Closer to Truth. Ask the Experts. Neil deGrasse Tyson

Whom do you most admire, and why?

“This sounds cliché, but it is true. The people I most admire are my parents.”

This sounds cliché, but it is true. The people I most admire are my parents. Right now, they're going through their 50th wedding anniversary, and I admire them for many reasons, but I would say foremost is the way in which they guided me through my interests. They didn't lead me, because if you're led by someone you might think that you're being taken somewhere that is not genuine sort of within your heart. How many people do we all know who became doctors because their parents were doctors? Neither of my parents were scientists, but they saw my interest in the universe from very early, and saw that it was something to be nurtured, and it was through initiative that I took as many trips to the Haiti Planetarium as I did as a child. By the way, I didn't only go there. We went to art museums and the like. I believe that if my interests were in art, I'd be making this same testimonial in their honor as people who have nurtured my interest in art. This case, it happens to be science, so they are who I admire the most, and that hasn't changed ever since my earliest memories.

Does the general public properly appreciate science?

I think the public has a love/hate relationship with the progress of science. Not a week goes by where you don't find people complaining that there's some genetically engineered food that they might be eating, or that technology has made their lives harder instead of easier, or they have less free time then they once did. I think what we have to consider is the very people who are making those statements 100 years ago might have died in child birth because medicine wasn't advanced enough to have kept them alive. They might've died of tuberculosis or polio or smallpox, so what a luxury it is to sit here in modern times and say you don't want to eat the bell pepper because it might have been genetically engineered. So yes, I don't mind if people take technology for granted, but at the end of the day, sit back and ask yourself, maybe once a week ask yourself how has technology enhanced your life, in fact, made you healthier, made you dream about what the next wave of technology might bring your way.

What advice do you have for young people?

“Go follow your heart, just don't do so without knowing how this world works.”

In order to make informed decisions, decisions that can affect your life, your health, your wealth, your well-being, it's important to be scientifically literate. That being said, beyond that it doesn't matter what you major in in college. Go follow your heart, just don't do so without knowing how this world works. Science literacy is empowering. However challenging it is to do well or to read through some of the material, the fact is technology drives our modern society, and it's possible to move backwards just by standing still. It's important to stay current, to stay up-to-date on things. So my advice is I'd love it if everybody majored in science, but that would be a boring world because I want artists out there as well. But whatever you do, keep an eye on the science pages of the newspaper.

How would you like to be remembered?

If I'm to remembered for anything, I want to be remembered for having brought down to earth the cosmos for all to enjoy in the way others had brought the cosmos down to earth for me.