Cosmic Queries – StarTalk-ology with Alie Ward

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

StarTalk begins right now.

This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries edition.

I’m your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and we can’t do Cosmic Queries without Chuck Nice.

Chuck, welcome back.

And by the way, you could.

You say you can’t do it without me.

I’m sorry, I was lying.

You’re being kind to me.

You’re being kind and I appreciate it.

You’re like, we couldn’t do this without Chuck Nice, but I’ve actually seen shows where you have.

Okay, call me.

I thought I could slip that one by, but apparently not.

Okay, but good to have you, Chuck.

We’ve got a special guest, a guest we’ve never had, and I don’t know how she went under our radar for so many years.

We’ve got Alie Ward with us.

Alie, welcome to StarTalk.

I’m here.

I’m so happy to incite such excited stammering.

Here I am.

No one can believe I’m here.

Least of all me.

So you’ve got quite the thing going on.

You’ve taken ownership of all the ologies of the universe and have delivered them back to us in digestible bites, not only in your Twitter stream, but in a podcast and videos.

So this is just, I love it.

Well, let me say something here if I can, just I don’t want to sound like father time on the porch, on the rocking chair, but you have a background that would not immediately indicate that you do exactly this, but your background is all the background you need to do exactly this, right?

So there are students who study acting because they want to be an actor, right?

So they go to law school to be a lawyer, business school to be a businessman.

And you do these things and now you invented all of this stuff because that is that melange of talent now unique to you and that can only manifest in products that are the unique paw print of what you bring to it.

That makes me feel a lot better about job security, I’ll have to say.

Tell that to your parents who said, where did we go wrong?

She’s not on the list.

But I mean, I think that really, one thing I’ve learned from Ologies so much is that the people that I interview were so passionate about what they study, whether they’re a ufologist studying toads, or they’re someone who is a fire ecologist or whatever, they tend to really love their jobs.

And so I think I’ve really learned from doing Ologies is figure out what you love the most and then just gravitate toward that.

Passionology is the study of watching people get excited about their work.

I just invented an ology, so there.

I can actually use that now that you’ve said it, I can use it, so I didn’t invent it, you did.

Maybe there’s an ology for my passion, buttology.

Is there?

You know who I had on?

I did do gluteology with Natalia Reagan, who has been on StarTalk a bunch.

So she.

Yes, she’s a friend of StarTalk.

We talked all about butts.

We talked all about butt.

The primate butt is a whole thing with the orangutan.

Yep, talked about gluteology.

And the mandrill, yeah, the big red butted one.

Gluteology, that’s what it’s called, okay.

So do humans have the biggest butts?

Humans have the biggest butts, right?

And I’m gonna use first person plural on that.

I’m gonna include myself on that.

We do have the biggest butts.

Right, that’s very kind of you.

The juiciest of rums.

That’s very inclusive of you.

Yes, it is.

You’re a big fine primate when you back that thing up.

And for a reason.

So yeah, you can listen to her episode, learn all about it.

But that’s kind of, I realized I was really good at being curious and just nosy enough to be uncomfortable in some situations.

So it turns out.

You need that, because that catch should be on the edge of your comfort zone, which is always important.

Otherwise, nothing new shows up.

And what did you study in school?

I studied science.

I loved science and I also loved fine art.

And so I was studying illustration and science and I couldn’t decide which way to go.

And I thought maybe I would do both, but I ended up as a double major in biology and film.

Well, there it is.

And you’re the full manifestation of that.

That’s great.

And then if you notice, Neil, if you notice, there’s a very distinct dichotomy in her choices.

One actually pays money where you can get a job and the other one doesn’t.

So she’s like, fine art and science.

Which one can I live on?

Which one?

Biology and television.

I mean, ask a grad student though.

There are grad students listening, saying, do you know how much grad students make?

Wait, Ali, let me put Chuck in his place here.

But your fine art infuses the depth and elegance of everything else you do.

So no, you may not be specifically making money from the fine art.

Everything else you’re doing is enhanced by it.

Yeah, I tried to say that.

I tried to tell my mother that when I went into comedy, I tried to do the same thing, Neil.

Did not work.

Did not work.

She’s like, you need to infuse some money into this rent.

There is an ology for that.

Gelatology is a study of humor.

And I interviewed someone who told me he was, it’s Dr.

Burke down in Loma Linda.

He studies the effects of laughter on medical patients.

And he is a man who is serious about laughter.

And it was one of the driest interviews I’ve ever done, which I thought was absolutely perfect because he’s so serious about it.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, so if you say, I was laughing so hard I was in stitches, that would have extra meaning to him.

It probably would, it probably, I think.

Or if I bust out my stitches, I don’t want to laugh too hard.

You know, if I’m in the hospital trying to recover, I don’t want Chuck to near me because I might laugh too hard.

You could just say, I was laughing so hard, I was lengthening my telomeres is a better way to say it.

Like you live longer when you laugh.

Is that the deal?

Okay.

You want to, the telomeres are good.

Chuck, we have questions for, yes.

Is that right?

I forgot we were doing this.

This was so much fun.

I forgot we were doing a Cosmic Queries.

Cosmic Queries, yeah.

What do you have for us?

Okay, so let’s just start off with Adam Crowther or Crowther, it’s C-R-O-W and then thir.

So Crowther, Crowther, I don’t know.

Anyway, he says, thank you for this opportunity to ask the question.

Chuck, you never know.

I wish I could refute that, but I can’t.

He says, thank you for the opportunity to ask this question.

I have friends and family who have been convinced that COVID vaccination is useless against the disease and it will be harmful to our health.

They are motivated by the general distrust of conventional medicine and faith in alternative, so-called holistic and spiritualistic healing methods and their strong belief in the paranormal.

So he says, how do I approach this discussion?

Adam, so you’re a person who studies everything.

Each of the fields that you dip your toes in or full body in require some sensitivity to the vocabulary, the jargon, the what’s interesting, what’s not.

And so you have to think this through and somewhere in there, you would have come up with methods, tools and tactics of communicating what needs to get out there.

So what can you share with us on this topic?

Well, I was lucky enough to study biology and I used to read a lot of journals for fun when I was in college.

I was a dork.

So luckily, I have that kind of background.

But things like this, when it comes to communicating science that I always try to start from is just empathy and understanding where someone’s coming from, whether it is asking a scientist to share their work or whether it’s trying to get these ideas to the public.

And so I think, of course, there’s things that are infuriating about this, but if you are with someone who does not want to understand science or is blocked to it, always come from an empathetic standpoint of what are they scared of?

I think typically fear is what blocks us off from a lot of learning.

So what are they scared of?

This would come from psychology.

Yes, anology indeed.

See what I did there?

Am I good?

Am I good?

Loved it, loved it.

Haven’t done that episode yet.

Too broad a top.

But yeah.

But the idea that the empathy at least doesn’t have them dig their heels in more strongly, you might be able to find a place to have that conversation.

I mean a space, a conversational space.

Yeah, there’s no, you don’t do any good if you are being condescending to someone or patronizing or if you are annoyed at them for their beliefs.

Doesn’t do anyone good.

You don’t get, doesn’t help anyone.

Well, I’m doing this whole thing wrong because I have the Fred Sanford approach.

Shut up, dummy.

Shut up.

Yeah, he did say that, didn’t he?

Does not open a lot of minds.

So try to address what they’re scared of and then try to perhaps talk to them about how scary the other alternative is in terms of vaccination.

So what you’re saying is you’re an idiot is not a good opener.

But it’s a good closer if they don’t listen to you.

We have to get you back on another show the week before Thanksgiving, before everyone goes home, so that the Thanksgiving dinner conversations can, so no one dies.

We’ll have the special show.

I have two Ologies for you though.

We do have Vaccine Infodemiology, which premiered in January, has a lot of information, has a lot of talk about vaccine hesitancy and where those come from, from historical psychological place, and Agnitology, which is the study of willful ignorance, which is a real study, and I talked to a Stanford professor about that.

So those episodes are there in case you want to understand why some people just don’t know us.

Wow, okay, very good.

I like the overview there, very good.

We’re going to take a quick break.

When we come back, more Q&A with the queen of Ologies, Alie Ward on StarTalk.

Hi, I’m Chris Cohen from Hallworth, New Jersey, and I support StarTalk on Patreon.

Please enjoy this episode of StarTalk Radio with your and my favorite personal astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

We’re back, StarTalk Cosmic Queries edition.

I got Chuck with me, and Chuck, we have a guest.

I don’t know how we missed her the past eight years that we’ve been doing this.

Alie Ward, welcome, welcome to StarTalk.

How do we find you on Twitter?

Oh, just at Alie Ward, A-L-I-E-W-R-D, or Ologies.

Just at Ologies on everything.

I sat on those handles, I got them, they’re mine.

Ologies.

Nice, so you own Ologies.

I do, I do.

I couldn’t believe the handles were available.

I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

I have to think about that.

It’s a good thing.

If you turn evil, then to control the Ologies is you become a superhero nemesis.

Yeah, no, that’s my plan.

Yeah, my plan is to ruin it.

You’re just seeing part of my backstory now.

So someone’s gonna wrong me, and then I’m gonna use everything.

This is a larger story right now.

So Chuck, we have to be nice to her because we’re not telling what powers she’s advancing.

We might turn her into an evilologist.

Lightning’s gonna come out of my eyes.

I’m gonna own the world.

It’s gonna be great.

There you go.

So Chuck, we solicited questions specifically for her in this unheardology universe.

So what do you have there?

Okay, here we go.

This is Chester Lipschitz who says, hey, what’s up, stellar StarTalk crew, Neil and Chuck.

Chester Lipschitz here with the question about ancient science.

Clearly manmade discoveries before language, even though they did not formally fall into today’s definition of science.

Do you think there would have been a limit to the advancement of civilization without language?

Ooh, interesting.

I like that.

Is there an analogy for that?

So, Alie, have you interviewed any linguists or anybody who’s thought about this language in the brain and the education?

I haven’t, I haven’t, but I wanna say, obviously.

I guess it depends on how you define language because there are so many animals that use language and have different ways of communicating.

So are you talking, are they talking about just written language?

Are they talking about like some syntax?

Because there’s, I mean, there are different primate, there are monkeys that have different dialects in terms of where they grow up in certain rainforests.

I’m thinking every species of animal on earth has no trouble communicating with other members of its species.

All right, I mean, you look at ants and bees and birds and they’re just having a, doing fine.

And I bet cavemen, you know, the cave people, they, without a dictionary and a language and a school, I’m sure they communicated with each other when they were hungry, when they needed more food, when they’re sleepy.

I mean, so maybe let’s, maybe we should tune the question a little tighter and ask maybe basic discoveries could be communicated, but not subtle nuances of discoveries, which would require a more sophisticated way of communication.

What do you think of that?

That’s my answer and I’m sticking to it.

It’s a good answer.

I think we would find those nuances the same way we found nuances for when you’re deaf or when you’re blind.

We always seem to find a way to communicate with each other as human beings.

And even if we didn’t have that, we would just find a way to communicate those nuances.

It would be interesting to look at written language and technology and if they follow a similar curve, if there’s a certain limiting factor, I don’t know, but I will say that I want to just deconstruct the question in terms of what is language, because I think that we have a very narrow definition of that in terms of what is human written language.

That’s what I say.

I say go back to your question, re-tinker the language of your question, and then we’ll re-answer it.

Damn, just send them back to the drawing board.

Hey, Alie, we have to be here next week, okay?

How about this, how about this?

Let me leapfrog this and say, science as we now think of it, took great leaps and advances only after scientific journals became the common way discoveries were shared.

Not only within a country, but across national boundaries, speaking whatever was the agreed upon language of the day.

And you go back several hundred years, it was Latin, the language of the erudite and the scientific.

That’s when it really took a jump.

So I have to say whether or not it’s spoken language, the simple act of communicating a discovery at a distance mattered greatly.

Yeah.

And you know what’s that’s so interesting because that’s where the codification comes in, is the fact that you’re able to have these records so that you can go back and compare and then compare across distances.

You don’t have to reinvent something next year.

You got the record.

Not only the record of what’s been discovered, but the record of dead ends.

So you don’t have to repeat the mistakes of people who came before you.

Fascinating.

Great job.

That was awesome.

All right, here we go.

Tom says, C-E-Z.

So I don’t know.

He says, I think being nice is better for teaching the scientific method.

What are the verified experiments showing which teaching methods are best?

So Ali, what’s this field?

I mean, other than the field of education, is there an ology associated with that?

I think I had Bill Nye on, headache, headache, psychology.

He’s this guy, he’s-

No, don’t, just, just, just, just.

Just started, just started, he’s just starting out in his career.

And-

We talked about science communication and he essentially was talking about how you shouldn’t introduce a concept with a big word first, you should talk about the concept first and then define it instead of just dropping a big word.

Essentially, I think not alienating people is the biggest hurdle to get over with science communication.

So I guess I would err on the side of being nice in terms of trying to be as inclusive as possible and have it be a welcoming space.

Because I think one thing about science that intimidates people, especially lay people, is they think that scientists are all in lab coats.

They know everything.

They don’t break anything.

They don’t make any mistakes.

They don’t fail at anything.

They are just imbued with knowledge.

They don’t realize that scientists…

Inaccessible to them.

They don’t realize that scientists are just really curious people who do a lot of experiments that mess up a lot until they find an answer.

So I think trying to come at it from a more humanistic, like hop on board, learn what you can, instead of get out of here.

I like that, rather than think of it as something up on the ivory tower hill that you have no access to.

And I also think the more varied backgrounds we have in science, the different questions people ask.

I think if you have the same people in science, they’re going to ask the same kind of questions of their experiments.

And I think that’s one thing I really love about technology is having all these different types of scientists who approach their research based on their own background.

So yeah, I think hop on in.

We need as many scientists as possible.

So nice, nice is better.

Okay.

I think.

Yeah, I agree.

All right, very cool.

So thanks for the super silliest answer, Alie.

I don’t know.

English humor.

Here we go.

Steven Summers wants to know this.

He says, hey, say you’ve spoken on TV or a podcast to a huge audience with total confidence in your idea, only to find out later that you got something wrong.

How do you set the record straight when that happens?

That’s a great question.

That is a great question.

One thing I recommend if people struggle with this is just take what you need from your house and go live in a cave for the rest of your life.

Don’t show your face again.

Remove yourself from society.

You failed.

It’s all over, is what I would say.

No, that’s not it.

I would say…

Chuck, you’re right.

We do have to be here next week.

No.

I think one thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that science is evolving.

There are so many things we thought about science and then we did more experiments and learned something else.

So understanding that science and just knowledge, human knowledge is always elastic, it’s always changing.

You may have been wrong.

That’s great.

Admit it, cop to it, issue a correction on Twitter and Instagram and on your website and move on with your life.

I think…

Wait, wait, wait.

Ali, there are two kinds of wrongs.

One of them is this is what we think is true today, but more research may undo it later.

And so I say, well, three years ago, I got that wrong because that’s the best we knew at the time.

That’s different from blunder, where you just simply say something that’s just flat out wrong and someone calls you out later on.

So that’s more of an embarrassing kind of error.

Should that person move to the cave forever?

I would say, remember, every human is a human.

Everyone makes mistakes.

And they say there’s a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.

One is too afraid to make mistakes.

Others make a mistake and I move on from it.

So I think the best thing you can do is admit your wrongs, apologize for them sincerely, and put out a correction.

And so we have to work on that mindset.

That’s a mindset that people fear, I think.

Because, you know, what is it they said that the scariest thing, even scarier than death, is speaking in public for some people?

Yeah.

I never understood that, because I’ve never had an issue with that.

I mean, you think people would rather be at the front of the room at their own funeral than giving the eulogy at somebody else’s.

Than in the front of the room of a full house.

And so, I mean, unless there is a sniper or you’re going to die straight up of a heart attack at the speaking podium, you’ll be fine.

I always say that, you know, we’re definitely so afraid of things that can’t hurt us.

I remember I made a flow chart once of like, can this thing kill you?

If yes, run.

If no, chill out.

Those are the basics.

I did an episode with-

I love that flow chart.

It’s a great flow chart.

I use it all the time, but I did an episode, two-parter called Fearology with someone named Mary Poffenrauch, and she’s an expert in fear and the amygdala and how we react to fear, and it was life-changing.

She is so great, and she essentially said most of our fears and anxiety and stress is just worried that we’re not good enough.

And so if you think about everyone walking around, worrying that they’re not good enough to do their job or follow their dreams or start a conversation or a podcast or correct their mistakes, then that’s a whole lot of stress that we have.

So I got one for you, Chuck.

What flat earthers fear most is fear itself.

Oh.

Oh, by the way, that joke made me believe the earth is flat.

Did you just come up with that or did you?

No, I tweeted that a couple of years ago and no, no, it was, I think it’s been around.

It’s been around.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

It’s fear itself.

Actually, I’m going to tell you something.

That’s pretty damn clever.

Yeah, yeah.

That’s good.

And it’s the, it’s fear.

It’s fear is what does it for the word play.

I like it.

We got time maybe one more question.

What else you got, Chuck?

Let’s go to Kayla Slaughter.

Kayla says.

By the way, these are all Patreon members, right?

Yes, that is correct.

I’m glad you brought that up, Neil, because let me just tell people that you can go to patreon.com/startalk.

Support us there if you come in at a certain support level.

We take your questions and we read them on the air.

And that allows us to-

I mean, they bribe us to ask the questions.

Yeah, listen.

Neither, nobody in this organization is a law enforcement official.

There is no law that says we cannot take bribes.

All right, go on.

Next question.

She says, I’ll be starting a family soon.

I want to make sure my children have a well-rounded experience in science and politics and every, all the ologies, basically.

Any thoughts on how I can start early?

I wish that paper encyclopedias were still around because I feel like when I was a kid, all I wanted was an encyclopedia shelf in our house just to take a volume and then just go sit under a tree with it.

But I guess-

So you’re 75 years old.

I’m one million years old.

Yeah, I’m-

That’s good.

Back when we had paper, books were made of paper.

You could smell them with your nose.

We did have an old, we finally got one from a garage sale, but it was so outdated that it was like one day, human man will be on the moon.

And I remember being like-

Yes, I love the out-of-date things.

They’re cheap.

That’s very funny.

But I would say let them frolic.

Let them frolic.

Get them a microscope, because you start swabbing window sills and start looking at fly mouth parts, you start to realize the world is a lot bigger and smaller than we think.

So I’d say let them frolic.

Fly mouth parts.

That was very random right there.

Of all the things you could have listed, fly mouth parts.

I don’t even-

No, I’d retract the question.

I don’t want to know how you came up with that in your list.

Have you ever looked at them?

What are you doing later today?

Get yourself a microscope.

Find a dead fly.

Fly mouth parts.

You know, they’re just thinking about them barfing on a sandwich and sucking it back up.

The world is big and small.

It’s beautiful.

It’s great.

Maybe get them a telescope and a microscope and then go to the telescope.

This should be free range children with access to the large and the small.

In those limits, there are no bounds.

Nice.

I like it.

And I want to make it known that I don’t have kids.

So take this with a grain of salt because I don’t know how to raise children.

I heard in Offline that you have a dog.

I do.

I have an eight-year-old daughter.

She’s a poodle.

And does your eight-year-old poodle daughter have a microscope?

She does.

She has a microscope.

Look, Chuck, she doesn’t have opposable thumbs.

They’re working on that.

She’s doing great.

She’s got infrared goggles.

I got her an electron-scanning microscope, we’re just keeping it in the garage.

She’s got everything she needs.

By the way, Kayla has a follow-up for you, Alie.

She says, what’s it like talking to so many smart people all of the time?

And by the way, I love your shows, plural, she put.

Well, thank you, Kayla.

What it’s like talking to smart people all the time is incredibly, incredibly humbling.

So, there’s nothing better than being reminded that you’re the stupidest person in a conversation.

And that’s what I do for a living.

It’s great.

So, Alie, that reminds me of a quote, if you’re the smartest person in the room, find another room.

That’s a good saying.

That’s what you’re saying here, Alie, right?

You’re reveling in the fact that every outing, you learn something.

Absolutely.

For so many people, the pain of learning something new is unbearable to them.

And so they stay steeped in their ignorance, falsified from the graduation day when they left school.

Living in the past.

All right.

So with that, is there such a thing as a stupid question?

I really don’t think so.

I think if it’s honest, if it’s honest and vulnerable, it’s not stupid and chances are someone else in the room has it.

And we’re all going to die anyway.

We’re all going to be bones and dust and a fungus is going to eat us.

That’s how I live my life.

Cut bangs.

We’re all going to die.

You’re going to be powder.

No one’s going to remember you.

I don’t even remember my great-grandparents name.

So why would I be like, I don’t want to ask this question about solar power or about the universe.

Can I quote you on that?

So I’m afraid to do this.

You’re going to die anyway.

You’re going to die.

You’re going to die.

You’re going to die anyway.

You’re going to die anyway.

You’re going to die anyway.

You’re going to die anyway.

You’re going to die anyway.

You’re going to die anyway.

You’re going to die anyway.

You’re going to die anyway.

You’re going to die anyway.

You’re going to die anyway.

You’re going to die anyway.

You’re going to die anyway.

You’re going to die anyway.

You’re going to die anyway.

Okay, I have evidence to refute that where somewhere outdoors, it’s Neil and I and these people who are huge fans, they come over, they’re talking to him.

He’s being very, very gracious, spending way too much time talking to him.

And so the guy says, hey, do you have one of those apps on your phone where you can hold it up to the sky and it will show you constellations?

And then Neil goes like this, are you kidding me right now?

You’re asking Neil deGrasse Tyson, does he need an app on his phone to look at the night sky?

I’m like, brother, he is the app.

What is your problem?

Yeah, my answer is in my day, we had to remember where the constellations were.

I still, I think, embarrassing moment for him, but still, there’s a lot of stars up there.

If anyone’s taught us that, it’s you.

So he learned something about you that your brain has even more capacity than he ever imagined.

And also, he learned he needs the app.

You don’t.

Yeah, thank you.

There you go.

Okay.

This bit about being fungus lunch, I’m trying to decide whether that’s a happy note or a sad note.

It’s amazingly liberating.

I did a whole episode on Thanatology, death and dying, one of the happiest episodes I did.

I came out of there saying, well, I’m just going to do whatever I want to do.

So yeah, your fungus lunch, ask a question, do your thing, follow your passion, read the encyclopedia, it’s all fine.

And remember, you’re delicious.

To some organism, you’re delicious.

Guys, we’ve got to take a quick break, but when we come back, more StarTalk without you.

Hey, StarTalk fans.

This next segment of our episode with Ologies host Alie Ward is sponsored by the All Electric Chevrolet Bolt EUV, the everyday electric vehicle for everyday people.

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The All Electric Chevy Bolt EUV has so many cool features, including the ability to engage in conversations hands-free with the industry’s first hands-free driving assistance technology.

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All right, let’s get back to the show.

We’re back, StarTalk Cosmic Queries.

And for this segment, we’re gonna actually devote this to a discussion about electric cars.

Chuck, what do you think of that?

Yes, that’s awesome.

Because I know you don’t like the word awesome, but in this case, I think it is awe inspiring.

But just to be clear, I love the word awesome, but when properly applied, like when you discover a new universe or something.

But people say, it would be awesome if you could pass the salt.

That is not a good use of the word awesome, okay?

Okay, here is a good use of the word awesome because electric vehicles actually do so much to help the environment.

And I care about the environment, I know you do.

People don’t think I do.

But this segment, we’re doing in partnership with the Chevrolet Bolt EUV.

So, I’m just over the moon because we get to talk about electric vehicles, man.

And that’s our future.

All right, so is EUV, is that like SUV except electric?

Is that how we’re gonna take it?

Yeah, man, yeah, exactly.

Doesn’t it sound better though?

Doesn’t it sound better to be like EUV, you know?

So yeah, let’s get back to our guest here, Alie Ward from Ologies.

Who basically did a land grab on all ologies in the universe.

Nice, that’s a straight power move.

That’s total gangster right there.

Once you get that handle, you’re sitting on it and it’s yours.

But yeah, this would be electric vehicle technology, I suppose, the segment could be.

The ology, okay.

You just cram that ology in whether or not it belongs.

That’s what I do.

Someone mentioned something in casual conversation and I tell you what ology it is.

But this one is really exciting to me.

I’ve been excited about electric vehicles since I was a kid.

My dad is really into alternative sources of power and solar power and so I have been watching for years and seeing how EVs come on the market.

So I’m really excited about the Chevrolet, or EV, I think EV is a good name too.

I like the way it sounds.

Cool, and Chuck, but is it like 100 grand like other electric vehicles, like what’s going on there?

That’s the great thing about it.

Otherwise, it’s not for everybody.

You can’t take that Chevy to the levy.

If it costs that much, nobody’s…

No good old boys are doing that.

So what’s the price point on this?

That’s why they drained the levy, was to pay for your very expensive, which this is not.

Actually, when I said it’s accessible, that’s what I mean.

This is a car that allows people to enter into this realm, and if you’re a conscientious person…

As a first foray.

Okay, very good, very good.

Yeah, so Alie, do you have a question?

I do, actually.

I wanted to know…

Wait, wait, wait.

Actually, that’s not fair, because you’re our guest, and we usually take questions from the audience, from our fan base, but you seem so into it.

Maybe we’ll give you the occasion to ask the question, with the permission of our fan base.

I think they’ll allow it.

So the floor is mine.

I have the Cosmic Query conch right now, and can launch a question.

Do you have it?

Okay, so I wanted to talk about whether or not electric vehicles are good for the environment.

How much good do they do over a car that runs on fossil fuels?

What are your thoughts on it?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So I can, I mean, I don’t claim to be the world’s expert on that, but I can get you a lot of the way towards an answer to that question.

So here’s the problem.

Transportation today, you know, cars and trucks and things that move commerce, I guess even trains, but some trains are electric.

So let’s just stick to the ones that have sort of engines that burn fossil fuels.

The problem is if you have a car that takes gasoline, it can only run on gasoline, right?

So if you run out of gas, you gotta go to a gas station and fill it up with gasoline.

So, you know, we all know how much gas costs and we know where it comes from in the world and we know if a pipeline gets shut down and we know if a war breaks out and if we know if an oil well is on fire and we know if there’s new regulation related to it.

So oil has become a strategic commodity simply because we need it to run our transportation grid.

So now in comes an electric car.

So an electric car, of course it still uses power, right?

So what’s up with that?

Why is it good rather than sort of neutral or bad or equal, right?

So here’s what happens.

You got your car and it’s at home and you plug it in, okay?

Now it’s getting electricity from your power plant.

There’s a chance your power plant is using coal.

There’s a good chance of that, all right?

So that’s not really much better, all right?

Coal, burning coal or burning gasoline, there’s still this carbon footprint, okay.

However, the power plant is not limited to just coal.

If they wanted to, and many have, they can put in, if they have sunlight where you are, a solar farm or a wind farm.

And if you’re near water, you could be hydroelectric.

All of these sources of power can be generated by your power company and show up in your wall socket.

So you don’t need 12 different engines in your car to use 12 different kinds of energy.

You just need a plug that gives you access to the thing that’s generating the energy 12 different ways.

So if you electrify the transportation grid, you are future proofing our path into a culture and a civilization that can wean itself off its dependence of fossil fuel.

And so that’s why it works.

That’s why it’s good.

Not to mention if you go solar on your house, you essentially have a solar powered car, which is a car powered by the sun.

There you go.

There’s gotta be a bumper sticker for that.

Like solar powered.

Yeah, but that wouldn’t work in places like Seattle where the sun never comes out or upstate New York.

But yeah, it would be believable if it’s in a place where the sun is prevalent.

So that’s why electric is good.

Now, the problem is I can have a gallon of gas over here and I can move it over there where you need it.

You can’t do that with electric.

You can’t carry electricity with you.

Oh, sorry, you can charge a battery and then I can move the battery over there.

No, the battery is in the car.

Okay, so one of the problems with electricity as it’s generated is it can only, you can’t sort of store it outside of the battery that’s in your car.

So to run your lights, to run most of the things that civilization uses electricity for, it doesn’t come out of a storage battery.

It’s generated on the fly as you need it from the power station and delivered by the high tension lines.

I was gonna say, like, I’m glad you said that because there’s a lot of people who are, you know, electric vehicle hesitant, I will say, because they’re worried about how far they can drive, like, because of what you just said.

And the cool thing about the industry, but more importantly about the Chevy Volt EUV is the, because I know this, because I got to take a tour of the car with GM.

The cool thing is this car has nearly 250 mile range on a full charge.

That’s good.

Right.

And then-

That’ll get you between any adjacent cities.

I mean, New York city is 250 between Boston and Washington.

And you’re in LA, Alie, what cities with it?

San Diego is easy?

Oh, if you need to make a getaway, that’s Palm Springs, that’s Joshua Tree, that’s Santa Barbara, that’s, yeah, up the coast.

Oh, excuse me, Joshua Tree.

Oh, excuse me.

Okay, yeah, these are different hangouts.

Excuse me, I’m about to take my Chevrolet Bolt EUV down to the Joshua Tree.

I mean, I’ve got a new-

Perhaps you’d like to meet me there.

Sometimes you need an Instagram shoot, you need to get in your Bolt.

I love the EUVs.

I think if you like a hatchback with a little bit higher profile, I love that.

And the range is great.

They call it range anxiety.

People who are afraid to go EV because they think they’re gonna be stranded.

But once you drive an electric, it’s kind of like once you become a bird watcher, you start seeing all these charging stations, just like you would see birds you didn’t realize were there before.

But once you drive an EV, it’s like, oh, there’s a charger everywhere.

You can charge in parking lots, in the mall.

You can charge next to your grocery store.

You can charge at hotels.

It’s just like, it’s really easy.

So the bird watcher, an analog there is, if you’ve never looked for a bird, you would never know it was there until you knew what to look for.

And then they’re everywhere.

I gotcha.

So that’s what’s like a psychological effect.

Once you know what to look for.

But yeah, there’s EV charging stations everywhere.

Yeah, there’s about 40,000 birds to look for when you’re traveling.

Is that how many EV stations are there?

Really?

Yeah, yeah, there’s about 40,000 public charging stations.

So, you know, you can-

Okay, so Chuck, which goes faster down the road, a Chevy Bolt or a Usain Bolt?

You know, I’m going to say that the Usain Bolt is faster out of the blocks, but the Chevy Bolt is going to ultimately smoke them.

Don’t tell him that.

You don’t need as many carbs for your Chevy Bolt.

You don’t have to run it on pasta, protein, anything.

I think range, better range.

Yeah, yeah.

So, is that your only question you have?

That was my main question about it.

I think people who are considering going from a fossil fuel car to something that is electric, I think, tend to be people who are environmentally conscious.

And so, they really want to know how much better is this for the environment.

But knowing that you can use…

I agree, and those are the people who do it first, but ultimately, if you get the right price point, people just do it because it’s the right price point.

Not to mention…

Wait, so then, speaking of what you just said, before we actually got on the show today, Alie was doing something on your computer where you were looking at the savings.

So when you talk about price point, there are hidden savings in every electric vehicle, but I don’t know.

What were you doing?

Well, there are fewer moving parts.

Oh, can I back up real quick?

We’re running out of time.

I don’t want to take up the whole thing.

But Michael Faraday, go back 150, 60 years.

When you said back, I thought you meant back in the show.

Can I go back?

Michael Faraday.

So Michael Faraday, an English scientist, a physicist, he basically is responsible for figuring out how to generate electricity, right?

And he invented the concept of an electric field, by the way, because that’s not a thing you can touch, right?

It’s just this thing there.

So he can draw it and calculate, you can calculate with it.

So he realized that if you move a wire through a magnetic field, it induces current in that wire, and it’ll show up on a meter.

And so, whoa, well, that’s kind of, it was a little novel at the time, but what would you do with this?

This is kind of a stupid toy.

And then people figure, oh my gosh, this is the birth of electrification of the world.

Point is, the way we do that now is we have a tightly wound, what’s called a turbine, a typically wound wire coil that spins in a magnetic field and an electric current is induced in that wire.

Ever since the beginning of electricity, we’ve known how to spin things.

That’s what we do best.

We’ve been doing it for 150 years.

And what is a car if not electricity spinning things?

So, the acceleration on an electric vehicle can be excellent because of this fact.

And that’s why the Chevy Bolt, I didn’t check the acceleration numbers.

They might actually accelerate out of the box faster than a Hussein Bolt.

Now that I’m thinking about it.

Also, I was checking on price point stuff just to see how much would I save per year driving an EV.

And my parents live about 400 miles away.

So I go up a couple of times, obviously, like every month or two.

And I would save $10,000 over five years on gas just based on that.

Yeah.

If you’re calculating how much…

Not to mention how much CO2 that is, right.

So a little karmically and then pocketbook wise.

But yeah, I did.

They have a number cruncher for you.

So you don’t have to pull out your spreadsheets.

They have it for you.

But yeah.

And yeah, the acceleration is better.

I see what you do when you say karmically.

The cons are electric.

So guys, we got to land this plane or park this car.

So Alie’s been delighted to have you on this show.

I can’t believe we haven’t had you ever on before.

We got to do this again with your permission and talk about some of the ologies that you discovered or I think you’re inventing some of those ologies.

Maybe bending some words.

I think you’re pulling them out of I don’t know where.

I swear I do look for them in the literature first.

I promise.

But yes, so many ologies to cover.

I’m here whenever you need me.

And so little time.

Yes.

Excellent.

Thanks for being on StarTalk.

And you can catch her on her ology podcast and it goes everywhere.

I mean, every ology you can ever imagine, even the ones you haven’t imagined because she made them up.

They’re there.

Chuck, always good to have you, man.

Hey Neil, before we wrap up, I just want to let the viewer know that if you’re ready to make the electric future part of your present and do some good for the environment, which is what it is all about, check out the Chevrolet Bolt EUV at chevrolet.com/electric.

chevrolet.com/electric.

Do some good people.

Come on.

All right.

This has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries.

Neil deGrasse Tyson here, as always.