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Tavis: Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is an accomplished astrophysicist and the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. This week, here on PBS, Dr. Tyson is the host of a four-part "Nova" series called "Origins," which features some new and very interesting findings about how we all got here. Here's a scene from "Origins."

Neil deGrasse Tyson: A spewing, fiery wasteland, a molten planet hostile to life. Yet somehow, amazingly, this is where we got our start. How? How did the universe, our planet, how did we ourselves come to be? How could the first sparks of life take hold here? And are there others like us elsewhere in the cosmos?

Tavis: Neil deGrasse Tyson joins us tonight from New York City. Dr. Tyson, nice to have you on, sir.

Tyson: It's a pleasure. I'm a fan of your show. I'm glad to be on.

Tavis: Well, I'm a fan of your work. I'm glad to have you on as well, sir. Speaking of your work, before I get to the particulars of this four-part "Nova" series, how did a brother end up developing a love--

Tyson: Heh heh heh.

Tavis: See, you're laughing already. How did a brother end up developing such a love for outer space?

Tyson: It was not easy initially.

Tavis: Yeah.

Tyson: I was born and raised in New York City. In the Bronx--or "da Bronx," as they say.

Tavis: The Boogie-down.

Tyson: And it all traces back to my very first visit to the Hayden Planetarium here in New York City, where they put up the night sky and thousands of stars came out, and I thought it was quite beautiful, but I was certain it was a hoax, because I had seen the night sky from the Bronx, and I knew it had only 12 stars in it. It wasn't until I was much older where I realized, of course, that is the real sky, and it was those early encounters with the cosmos that--It was almost like a calling, because I've known I wanted to be an astrophysicist when I grew up ever since I was nine, ten, eleven years old.

Tavis: You were a wrestler, though. I'm told that you had some counselors that thought it was a bit of a joke for you to even be thinking about going to a place like Harvard. Although, by the way, Carl Sagan recruited you to Yale, you decided to go to Harvard, but those counselors--I'm looking at you now on this monitor. But I'm told you're--at the time, you were, like, 6'2", 100--almost 200 pounds in high school. They were like, "Come on, Neil. You can't--" You know, "Notre Dame, USC, somebody's waiting on you, man."

Tyson: Yeah. It turned out of course there are certain circumstances in one's life where becoming a scientist, as in my case, became the path of most resistance, because the whole system--the guidance counselors, the school, the expectations of society around me--would have me be a professional athlete and not an academic, and so--And yes, actually Carl Sagan was at Cornell at the time.

Tavis: Cornell at the time, right.

Tyson: And I received a very warm invitation to Cornell from him. I ended up going to Harvard, which had a much larger program in astrophysics at the time. But yeah, it's a path of most resistance, and if I didn't have this life of ambition deep within me constantly reminding me to get back on track, I don't know where I'd be today.

Tavis: What do you say to young students, no matter what color they might be, who find themselves in that same dilemma, where they are a true student athlete, where they're getting the grades and could certainly pursue an academic career, but sports is calling them? You made your choice, but what say you to young people who struggle with that dilemma even as we speak?

Tyson: Well, I can tell you this. If you take the number of people who want to be a professional athlete compared to the number who are, take the number who ever wanted to be a scientist and the number of people who are, you have a much better chance of becoming a scientist. Just the statistics of it would give you that, but I would say that what matters is what you love, and you can engage in intellectual activities practically until the day you die, whereas athletics, you're done by 26 or something. So there's a certain reality check we all need going through school, thinking about how you're going to spend the rest of your life, and for me, it was clearly the academic path.

Tavis: This "Nova" series in particular has four parts to it. Before I break down one or two of the parts, I really want to focus in for our conversation tonight. Let's run through right quick what the four parts of the series are. Start me with part one.

Tyson: Yeah. The first one is the origin of the Earth and the Earth-moon system, which there was an idea some years back, about 30 years ago, that the moon came about from a collision between Earth and some Mars-sized object. It was very hard to believe at the time. There wasn't much evidence, but it's an emerging consensus just in the last few years that now which no one disagrees with, because the moon is made of the stuff that Earth's crust is made of, and the moon ought to have a big iron core the way the Earth is, but it doesn't. And so, you get that scenario by having the nascent Earth getting slammed by a Mars-sized planet, and the fiery hot debris in orbit around Earth coalesces to form the moon. And so we retell that story and--In fact, telling it publicly for the first time in the grand panorama of the origin of the planets, the origin of the galaxy, and the origin of the universe as well, and where you get all the base ingredients that give you planets and ultimately give you life.

Tavis: Part number two?

Tyson: Part number two is the search for life in the cosmos. Life of any kind. Normally, we think of the search for life as little green men, but to the biologist, to the chemist, it is no less fascinating if you found bacteria on another planet. This--All this excitement about Mars recently was the search for water. Because every place on Earth where we have water, we have life. And so, follow the water, as the mantra goes in NASA. So we highlight all the places in the solar system and in the rest of the cosmos where you might find life at all because the basic ingredients are there. The universe is endowed with these ingredients that are the most common ingredients in the cosmos, the ingredients of life. Then we go on to the search for alien intelligence.

Tavis: Uh-huh.

Tyson: That's a whole--That's a fascinating area, because how would you know if there's a planet that has intelligent life and cultures and civilizations? And we take on some of the people who have claimed they've been abducted. My message to them is next time you're ever taken onto a U.F.--a flying saucer, just steal something off the shelf so you can bring it back to the lab. Don't come back telling me eyewitness testimony. Eyewitness testimony might work in the court of law. In the court of science, it is the lowest form of evidence. And episode four is the origin of the entire cosmos from the Big Bang right on through the formation of elements.

Tavis: Tell me why this matters. Tell me why this matters to those of us who don't get excited by the notion of bacteria or water on Mars? I mean, I found these stories fascinating. It's clearly what you do for a living. Make this relevant to me. Why should I care about a "Nova" series that talks about how we got here?

Tyson: I'm going to tell you, because if you told me that you walked out under the night sky with stars above and looked up and didn't wonder what our place is in the universe, then I've got nothing to say to you.

Tavis: Right.

Tyson: But I think you have, and I think everyone has. And even the star-starved New Yorkers, you put 'em out in the country, they'll look up, and, "My gosh, where did this all come from? What is the origin?" These are thoughts that are timeless, and they cross cultures. Every culture in the history of human civilization has wondered about these questions, and for the first time, we can answer them in a long, sweep of content from the earliest moments of the Big Bang to modern day, and it's a matrix of biology, chemistry, physics, geology, paleontology all coming together to answer this one common question about our origins, and it's that synthesis of knowledge that is without precedent in television or in the study of science in general.

Tavis: You mentioned a list of "ologies" just a moment ago. Let me throw another into the mix since my mother's watching, who happens to be a minister. Theology. Talk to my mother right quick and tell her why she should even give ear, should give listen to a scientist when her Bible says, "In the beginning, God created," and for those of us who have an abiding faith, certainly those of us who are Christians and believe the Bible, that's the story, that's good enough for me. Why should I give ear to all the time and energy you've put into studying these issues, and how do these things connect?

Tyson: Well, I'm a big fan of some of the comments that Galileo made during the trial of Galileo, where of course he was brought to task by the church for his views of the universe. One of them was the Bible tells you "how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." And so there is a lot of wisdom in the Bible about how to treat others, how to live, how to--moral stories and the like. But it has not served well as a textbook of science of the physical world, and so we need to come to terms with that fact. Otherwise, we'll just be living in the past. That's number one. But number two, I've met many a religious people, upon seeing space shows that we put forth in the planetarium and--or have read some of the--my writings or seen other programs done by others that in fact, they find themselves closer to the divine cosmos that they know and love, so to say, "I don't want to know what the scientist says about the universe," closes you off from the grandeur and the spectacle that surrounds us, and it would--you would do yourself a disservice to not at least have some exposure to what we are finding about this universe in which we live.

Tavis: Let me ask you how your study--We talked at the beginning of this conversation about how you as a kid growing up in Brooklyn--the Bronx, rather, developed a love for space study and space travel, for that matter. Let me ask you what you have learned over the years--Let me rephrase that. How has what you've learned over the years given you a greater appreciation for life, caused you to be more inquisitive? Talk to me about that.

Tyson: Have you got three hours?

Tavis: Ha ha ha! I've got three minutes. How about that?

Tyson: Think about it. From the practical, all right? You know, they say that the state lottery is a tax on the poor because they spend a disproportionate amount of their income on it.

Tavis: And I still haven't won yet, but anyway, go ahead.

Tyson: It is not a tax on the poor. It's a tax on all those who never did well in mathematics in school, because all it takes is one half a semester on probability, and that money stays in your wallet. So a scientific awareness of the world--And I'm not talking about a Ph.D. I'm talking about just a general sense of science literacy empowers you. It puts you in touch with the physical world around us in ways that gives you power over it. Rather than saying, "You know, my life is going bad because this went wrong and this happened." Why did your house get flooded out? Well, you lived in a flood zone, OK? Do some homework before you buy your home, all right? I don't mean to make light of that fact, but the point is the more you understand weather, climate, the Earth, the cosmos--You know, there's talk about whether we might have an asteroid headed our way. This is important. I've got some people saying, "No, I've got to worry about my job tomorrow." Well, you won't have to worry about your job when humans are extinct. Of course that's not a problem then. So it enables you to not only think about those problems, but think about the impact of science on modern life. We live in the 21st century. There's not a single aspect of how you conduct your life that isn't touched by the discoveries of science and technology. And if you don't have some fluency in that, you're going to be left behind just by standing still.

Tavis: In 30 seconds, tell me what you hope people will get out of this four-part "Nova" series.

Tyson: What I want people to do is to feel comfortable thinking about the universe. Because in there, we tell you that the very elements in your body are derived from stars that have exploded, spreading their enrichment throughout the galaxy. So it's not simply that we are in the universe. It's also true that the universe is in us. And to me, that's one of the most profound lessons of modern astrophysics, and if you don't have that deep within your heart, you ought to, and you'll get it by watching this series.

Tavis: Fascinating conversation, Dr. Tyson. I enjoyed talking to you. I wish I had three more hours to talk about it. Maybe we'll do it again somewhere down the road.

Tyson: I'd love to.

Tavis: Nice to have you on.

Tyson: Thanks.

Tavis: Thank you. That's our show for tonight. As always, you can catch me on the radio on NPR. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, thanks for watching. Good night from Los Angeles, and as always, keep the faith.