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A truly stellar Sunday morning interview. We are here at the sort of genesis moment. of this thing. What is this thing? It's a bromance.
I think what Bill Shatner and I have together. should be The textbook definition of the bromance. I know the word predates us, but It was we knew each other. several years back. because we had traded Guesthood.
on each other's shows. unexplained show or for one of these shows where We try to ask questions that are hard to answer. And he came to visit me in New York. at the Hayden Planetarium where I serve as director. And we hit it off real well, but He has that kind of personality, so.
There's a category of sociable people. where if you hit it off well with them, that doesn't mean they necessarily like you. They're just like that with everyone.
So you can't really judge that on one encounter. And then I thought, maybe I should get him on my podcast. And he agreed to that, so I had him on my pod podcast, and we got a little closer. But it was still more just a We weren't beer drinking buddies yet. Until We were both guests on a ship.
to Antarctica. this past December. which remember is the southern hemisphere summer. And I'd never been to Antarctica. That's on most people's bucket list.
It was on his too. And The organizer said, Why don't we put the two of you on this mini stage that they have on the ship? And we just. Just chew the fat. just to talk about whatever comes to our minds.
And we did that, and crowds gathered. and they gathered some more. And then the organizer said, Exactly what You always hear or imagine them to say, Why don't you guys take this on the road?
So it was like, well, okay, sure. But then where are we going to do it first? Turns out both he and I have very Deep. And Committed fan base. here in the Pacific Northwest.
We're right here in Seattle now. And so we said we got to do it in Seattle. There's no other place deserving of this first Exchange then there. As a guy from Seattle originally, I like to hear this about the 206.
So, what actually is the plan for tonight? What will be unfolding on stage? Yeah, so what we decided. was That Every time I say something about what I know or what I Do professionally. He's got questions.
And every time he says something about his life, I've got questions. Not only As a basic Star Trek fan, but his career has been extraordinary. Plus The man is 94 years old. He's 94. Everyone I know.
Who was 94? is either addled Infirmed We're dead.
So What's up with that?
Okay, what kind of magic Potion is he. drinking.
So but when you're that old, you have By the way, you can do the math. He's been alive for 3 billion seconds.
Okay, I did the math. You don't have to. That is a very Neil analysis of the guy's life. Almost exactly 3 billion seconds. That's enough.
provided you remain curious throughout your life. You develop not only a base of knowledge, Information becomes knowledge. And over time... that knowledge becomes wisdom.
So when Bill Shatner speaks, It's coming from a place way deeper. than any of the rest of us. can possibly Match. Because we haven't lived as long as he has. We haven't experienced what he has.
The arcs of our lives are not nearly as as um Enriched and nearly as As Uh What can I say? If you look at the life of William Shatner, the many things he's done. Many things that have happened to him. Here's something just no one understands. TJ Hooker.
Was on for more seasons than Star Trek.
Okay? Star Trek was canceled after three seasons. Every one of his other TV projects went longer. Boston Legal, TJ Hooker, just name it. And All we remember is Star Trek.
There's something there. And he's not unaware of this fact. its impact. on us personally, emotionally, culturally, especially.
So that is a fountain of life experience. that on stage, the two of us together, will compare and contrast. with each other. There's also our relative ascent. to fame, I guess is the word there.
I'm a scientist, I don't think of fame and science going together, but I do get recognized in the street, as does he. And so we compare notes. What was that like? uh ascending that You know. that ladder of fame.
Are there any checkpoints in there? Are there any? interesting stories you can share.
So what we have is preloaded. A s series of bullet points. And they're bullet points for him, bullet points for me. And each of us can't resist. jumping in and commenting when the other is speaking.
So we know that's fertile ground as it is. But the bullet points are a series of topics that go from our childhood It's through What? We did. that led us to become who we are today. and stories that dot our lives throughout.
Some stories come from our own lives, some are from outside our lives. Learning about the adventures and voyages of others. Bill Shatner's especially uh attracted to the stories of the great explorers. Shackleton going to Antarctica. We met in Antarctica.
We we had this bromance get forged in Antarctica.
So that brought to him all these Antarctica stories, Shackleton among them, where he has all these men, he never gets to went to the wanted to go to the South Pole, never gets there. and gets stuck in the ice. And no one dies. Think of it when that happened. Everybody, usually people died on these voyages.
You never came back with everybody who left. Everybody came back alive. Uh so he has no end of fascination. He's a 94-year-old. Voracious student.
He always wants to learn something. And as an educator, I'm drawn to that. You want to learn? Call me up. I'm there for you.
So that created a relationship. that is I find to be very strong potent. And we should not keep it to ourselves.
Now, is it hard for you to gently push back when he seems to be locked into what we could call a non-scientifically supported theory?
So he. is never locked into anything. He's smart enough to know that there are things he might not understand. And he might need a little more information or a little more. knowledge or insight.
to dig himself out of her. Hypothesis hole that he might have dug himself into. He respects what I know and my expertise. And I respect His childhood curiosity. He doesn't take anything for granted.
How do we know that? And the emotions flare and his face turns red. the vein pops out of his forehead. And He's not. arguing against me.
He's just arguing for his own curiosity. That's a very big difference. Does it help that he doesn't have any formal education in these matters, that his way in was playing. Uh space captain. He's been around long enough.
and is well read. He's quite a literate guy. Right, he does not have formal training in quantum physics or astrophysics. But I never hold that against someone. What I would hold against you is if you claimed to know And you don't.
He has some ideas about the world. but they're not so much ideas as they are questions. about the world. You know, what does the quantum mean? Why does it that way and not this other way?
Why? He's driven by the why. And as I said, as an educator, That's irresistible. I have to respond to it. The real problem anywhere in life and in society is when people They know enough about something to think they're right.
But not enough about that thing to know they're wrong. And William Shatner is in the open mind part of that curve, wherever that would land. where I think I know what I'm talking about, but maybe I don't. Clue me in. on what's going on.
And I love it. Do you think that we are sort of as a society in a a moment where That idea of being sort of short on facts but sort of long on confidence is happening more and more. Yeah, it's an unfortunate state of the world. at least certainly in the in the United States. where People, after they learn a little bit about something, they become overconfident in it.
You know, you tell them something.
Well, I saw two YouTube videos, so I know what I'm talking about. No, you don't. That is not the measure of what you know. You got started on this. Have you ever wondered why some people spend four years becoming engineers?
or they're they're in plumbing school for years in mechanics school. Have you ever wondered that? And you're just going to watch a video and claim that you know? what you're doing and that they don't.
So we need to restore some Some sense of the value of expertise. When it's in a person who's offering Their advice. or their help or their assistance. You know, often, you know, the patient doesn't die. Right.
You don't have people say, I saw a An open heart surgery video, so I'm good here. They don't do that, right? But they're gonna run up to me and tell me Earth is flat, like, really? What's your standard response to that if somebody comes up to the airport and says, Dr. deGrasse Tyson, I need to inform you of something, the earth is flat.
And I say, isn't it great we live in a country where you can have that idea and you don't get arrested for it? There was a day when my people said Earth was not in the center of the universe and they got burned at the stake.
So what a country. that you can think and feel that. I don't It doesn't upset me. What concerns me is if you now run for office and you have power over laws and legislation. and you think you know what you're talking about and you don't.
Then you're dangerous. You're dangerous to yourself, to others, but more importantly, you're dangerous. You st you begin to unravel the fabric of an informed democracy. Because in a formed democracy, people make decisions based on objective truths. Not based on feelings.
Feelings, your feelings may be different from someone else's. That's not good to base a law on. Fine, have your feelings, but I feel this way, therefore I'm going to make a law, even though no one else has those feelings, or just your clan has those feelings.
So no one is if you're going to build a society, Objective truths matter. What's interesting about science is that its methods and tools are exquisitely tuned. to establish what is objectively true. and what is not. That's the whole point of science.
This almost has no other purpose in life. And we have built-in error checking mechanisms to protect you. from thinking that something is true that is not. Or that something is not true that is. For a lot of us, it is very hard to feel optimistic right now about this sort of.
trajectory of science and of the funding of science and of the agreement that we live in an objectively fact-based world and universe. I'm just wondering, as someone who's dedicated your life to this, do you see any signs or any thoughts for optimism? I wouldn't call myself an optimist. pragmatists. Or there's some ist.
I'm a scientist. That's the only ist I am. After that, I do try to look at the positive sides of things, but not to the point of delusion.
So as a practical optimist, how about that? You can cut all the science. Good. You want if you have the power to do so. and you believe you're doing the right thing and you're voted into office.
That's kind of the whole point of a democracy. You vote people in who think the way you do. and you want to create that country. What people perhaps don't recognize. is that innovations on the frontier of science.
are the foundations. of the growth economies of the future. And not only that, It is the axis on which Our health or wealth. and our security pivot. And so Without science, we'll just begin to fade on the world stage.
will start becoming irrelevant. because other countries will rise up because they understand this about their science investments. We don't do well. when we see other countries just passing us by. You know, other countries will start basing their financial system on some other country's currency and not ours, and we just begin to fade.
What I have realized about America. Let me say it right. Merck. What I've realized about America is We're not really good at being proactive. But we're really good at being reactive.
Oh yeah. Look at the space race. Oh yeah. October 4th, Soviet Union launches Sputnik. You know, we lost our shit, okay?
And within a year, NASA was founded. And, you know, they launched the first satellite. Then we launched a satellite. They put a person in orbit. Then we put a person in orbit.
They put a black person in orbit. Remember Cuba? They were on their side. Then later we would have a black person. They did all of that first.
And we're still trying to show the world that we're best. And then we get to the moon and say, we win. But the Soviets beat us in practically every other metric. And so we reacted. And when we react, we're all unified.
So we may need to feel the fading of our presence on the world stage. that I, surely you, maybe even took for granted coming out of the 20th century. This post-Second World War force that the United States was, leading force on civilized world.
So we may have to sink deeper before we recover, but we've recovered before. and we survived worse. That's where my sense of hope. comes from. But all the while I'm trying to fight the good fight.
I don't like calling it a fight. As an educator, I'm not fighting you to teach you. I'm trying to enlighten you. with objective truths that make you think a little differently about the world. And if TJ Hooker's there with you on stage doing it, all the better.
All the better. It gets people in the door. All the better. And at the end of the day, 2,500 people are coming to hear. A scientist And an actor who played a Starship Captain, just talk about.
the world through the lens that we've carried with us throughout our lives. And in there are a lot of objective truths. touches of wisdom. I like to think people will walk out saying, I feel better about the world. And maybe I can do something about it.
Hmm. That's a really great place to end. What do you consider yourself, if anything? I was a Jewish son in a Jewish family and brought up as a Jew in Montreal. And so I'm Jewish.
But religions too. Sacrosanct, it's too hard, it's too defined. What is religion? Nobody knows. You know, God is a perfect term for the unknown, is the universe.
Now they're thinking the universe is flat. And then they got the Big Bang Theory, but the Big Bang Theory came in 100 years ago. You know, so 100 years ago, before 100 years ago, how did the universe? We didn't know how the universe went.
Well, big flash of energy, and we still hear the remnants of it when we look. I mean, There's no room for The thing I'm going to do, and the last thing we're going to do tonight, I'm going to do tonight. is the the great mystery that Robert and I wrote. The great mystery. It's the great mystery.
We should always be aware. Our religion should be In awe of the great mystery. And when we die, Do we solve the mystery, or do we go like an unfinished ghost story? and it ends and we don't ever know. In my will I have My grave.
with a tree. planted over my grave. And I want the tree. to take my sustenance and grow. And that's a living.
thing that I wish for. my children and my grandchildren and all that of course, but But that tree growing because I supplied its original Uh food. Makes me feel good. Is that something that maybe takes some of the edge off of the fear around death. The idea that you will the fear of death, My fear I have so much love around me.
I have Wife and children and grandchildren. I even have two great-grandchildren. I have two great dogs. I've had dogs all my life, all my adult life.
So those animals and those people and And my life and talking to you is such a joy. And being on stage, I went on stage this opera house, and I could hear my voice coming back to me. And this is what I am. I'm a performer. I'm at home in the theater.
I'm at home in front of people, making them laugh. The sound of laughter made you laugh. This is all my life is f fertile, this vibrant is And I don't want to leave it. And that's the sadness. I don't want to go.
Are you curious, though, about what you will find out? Not enough to die. Even your curiosity has a limit. It stops right there.
Okay, well, we found it. Where Bill Shatner's famous curiosity bumps up against the edge of his universe, and that is leaving this planet. I have to comment on something that I think is probably apparent to everybody in this room, which is. You are really vibrant. At the age of 94, and in fact, almost vibrating talking about this stuff.
Is it keeping you young?
Well, look, I'm facing 3,000 people in a couple of hours. And I'm filled with the jeopardy of of how this works. I mean I heard, I d I d I did a one-man show on Broadway and I toured that one-man show and it was successful. People liked it. They'd laugh on that and they'd leave the theater and the word was it was very good.
I heard of another actor. who went to do a one-man show and was laughed off the stage. That's the actor's niper. Yeah. Huh?
That and appearing naked.
Well, I'm dressed. But What will the reaction be? It's like. waiting like we're now Politically, waiting for something terrible to happen. Right, as you and I speak, we're waiting for literally a bomb to drop.
And that's the way I feel. Today, like I'm jazzed. I ride horses a lot. I compete on horse and getting ready to go with your horse and the horse is feeling it and suddenly you're into the pattern that It's it's It's exciting. I guess the nature of my question is, is this curious mind of yours the key to how you are you are just so much more vibrant than a lot of other people who might be your age?
Is it because you have not decided that you've learned enough? I haven't, well I don't learn, I don't know anything. Once you start to learn something, you realize There's no way. You die unha-the scribe, the teacher, the word I'm looking for, who teaches must die sadly. Uh I didn't learn everything there is to know.
Nobody can learn everything there is to know. And how sad that is, because what there is to know is so interesting. It is there to be known. by the effort of many people. Uh Building on the shoulders of giants, as you will.
So one mind thinks of something and another mind grasps it, and Einstein comes along and says the E was M C squared, and what does that mean? And people say, well, that means this, and they invent the atomic bomb from Ewa, and it just multiplies, and it's all over. Knowledge is all over to be gained. Oh my God, I didn't realize that superposition means you don't know where it is. You know what superposition is?
I don't. See?
Now I'm going to tell you something that's... That if you're in a close-up, your eyes are going to go wide. Superposition is when a particle of energy. You know, there's a particle of energy, and you want to plot it and know what it is. You can't know both.
If you your instruments tell you what that particle of light is. You don't know where it is. And if you know where it is, you don't know what it is. And it's nothing until you observe it. It's out of science fiction.
Doesn't that amaze you? Don't you want to know more? Yeah. That's what I feel about everything.
So you and Neil were on this uh this uh ship in Antarctica and you hit it off. How did you first get to know each other at all? Just somebody got somebody's cell phone number and started texting you. No, I was on the podcast. He has a wonderful podcast.
I was on it, I think, twice.
So he's head of the Hayden.
So we walked down to the Hayden and My thing is I don't understand what you're talking about, Neil. You know, what do you mean the thing is in two positions, you don't know what it is? They call it fuzzy. What do you mean it's fuzzy? How can you be and then you've got Dark energy and dark matter in the way.
How can you? And you think light is going whatever it is, 500,000 miles a second, whatever. How do you measure that when there's this curtain and all your measurements are wrong, Neil? Scott! And I found myself shouting at him in the lobby of the planetarium.
You don't know what you're talking about. And he's saying, I do and I know. And that's because, and so we had a great time. doing this. and doing it on stage in this luxury ladder in the South Pole.
So That's essentially what the evening will be. I'm the barbarian. I'm I'm not gonna go to skates. I'm gonna burn them down. Not really.
I've just eaten awe. Yeah. I mean astrophysicist it's just It's better than being king, isn't it? You are an astrophysicist. You're a king.
What? Wouldn't you rather be an astrophysicist? But you also are not. uh shy about questioning some of the Assumed wisdom of this astrophysics. Like, I know you have questions about light speed, and if that's where we top out.
Help.
Well One of the things we got into on board the ship was the speed of light is the. Sequenon is the absolute measurement.
So, how far that star is, how long does it take the speed of light to get there, or get from there to here? And I say to him, Every scientific fact I'll say every, probably not every, but many, most scientific facts, as time goes on and more exploration is made, those scientific facts are discarded because there's new knowledge. And I say to him, the absolute speed of light, I'll bet you will be found shortly, long time from now. It's not to be, absolutely. He says, no, speed of light is the speed of light.
And I said, no, Neil, science is put.
Well, that's the argument. We had one of those arguments, and a guy comes up to me after the show, and he says, I'm whatever this knowledgeable guy from some place. He says, There is a question. as to the speed of light. I don't want to bring that up to Neil.
It'll make him feel badly. It must have been very validated for years. But that's the other thing about it. Everything is in question. Everything's in question.
Nothing is absolute. Nothing. Your life, your your gravity, your shoes. Nothing is absolute. And nothing is real.
And when you apply quantum to our brains and thinking, then you get something that is so Because we don't know what our brains are doing. We don't know how we're thinking, how we think, how do we re remember?
So they're measuring, they got little things in the electrical pillar. Uh We don't know anything. There was an experiment. And I read this, that's why I'm thinking. I'll bring it out tonight, but I'm not absolutely sure.
So they asked. The people that were Examining. Flex your hand.
Now tell your brain to flex the hand. Layer it, flex the hand. Flex the hand. When you're ready, flex the hand. And they were measuring the brain, and just prior to him making the decision to flex his hand, the brain lit up.
Meaning he had made the decision before the hand flexed.
something preceded His command to flex his hand. It suggests that we know what we're going to do before we do In quantum thinking, Nothing is exact. We don't know anything. And the whirlpool of lack of knowledge, you stare into the whirlpool and you don't know anything. It's dizzying.
Do you find that inspiring or depressing? Both. I'm depressed that I'm going to die without knowing the speed of light will be questioned. And Neil deGrasse Tyson was saying, you remember Shatner, that actor? He said, and I thought, I mean, he was right.
I wish he were here, I could tell him. Ah!
Well, you don't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.
Well, we don't know that. I may not be able to get off this chair. Five. You had the experience of actually going into space. I did.
And I was. Should I say, I did? Oh, yeah, that's right, I did. I was very inspired by what you said when you came down because it seemed that it truly impacted you emotionally. Intellectually?
Listen, I've been an ecologist for a long time. For a long time. Rachel Carson's book, The Silent Spring, was, and so I've been preaching what I've just said for 60 years. I go, my God, man. And when I was up there and I saw the vulnerability of Earth.
I'm a pilot as well, and I know that after 12,500 feet, you need oxygen. Finnish paper of air. around the planet. The earth's got a handful of A fertile earth. on its surface.
Everything else is granite and volcanic rock and all. We live on the edge, even if we're perfect. And we're screwing it up. We've screwed it up. Can we get back in time?
And from there, I saw the vulnerability. I saw how tiny, a speck of dust, we're less than a speck of dust and the the universe and how vulnerable our planet is. And the planet in you are so beautiful. You asking questions, so we're on the air and we're broadcasting people. I mean, imagine what we're doing right now.
Just to be aware of that magic, just to know how magical the earth is and how intertwined it is, how sad. It is that it's in decline. It just makes me weep. Do you ever find yourself genuinely frustrated at your friend Neil deGrasse Tyson because of? A disagreement about the university?
Neil deGrasse Tyson is a teacher and he's through and through a teacher.
So he tends to teach and be, you know, absolutely sure pedantic about it. I love him as briefly as I know him. He's a marvelously generous, funny, laughter, loving, kind man. who is a bit of a patent because he is. Ha ha ha.
So I have to find myself saying to this wondrous man: wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, Neil. No, no, Neil, stop, stop. Let me figure it out. And that works. He goes, oh, excuse me.
I guess other people have done that. His wife said, Neil, stop. I know how to cook. But you're also such a smart person, and you've spent a lifetime Dedicating yourself to the future. Yeah, but I feel I feel inferior in every respect.
to his Is intellect.
Well, I'm wondering what that's like for you because, in a lot of rooms, you're probably one of the smarter people, and now you're in a room with a guy who very few of us could compare ourselves to. It's a privilege. and a point of exaltation. to be able to argue with them. Are you familiar with the term bromance?
I am. And there is a bromads. I love him. He's... He said, and it's interesting, he was an athlete, he was a wrestler.
the complete antithesis of the intellect.
So and he wants to be he loves being an actor.
So he's had these bit parts on little things that you think, why would he want to do that? Because he's like, you know, he's like a showman, too.
So here he is, this Big burly Guy who was a wrestler, I got you, and now I'm gonna conquer you. He's got all that. And then he's got this, and he's got the joy of life. And he's a heck of a guy, a heck of a guy.
So, bromance, I'm very, if we have a bromance, I'd be very privileged. I'm Jane Pauley. Thank you for listening. And for more of our extended interviews, follow and listen to Sunday Morning on the free Odyssey app. or wherever you get your podcasts.
Now, streaming on Paramount Plus, it's the epic return of Mayor of Kingstown. Warden, you know who I am. Starring Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner. Has sway in these worlds. Emmy Award winner Edie Falco.
You're an ex-con who ran this place for years. And now?
Now you can't do that. And BAFTA award winner Lenny James. You're about to have a plague of outsiders descend on your tomb. Let me tell you this. It's kind of the consequences.
Mayor of Kingstown, new season now streaming on Paramount Plus. This November, action is free on Pluto TV. Go on the run with Jack Reacher. Every suspect was a train killer. Then buckle up for drive.
World War Z. Every human being is safe. One less fight. And Charlie's Angels. Damn, I hate to fly.
Launch into sci-fi adventure with the fifth element and laugh through the mayhem in Tropic Thunder. What is going on here? All the thrills, all for free. Pluto TV. Stream now.
Hey, never.
