traveled either to the u.k. or south africa do not know anyone who would associate themselves with these so-called patients 0 so in the end the mutated virus is more or less infectious wish justifies the control measures the restrictions the masks and all the precautions in general the reinforced that's been your news wrap up for now but i'll be back at the top of the hour with the latest thanks for tuning in. is that it claimed accomplishes and do you understand. it brings spontaneous order because it's the hardest money ever in history humans did a fairly decent job for many years thousands of years but it got entirely financial ice 2000 and. 8 it's the status.

of town see and welcome to going underground the team and i will be back with a brand new season starting on my birthday january 30th but until then we will be showing some of your favorite shows from this season going up in this show what will the expansion into space mean for war and capitalism going on the ground speaks to the western world's most famous astrophysicist neil de grasse tyson about the past and future of humanity when it comes to conflict coronavirus and conspiracies all the more coming up in today's going underground in the week of u.k. chancellor eastern expending review which seeks to balance the books as u.k. prime minister boris johnson touts the largest military investment since the cold war allegedly an attempt to woo incoming u.s. president elect joe biden the 16000000000 pounds of funding will go towards among other things and you are if space command so why are the countries hit hardest by

coronavirus instead focusing on preparing for conflict among the stars joining me now to talk over 1000 of the new cold war space race is the western world's most famous astrophysicist neil de grasse tyson neil thanks so much for coming on what a privilege it is before i get say any of that i have to say given that millions of people have watched your t.v. programs if there are people out there who come from disproportionately so. 2 economically vulnerable groups how on earth can their interest in this does translate to becoming like you not only in communicated but. an innovator when it comes to science that's an important question and a lot depends on what kind of what is this system that surrounds you so for example there are many countries where if you spot someone who is otherwise poor but is like reading math books and physics books and the like in the street doing that there are many countries where some will say hey we need to provide an opportunity

for that person because 2 things are going on 1st it would be good for the person but deep down you know it's better for the system if everybody rises to that their potential not only the potential that they can achieve but the potential of their ambitions and without a system to connect those with ambitions to where they land you've got nothing and brilliant people end up staying suppressed in your society and basically at the end of the day your society goes nowhere ok meant why is your country doing so badly when it comes to coronavirus i mean i can give the obvious answers but i think what we're really after are deeper insights into people's conduct and in the united states we like thinking of ourselves as free rights free to the point where i should have the right to put my own life at risk all right so their whole

states here where there is no law requiring that if you ride a motorcycle that you must wear a helmet that people can ride without helmets that is their sense of freedom so here's the difference the difference is if you ride a motorcycle without a helmet and are in an accident your chances of dying go up but you don't really put someone else's chance of dying on the table and so freedom stops where you infringe on other people's free up. the people's freedoms and so so we have a mixture of people who do take warnings from medical professional seriously and those who just want to america to be the land of the free and that conflict pumped by political alignments and all this that that spoutings that has gone on on the political platforms has made for a very unfortunate situation but it's also true that coverage are going up all around the world in the 2nd wave that happened in 1918 as well there was a 2nd wave in fact more people died in the 2nd wave in the 1918 pandemic then died

in the 1st wave so we need to take cues from history here and be very serious about the advice from medical professionals and to be clear then obviously that was that was returning from the trenches of world war one to be clear if there are any and vaccines out there any bill that are refusing to abide by government restrictions you would recommend that everyone with as mosques and follow as their governments restrictions on their freedom if it's evidence based on you know i mean this i mean you don't have to listen to me to give advice every medical professional is giving that advice so for me to give that advice i'm simply stelling you i listen to medical professionals ok you know we live in an era where everyone where where each person's ignorance is declared to be greater than another person's expertise and that's a dangerous combination especially when it leads to actions that put health at risk

and it isn't just that you alluded to political power you can presumably understand the connection between inequality distrust of power and the cherry picking of science in a way that harms them yet so but i think of it differently i think of it there was a day not many decades ago where the political leader was also a primary conduit beach. in you and things you should do for the greater good of your family and for the country ok and because they had the platform the politicians are not the experts in medicine the medical people are and medical people do have platform scientists do have platform people who have have had insights into the plight not only of your health but of the world with regard to climate change you don't have to wait for your politician to tell you what to do about that yet they control policy yes policy matters and that policy should be

influenced by the objective li established truths by the methods and tools of science and when they are not you're putting says you're putting civilization at risk i'm going to get on to the existential threat of climate change in a moment but you know that the opioid crisis in your country killed thousands of people more than thousands i think under the obama administration surely that's that unknown would trigger some people to be suspicious of medical professionals as you put it so there are sort of. bad players out there yes and so yes you need to see when there are better players watch the flow of information as it comes out look what medical professionals are telling you who do not otherwise have a financial interest in the outcome that's a big issue here because you want to know who's controlling the strings of the word spoken by whoever it is that's that's in your sandbox big pharma.

possibly but of course big pharma is also keeping us alive right so. it's too easy to say all big pharma is bad oh by the way give me that aspirin i need a headache give me my my so yes we need to be sensitive to that no doubt about it but what i'm saying is that politicians because they spend all the time arguing with each other and claiming that they're right when others would know they're wrong i guess i don't tend not to lean towards what politicians tell me you joke about the systems of government from the earliest times in the 1st series of cosmos i think you're doing in a 2nd serious do you think that the greatest system of government we've ever had democracy is unusually predisposed to having politicians responding to constituencies that the damage enough to refuse vaccines to believe in refusing to billions of evidence has her in action that's a brilliant really good question because we we who live in democracies like to say

that democracy is the best thing ever and yet occasionally we are reminded how fragile they are great democracies are the ones that are susceptible to civil wars to us 1st 2nd yes it everybody has a vote then you could have collective ignorance voting people into office who share a collective who share that ignorance and then try to institute laws and legislation that's a product of that it of that ignorance that's bad so that the solution for to nurture a democracy is to have an educated electorate and educated electorate so i as a scientist you'll never see me hit in politicians on the head because that implies you can just swap one out put another one in and then all will be fine if they are duly elected i turn and face the people who voted for them and i say do you realize you just voted in a way that's not in your self-interest this is what i as an educator this is. right

duty and should be the duty of all educators in all systems of teaching so what by the way i don't mind political fights political fights are fine when you're talking about policy and legislation but you should never have a political fight about whether some scientific research that is a bit objective we shown to be true in german peer reviewed journals to have a debate about whether that's true in a scientific in a in a political circle that is has a recipe for disaster well you know the economic hit taken by countries because of coronavirus the biggest funding out of this crisis continues to be in terms of increases weaponry do you think that education is needs the extra spending up to this coronavirus pandemic. well i think that education always needs spending now weaponry. there's always been money

in the in the in the coffers for weapons i mean if you look at the u.k. especially how many years the u.k. has been at war it's a fundamental part of an annual budget. in sovereign nations is to protect itself and some that are more aggressive to sort of take themselves around the world what i'm saying here is that the wisdom of a budget allocating body is not oh we're spending money on weapons but we should be spending or we shouldn't it's what is the proper balance of all of these items in the budget ok and this is the problem with with regard to. poverty and homelessness if you look at the balance of that budget and never should it be put to a binary decision are we going to defend our country or are we going to know is a balance of monies that can do it all and if it's done wisely you will do it all

not only the. that it's hardly ever just weapons there's research that could lead to weapons right this is with the space force is there's this people want to protect your assets in space there that if there's a bad player ok what i'm saying is i just i wrote a book a good 2 years ago that it's tracks the the history of scientific research especially my field astrophysics with the history of warfare and it's a 2 way street and we don't want to admit that you and i might feel this is is liberal anti-war and historically and currently i'm just saying that our understanding of the universe and our understanding of so many things on the frontier of science do overlap with military means to not show what children watching this in yemen being bombed by u.s. weaponry used by the saudi air forces think they can that you do actually. you were

actually on the defense innovation board of the pentagon as i understand it what is that rules and you have a 3 year term the role of this is to explore ways that a modern defense system is isn't sort of trapped in old ways of doing things just because you've always done them that way these are things that the corporate world especially the i.t. sector have done brilliantly in recent decades and so the military is reaching into one of the newest boards trying to think about what could best serve those needs now the grass is not stuffy that more from the western world's most famous astrophysicist after this break.

join me every thursday on the alec simon show and i'll be speaking to guest in the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then. welcome back i'm still here with the world's most famous astrophysicist neil de grasse tyson now i know you've talked to the boss why the externalities when it comes to accounting does that come up at the pentagon boyd because presumably weaponry defense this has a knock on effect on climate change and exist central threat that we face today i can tell you this that there are 2 sectors that are not in denial of climate change one of them is the insurance industry and the other one is the military because climate change creates problems 1st financial problems because you start

flooding coastal. flooding coastlines were most of the greatest cities in the world are on rivers around coastlines in london included you start raising the sea levels you lose all of those cities but that's not even what's going to happen 1st which can happen 1st you going to lose entire countries in the south pacific where the average. elevation is just half a meter above sea level a meter above sea level when you start displacing communities you have a refugee problem that big climate refugees which destabilized the world the military is paying very close attention to that but bombing them with ever more sophisticated weapons is nothing to do with that that's the research that backs up the existence of climate change not bombs and weapons well you know usa what does the military think about climate change and i'm saying they take it very seriously

with regard to weapons that are used by one side against another that's an entire other geo political conversation by the way i think there should be no war anywhere in the world i can tell you flat out i can't imagine a future world where no one is bombing anybody nobody is invading anybody and we all get along peacefully ok and i don't necessarily know entirely what that rule require i think a lot about american military build up in presence. domestically and around the world i think about that one time i was visiting greece and i visited there their war museum and park out front was one of the airplanes they used in one of their 20th century battles i think it was with turkey and was one of our airplanes it was like an american girl and i was 5 felt my heart just dropped to them in another country looking at their warm using them and it's our weaponry that was they

wielded in that cause and i felt sick briefly sick and then i walked in and i saw oh my gosh the united states didn't invent war oh my good the greeks been fighting wars for thousands of years and i said oh my gosh this is not an american problem it's a human problem it's a problem it's a humans can't get along so united states is a johnny come lately compared to all the wars that have been fought it all across europe multiple times the u.k. and france just lead the list and how many years 2 countries have conflicted have been in conflict so i'm so yes this is a it's a global problem you know one way to make everybody peaceful is to have everybody be exactly from the same tribe ok but that's not how the world is and. the challenge is how do we all get along i try to remind people i did in my twitter

stream twitter that at least i attempted to remind people that as much as we divide each other by color that's you know skin color religion sexual preference. all of these ways that we divide people the coronavirus doesn't care the coronavirus only cares that you're human i would have thought that when the coronavirus landed that we would have all banded together and say we're. all human and that is a common enemy like like ammi an invasion or right we've we've all seen in the movies we've got to be together on that one and that did not happen to my great disappointment in our species anyone watching because musson the thing most people would believe you'd be disappointed they didn't all united humanity given how small you make the earth sound in the end the universe you know i don't know whether you're aware and i want it to be clear it's not how small i make it sound it's how

small it is. good enough and it's just just let's be clear about that science fact all we know we don't have any time for climate change denial but i don't know whether you're aware of that new michael moore film which we did. and he says to how renewable renewable energy is given the amount of fossil fuel emissions it costs to make solar panels and hydro and i know as you say in your work it's all solar really and would you make of that yeah it's an important point there are a lot of hidden by the way there are hidden elements in all of this right so you know what is the actual cost of oil or a you know with the tax monies paid for the whole foundation of an entire automotive industry that then use gets petrol and so that you look at the total cost it's usually bigger than just the simple sum of

a quarterly report accountings so yes if you drive an electric car the cost to obtain the rare earth elements that go into the batteries and the electronics and all of this that it's not in ass clean as we want to think it is but it's cleaner than the alternatives and i make something clear all right if you have an internal combustion engine car you have to put petrol in it to run it right if you have a battery driven car and you poll august into the wall. you don't really think or care yourself what's generating that electricity ok so what that means is yes it might be produced by coal but you could swap out coal and put in nuclear and if you don't like nuclear could swap out nuclear and put it in as wind or destructive solar or hydro or tidal power all of that pumps in through your wall socket my point is that if you go electric then you don't

have to completely swap out your car when they swap out the source of fuel for it source of power for it whereas once your car is made that has to use gasoline based on on petroleum you're stuck and you're but you built into the geopolitics of access to oil and the united states where we're we're riding on it led by iran musk some years ago but now other companies are following suit and that's an important these are important 1st steps. of course now famous for all these a space launch is that people can catch on on you tube i mean again going down to accountancy how'd cheap is basic supply aeration relative to this kind of spending that governments spend every year so via the 2 levels in there let's just think about nasa for the moment so when nasa had the shuttle running and we were

maintaining our section but built we built the space station and maintaining our portion of it so the shuttle the space station the hubble telescope the 10 nasa centers all of the space probes that are visiting the planets we went to pluto add all of that up at all of that up it was 4 tenths of one percent of the federal tax budget but if so how i leave visible you get people saying why are we spending money up there when we should be spending money here well we are spending money here 90. 9.6 percent of all money is getting spent here so so again returning to my earlier point about a wise governance knows what and how to balance things so that you get it all done in the service of all the needs of a nation so yes space exploration is expensive compared to the cost of your dinner but it's not expensive compared to cost of waging war then there's the this is more

than of an answer than you're bargaining for then there's the vision that that brings the next generation oh my gosh we're going to mars i want to be part of that i want to be an engineer i want to be a biologist to think about the search for life and all of a sudden you stoke and the stam fields science technology engineering and math with the ambition of students in the pipeline and you know and i know and everybody who knows knows that innovations in science and technology are the engines of tomorrow's economies so if you care about the economy then that kind of investment inspires people to be creative in all the ways that stoke well of what you're saying clearly you know last on the communist party of china you've you talked about the fact they have the biggest telescope right now on the chinese you think the telescope where the alien communication would likely be through 8 radio waves

so if illions send signals to earth the chinese will be the 1st to hear. we don't know what it's like trying to argue for more money with the government for its base programs let alone important as for physics research but do they sometimes say you know what why don't you get your own house in order and solve some of these basic problems like when the protons decay new chewing is also laid out in the sun generate. reversing magnetic field feel what he is sort. that i have asked here rather than spend money going up there let alone the space was all i can say is no there's no one panacea that solves all problems in any given moment but there are pockets of research where you have ambitious people who are creative and smart and they want to learn how the sun generates its energy and how you know how to get to pluto and in so doing they invent stuff my physics professor from college was one

of the co discovers of a new physics phenomena called nuclear magnetic resonance ok got the nobel prize for that well the clever medical technician said oh my gosh that's phenomenon i can make a cavity put your body in it and i can distinguish different adams in your body in ways that x. rays cannot and thus was developed that magnetic resonance imaging are arguably the most potent tool in the arsenal of the medical doctor to diagnose the condition of your human body and that's based on a principle of physics discovered by an astrophysicist who had no interest in medicine to begin with well you know rafa a series of cause moss the series after the famous one michael saying and when dad to millions of people are going to ask you and that started with the persepolis in the end they run which i think the jump was supposed to be bombing a week ago getting the room is to tell me about the new series of calls about one thing that is a rip recurring theme in cosmos and it's that it's not just we're not just out

there saying you're all going to die if we don't it's there's always some thread of hope that is offered how to use the awesome powers of the methods and tools of science to solve the problems some of which science created but most of which were created by the denials or the absence of foresight or or total selfishness of people in power and many of the stories come from from the research in mind of andrew in whose deceit sauce of all 3 cosmos is. 2014 and this year 2020 she's the that the principal writer of record there are other writers that come in and out over the over those years but she's been on it all 3 she she's highly scientifically literate and deeply enlightened in a way where she can see how science can be not just something you learn but something you take to heart and stop thing that you embrace take ownership of and

decide yes i'm now empowered to make a better world based on what i just learned that is the d.n.a. of cosmos and i'm privileged to be host of it by the way it has the same distribution as in 2014 so it's 187 countries 47 translations. that a friend of mine got one where apparently i'm speaking brilliant spanish and it. is ideal you learn spanish really whoops so they've been $47.00 translations and it's called cosmos possible worlds which is an exploration not just of yes exoplanets that are out there those are fun to think about but but there's there's what kind of world obv do we have the power to create for ourselves. what kind of world are we not to what are the risks but i'm not but what are the risks by taking this path instead of that path into our future are we to shepherds of the of of the

planet that we need to be so that our descendants will be proud of us rather than embarrassed by what we have done to this world so it's optimistic and do you know and think pandemic so and the microbial resistance will finish yet as a species. yeah. i hope not a virus is not going to render us 60 but you would hope that pandemics force us to that we pass through some kind of portal and we look around and say we're now on the other side of a gate and that was a tough gate to pass through that do we have the right research going into anti-viral. research programs do we have it for cancers for for the pestilence for all these things that the that pen demick is forcing us to rethink do we have the wisdom to actually rethink things so that we

come out the other side a better world not one that's still fighting over who's going to wear a mask you know the rest tyson thank you. pleasure that's ever one of your favorite shows of the last season we will be back with a brand new season of going on the ground on january the 13th until then subscribe to the john when you've got all the other interviews from this season for online exclusive content merry christmas and a better 2021. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy one from day shouldn't let it be an arms race is very dramatic development only mostly i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time time to sit down and talk.

and then do the passenger is believed to have crashed into the java sea with $62.00 people on board including 7 children and went missing during a flight from jakarta to borneo. also this hour twitter permanently bans donald trump accusing him of inciting violence at followers a similar move by facebook raising questions over free speech what they're doing is they're going out and expressing the message that it's ok to go ahead in certain sort of speech if you do not agree with the problem is that trying to address the speech will and i did them too much on the capital.