Neil deGrasse Tyson On: Happiness, Seeking Friction, Getting Your Mind Blown, and Why Casinos Hate Physicists

Plus: why the vastness of the universe should make you feel bigger, not smaller; where the atoms in your body come from; and what Hollywood gets wrong about aliens

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist and the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, a post he's held since 1996. His newest book is Lost in Space: 5,000 Facts for Navigating the Universe.

Born and raised in New York City, he attended the Bronx High School of Science. He earned his B.A. in physics from Harvard, an M.A. in astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin, and both an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in astrophysics from Columbia.

He's authored eighteen books, hosted Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014) and its sequel Cosmos: Possible Worlds (2020), and served as Executive Science Editor on the original Cosmos revival, which won four Emmy Awards. He created and hosts StarTalk — an NSF-funded program pairing celebrity guests with science conversation — which runs as both a podcast and a National Geographic TV series.

In this episode we talk about:

Why knowing his calling at age nine shaped his happiness Why seeking discomfort and learning new things keeps you growing How to spot online "experts" who are really selling something Why the universe can make you feel bigger, not smaller Why most elements in your body were made inside stars How mirrors left by Apollo 11 track the moon's slow drift Why Hollywood's human-looking aliens make no scientific sense Related Episodes:

Neil's first appearance on the show

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