me fulfilling the expectations of others rather than me following any actual

interest that lived deep within me. >> hinojosa: really? so you may not actually have been a jock? >> it's not obvious to me that that's where i would have turned. and so throughout my years in school, i knew... as i said, age nine and 11, i knew i wanted to study the universe. and i would express that interest in class, but teachers would never... it wouldn't click with them. >> hinojosa: they'd kind of say, "he's a little weird because he likes the stars"? >> not so much that. i think there was a racial dimension to it at the time. if, you know, the little black kid in the class says, "i want to be an astrophysicist," some people don't even hear that. they say, "oh, don't you want to join the track team, or the basketball team?" the... you know, it wasn't explicit racism, like the stories i get from my parents back when they were growing up. it's kind of an implicit sort of cultural... they lean you this way instead of that way if they have power over your trajectory. and the directions they lean you are consistent with their expectations of what you should become when you grow up.

>> hinojosa: which means that you had to be incredibly powerful to push back. >> yes. i had to push back my entire life, that's correct. >> hinojosa: and that's exhausting. >> it's energy, yes. but i was getting energy from the universe. i felt it. it was there. >> hinojosa: you said when you were giving your convocation address when you got your ph.d... >> by the way, that's a highlight of my life, was getting the ph.d. and being invited by the dean to give the commencement address. >> hinojosa: i was kind of like, "oh, wow, does everybody get to do a convocation address?" >> yeah, no, no. it was... i mean, i was very honored, deeply honored by that, because it was my lifelong goal and dream to get a ph.d. in astrophysics. >> hinojosa: but you get up there, and you don't pull any punches. >> no, no. >> hinojosa: i mean, when you're giving this convocation address, you are saying that, essentially your entire career, people were saying things... and these were professors, fellow students... >> people in... now, the fellow students... >> hinojosa: what were the things that they would say to you? what would they say? >> well, no one would... >> hinojosa: "you want to be a computer salesman, you want to go teach at a community college"? >> right.

no one was with me with my ambitions. it was a fight at every point. and i came to realize that i was trying to create a pathway for myself that was in violent opposition to people's expectations for me. and whenever that happens, it sucks energy out of you. and i wonder how many people derailed simply because they didn't have as much energy to keep fighting as i did. because my fuel supply was... went deep, because it was... started... you know, the nozzle was filling it up from age nine. so i could reach down deep and pull fuel where others perhaps might not have, or could not have. and so yeah, it's unfortunate. and i lose sleep at night... not so much anymore, because i think opportunities are much more available than they were back when i was a kid, and much more than they were even when my parents were kids. but i used to lose sleep wondering what brilliance could have been expressed among my

contemporaries had they not been pushed away from what might have been their dreams. >> hinojosa: you say that that kind of fighting, and these are your words, "levies an emotional tax that is a form of intellecutal emasculation. it's a tax i would not wish upon my enemies." >> yeah, that was a direct quote from my speech that i gave. >> hinojosa: but essentially you just felt like the pushing forward to be an astrophysicist meant that at every turn, you had to somehow justify who you were, justify what you were doing, justify your intelligence, prove that you could do this. what about now? >> now it's different. it's different now. in fact, there's a fascinating transition. back when i was... in the early days of when i was becoming visible, so maybe 15 years ago, when i was on tv a little bit, and so occasionally someone would recognize me, the fascinating transition which allows me to say the world has

changed in a positive way. you know, people like to say, "oh, it hasn't changed." it has changed. i'm telling you firsthand, it has changed. so back then, people would come up to me, and there'd be this discomfort with people who... with, like, caucasions, they could never say to me, "gee, i wish i was as smart as you," because the smart thing was still operating in society. because "white people are smart, black people are dumb." this is how society divides. and so i would see this anxiety within them, because they knew they liked what i was doing, but they weren't doing it, they were doing something else. and they'd say, "oh, yeah, i could have done the physics, but i chose to do this." and they're wiggling through... >> hinojosa: kind of passive aggressive kind of stuff? >> yeah, they're trying to try to say that they like what i'm doing, but they could have done it had they chosen. and so... but i kept at it, and what i noticed is eventually people just started respecting what i had accomplished without

trying to qualify how they choose to respect it. and so that's why i jumped on you when you said, "most visible african american astrophysicist." being african american is not a part of my public profile. yes, you see me in this way, but i don't say, "well, this is what african american astrophysicists think." that's not part of what i do. i talk about, you know, sun, moon, stars, the big bang, and will the earth be here in five billion years. >> hinojosa: and we'll get to that in a minute. >> so times have changed. and i am picked up by taxis now in ways that was not the case before. there'd be a fear factor that would operate. >> hinojorsa: but you now also are the director of the hayden planetarium in new york city. >> yeah. i've been that for 12 years. >> hinojosa: for 12 years. and it's interesting, because that's where it all started for you. >> hinojosa: yes. >> at the hayden planetarium. >> yeah, i became director of the planetarium, the place where first shaped me. so yes, it is one of these sort of "hometown kid comes home and does good." >> hinojosa: well, it's pretty

amazing. >> but there are no hometown stories in new york. the city is too big. so it's not a story to tell. it doesn't play. >> hinojosa: but you have said that, at least in the beginnings of your career, when you were directing the museum, sometimes you'd be walking into your office late at night or walking out, and that security guards would kind of be looking at you like, "yo, what are you doing here?" >> oh, no. that was not at the museum. that was when i was still in graduate school. >> hinojosa: oh, oh. >> beginning the ph.d. oh, yeah, then i'd be stopped all... yeah. and i'd go to the office at night, because sometimes astrophysicists might want to work at night. and i'd get stopped going into my office. i was never stopped going into the gym, though. i always thought that was interesting. >> hinojosa: okay, so you have this, you know, universal view of who we are and how miniscule we are. >> the cosmic perspective. >> hinojosa: okay, well, help me to understand, so within the cosmic perspective, how you put that stuff that is so personal, so racist, actually, where do you put it? >> it allows me to see the folly of it all and to rise above it. >> hinojosa: the folly?

so you laugh at it? >> yes. because, well, there are those who behave this way, but they don't stand between me and my goals. the security guard that stops me from going into my own office, it's a nuisance, but he's not actually between me and my goal. so i... you know, if you let it get to you i'd be dead by now. so at some point you have to laugh, otherwise you'll cry. and so the real energy that i invoke, yes, i put up some guards there, but the real energy i invoke is when it happens with someone who stands between me and my goal. then i have to navigate. i go around them, above them, below them, you know, push through them, whatever. and so that's where the real energy was invoked. but i'm happy to say the last ten years or so none of that has revealed itself. >> hinojosa: and we are happy to hear that. so recently... well, actually it was probably around a decade ago when i went to the hayden planetarium with my husband and my kids. and there's something that you do at the planetarium which... essentially you make us understand that we are part of

the universe, but the universe is part of us. that the universe is within us. and... >> and that's a concept, by the way, that was sort of pioneered by carl sagan and his contemporaries. >> hinojosa: you know, after we... and my husband is a huge carl sagan follower as well. but that became something that we talked so much about. i mean, for weeks after that we were like, "well, what does that look like?" so when you say that... because i'm sure people are thinking, "what are you talking about, the universe is within us?" we embody this somehow? >> no, no. no, no. it's actually very simple. it's not trying to be deep and new agey on you. it's very simple. so you've got sort of molecules in your body. they have atoms. and where do those atoms come from? and i remember in chemistry class, you ask the teacher, "well, they're just here on the periodic table of elements." but actually, we learn from astrophysics that those elements are tracable to the crucibles in the cores of stars that have lived billions of years before our own sun. >> hinojosa: okay, i just got, like, shivers. i swear, i mean, every time i

hear it i'm just like... >> and these stars, upon manufacturing these elements in its core, exploded, scattering this enrichment across the galaxy, out of which the next generation of stars and planets and life has formed. and so when you look up at the night sky, it's not that we're here on earth and the universe is there and that somehow we're separate from it. we're in the universe, we are part of the universe, and the universe is in us. and that is one of the most profound revelations of modern astrophysics that there ever is. of science. of science. and i'd like to... if you put together all the revelations of science, that we are biologically connected not only to each other but to all the life forms on the earth, that our molecules are the same molecules that we find in other plants, that this connectivity transforms, i think... i'd like to believe will transform how you view yourself. are you above and apart from

everything, or are you a part of everything? because if you think you're above and apart from it, then what's to prevent you from just taking out the forests, and dominating all the creatures of the planet? >> hinojosa: and a lot of people do that, don't they? >> they do that because their ego sits high. but when you study the universe, the ego needs to take a different place. >> hinojosa: there's something else that happens, though. >> because we're not as... we're never as big as we ever thought we were. we're little. a quick example how little... >> hinojosa: well, i am little, but whenever i go to the planetarium, i feel really little. >> we think we're in charge because we're humans and we have big brains. if you take one linear centimeter of your lower colon, there are more bacteria that live and work in that one centimenter than all the human beings who have ever been born on earth. and so who's in charge now? we're just hosts for bacteria. >> hinojosa: sometimes, though... and i was at the planetarium recently. >> i don't mean to freak you out there. >> hinojosa: no, it's okay, i'm

not freaked. but here's what happens. i went to the planetarium, and, you know, we're overloaded with so much information about whatever it may be. i'm a smart person, but i am not science literate, even though my father is a scientist, and looked at molecules and atoms through the electron microscope. what do you do with people like me who... we want to know, and yet we feel like... >> i think you're understandably confusing two things. don't confuse how much you know about the natural world with whether or not you're scientifically literate. it's one thing to, yes, to be able to recite how your microwave oven works. fine. >> hinojosa: don't have a microwave. >> i don't have a problem with that. you don't have a microwave? okay. >> hinojosa: no, because i'm concerned about what those microwaves... >> yeah, that would be a consequence of science illiteracy. >> hinojosa: oh. >> yes. >> hinojosa: did you just say that i'm scientifically illiterate on television? >> yes, i'm agreeing with you that you're scientifically illiterate, but for different reasons. >> hinojosa: okay, but what you want to do... >> here's what my point is-- you're scientifically illiterate

not because you don't know enough science. it's... science illiteracy is not understanding how to look at the world around you and how to query things that you don't understand. >> hinojosa: so what do you want to... >> it is an outlook. it is a perspective. it is a lens through which you look. >> hinojosa: so when you... i mean, the most important thing for you is teaching this science literacy; is teaching people in general, young people specifically, young people of color very specifically, to be scientifically literate. >> i want to teach adults who vote and pay taxes and control the world how to be scientifically literate. >> hinojosa: and so what do we need to know? apart from buying all of your books and reading them, okay, which... >> thank you for that. >> hinojosa: quick plug. >> that'll raise you a couple of notches, but there's a lot of good stuff out there. >> hinojosa: but what do we do? i mean, like, when you say, "i want to teach science literacy and i want to make it accessible..." >> i think kids are born scientists. they're born exploring the world around them. we... here's the problem. you spend the first years of a child's life teaching it to walk

and talk, and the rest of its life telling it to shut up and sit down. that's the problem. and so what you need to do is recognize the exploratory dimension of what it is to be a child and celebrate that. >> hinojosa: and that's scientific. >> yes, of course! did i scream at you? i'm sorry. so what does... every ki... i don't know any kid who hasn't done the following. they go into the kitchen, open up the cabinet, pull out the pots and pans, find the wooden spoon, and start banging on it. and you're a parent, what do you do? "you just got the pots dirty. you might break the spoon. you're making a racket. stop it." whereas i look at that as experiments in acoustics. >> hinojosa: and did you say that to your kids? >> yeah. well, no, i don't tell them that, i just let them do it. i don't stop it. so... >> hinojosa: so it's not about the talking, and "let me tell you what you're doing." >> no, no. >> hinojosa: it's experiential. >> because then you're... you're annoying. you want exploration to be sort of the free movement in the natural world around you. >> hinojosa: so do your kids, for example, do they understand that they're scientifically experiential?

>> i am right now... i've got a book in my head to come out in a few years called how to raise a scientifically literate child. and my kids are, like, the subjects of this. >> hinojosa: and so give me just... >> i'm not putting electrodes on them or anything. >> hinojosa: good. >> they have no idea they're actually subjects of this. i immerse them in environments, and i just watch how it unfolds, things that they explore. so they'll spill some liquid on the table. >> hinojosa: oh, my producer's going to get angry at that. but okay. >> okay, and what do you do as a parent? you quickly wipe it up. but if they're playing with it, i let them play. that's the exploration. >> hinojosa: but i find it so interesting that you don't do the explanation. >> the explanation can drive them away from the science. that's why we need to think of science literacy as a way of thinking about the world, and querying the world around you. and so now my kids, they will not likely become scientists when they grow up, but i'm telling you, they're scientifically literate. and i have documented examples of what i'm judging to be scientifically literate. a quick example?

>> hinojosa: okay. >> my daughter, she's 12, likes hannah montana. i said, "miranda, i saw a poster of hannah montana. it was, like, as big as a wall." and she said, "well, how big was the wall?" and i had not specified this. so that is a skepticism of information because she's trying to receive information and make sense of it. that's all a scientist does. and i gave information insufficient enough for her to make sense of it. and if that ever stops, you end up growing up as an adult that just believes whatever anybody tells you, like, "microwave ovens are bad for you." >> hinojosa: oh, god. >> okay? >> hinojosa: why did you bring that... okay, listen. >> you just believe that because somebody told you, rather than thinking about it. there are microwaves all around us. cell phones use microwaves, radar detectors. >> hinojosa: let's not use the last minute that we have for you to tell me how i made the wrong decision. >> okay. >> hinojosa: so in the 30 seconds we have left... >> i don't want you to stick >> hinojosa: when you see a young person what do you want... 30 seconds, you tell them, "i want you to look at the world like this, through this scientific prism," what is that? >> i try to share with them not

facts about science, but ideas-- ideas about our place in the universe that have transformed our understanding of who and what we are. and then they learn that the methods and tools of science led to those ideas. and upon doing so, i'd like to believe that a flame is lit within them, and they then have energy of their own to learn about the science that excites them. >> hinojosa: i got the energy, man. thank you so much, neil. >> we're done? >> hinojosa: you're done. >> my gosh. >> hinojosa: until next time. >> can i come back? >> hinojosa: yes. >> okay. >> hinojosa: thank you, neil. continue the conversation at wgbh.org/oneonone. captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

- [narrator] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation and hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy, and by klru's producers circle, ensuring local programming that reflects the character and interests of the greater austin, texas, community. - i'm evan smith. he's one of the best-selling children's author's in history and one of the most prolific. with more than 300 books to his credit, including the goosebumps and fear street series. his latest is young scrooge: a very scary christmas story. he's r. l. stine, this is overheard. let's be honest. is this about the ability to learn or is this about the experience of not having been taught properly? how have you avoided what has befallen other nations in africa-- you could say that he made his own bed, but you caused him to sleep in it. no, you saw a problem and over time took it on. let's start with the sizzle before we get to the steak.