439 - Sam Cooke - Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 - Neil deGrasse Tyson
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EPISODE SUMMARY:
When is it more important to think than to feel? Are we alone in the universe? How will it all end? What happens if you put artificial intelligence in a box? These are the kinds of questions that great minds like Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space Neil deGrasse Tyson ponder every day. For a guy like Neil, the day is wasted if his mind isn't blown at least once. Ever the enthusiastic science communicator, he recently written a book titled Letters from an Astrophysicist, an attempt at answering queries people have about every aspect of our reality, from the existentially complex to the mild and banal. As it happens, one question raised relates to Neil's love of the great crooners of yesteryear; more specifically, Sam Cooke. Thus the stars aligned so that Neil was able to turn his mighty intellect towards an in depth analysis of the soul singer's second live album, Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963, finding some answers and even some more questions about what it all means.
SHOW NOTES:
00:30 – Intro
09:45 – You’re not alone in the universe
14:30 – The Immortal Crooner
16:34 – SONOS ad break
22:00 – Give it up for science!
24:30 – More than just the gift of gab
29:00 – Feel too much, think too little
34:30 – Don’t go back in the cave!
38:45 – The “science” of the soul
46:30 – The inevitability of Terminator
54:30 – The end of the world
56:30 – Facts!
1:02:15 – The question we don’t know to ask
1:03:45– Blow your mind daily
1:06:30 – Outro