Neil & Charles Exchange Advice They Got Growing Up

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In this engaging StarTalk conversation, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Charles Lou discuss the varied and often conflicting advice they received throughout their educational and professional journeys. Reflecting on societal expectations and personal ambitions, they share insights into how formative experiences and advice shaped their paths in science. Their stories highlight the importance of understanding one's true self, societal biases, and the support from friends and mentors in successfully navigating one's career and life choices.

Highlights

Neil and Charles discuss advice from their mentors and how it shaped them. ✨
Both faced societal expectations based on race and interests but chose their unique paths. 🎭
Neil shares his perspective on using societal biases as fuel for personal excellence. 🔥
Charles talks about embracing his multifaceted interests despite being advised to focus. 🎵
The conversation emphasizes the power of being true to oneself in a world full of expectations. 🌎

Key Takeaways

Be true to yourself, even if society tries to fit you into a mold. 🌟
Embrace your diverse interests—don't feel pressured to focus on just one thing. 🎨
Let naysayers fuel your drive to succeed and prove them wrong. 🚀
Societal biases exist, but they can be overcome with determination and support. 💪
Success often involves ignoring those who underestimate your potential. 🙉

Overview

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Charles Lou take listeners on a journey through their past, sharing the nuggets of wisdom—and lack thereof—that were given to them as they found their footing in the scientific community. The dialogue is rich with perspectives on how they navigated societal expectations related to race, ambition, and the breadth of their personal interests.

Charles delves into how being advised to focus on one thing didn’t align with his passion for embracing a wide array of interests. His path teaches us that sometimes, the best advice is to go against the grain and embrace every facet of who you are.

Neil shares anecdotes about overcoming biases and societal pressures by leveraging them to excel beyond expectations. Through humor and insightful reflection, they convey that staying true to oneself, even when the world insists otherwise, is crucial for personal satisfaction and success.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Greetings The chapter begins with a warm welcome and expression of happiness as Charles returns. The participants express a keen interest in comparing notes on the advice they've received from mentors or other sources throughout their lives, emphasizing the importance of shared wisdom. The conversation is light-hearted, with a humorous reference to an elixir, symbolizing valuable advice.
00:30 - 01:30: Advice and Childhood Backgrounds The chapter titled 'Advice and Childhood Backgrounds' opens with a casual conversation between the speakers, admiring handcrafted mugs made by a fan of 'Star Talk' named Joel Jericho, who runs Jericho pottery. This moment of appreciation for the craftsmanship leads into a discussion about their personal lives and the realization that they likely received different advice growing up, given their different backgrounds. This segues into exploring how their diverse childhood experiences have shaped their perspectives.
01:30 - 03:00: Early Influences and Interests The chapter titled 'Early Influences and Interests' discusses the time period when the Hubble Space Telescope was on the brink of launch, symbolizing a new era in space astronomy. The speaker reflects on how people began to think differently compared to previous generations due to these advancements. The narrative also includes a personal background element, mentioning that the speaker grew up in Ithaca, New York, where Cornell University is located, indicating a potential influence on their early interests.
03:00 - 04:30: Challenges and Misguided Advice The chapter discusses the influence of significant events and figures on the author's childhood. The mention of the Viking lands and Carl Sagan highlights a strong connection to space exploration and scientific curiosity during that era. The author reflects on growing up in a university town, contrasting it with the unique culture of the Bronx, emphasizing the different educational environments he experienced.
04:30 - 06:00: Personal Journey and Self-Discovery The chapter 'Personal Journey and Self-Discovery' highlights an individual's diverse interests ranging from humanities, arts, music, and science. Despite not having a clear early inclination towards studying the universe, the individual's journey is characterized by a love for a wide array of disciplines, leading to a broad exploration of various fields. This breadth of interest reflects a personal journey of self-discovery, embracing both creativity and scientific inquiry.
06:00 - 09:00: Overcoming Societal Expectations This chapter addresses the challenges and pressures of societal expectations, particularly in the context of a college student's experience in a Glee Club. The narrator shares their experience performing worldwide, participating in smaller groups, and engaging in various singing styles like a cappella and masterworks. They reflect on the early advice they received to concentrate on one thing, dismissing it as unhelpful. The underlying theme is the struggle between following one's diverse passions versus conforming to the societal dictate to focus solely on one pursuit.
09:00 - 12:00: Professional Achievements and Reflections In this chapter, the speaker reflects on receiving advice that, at the time, seemed valuable despite feeling intuitively that it might be incorrect. The advice was to focus rather than being spread out. Initially, the speaker tried to apply this advice, leading to attempts to concentrate on one thing at a time. However, the speaker's natural curiosity led them to explore multiple interests, which resulted in chaos. The lesson learned was contrary to the original advice: embracing multiple interests can be more beneficial than forcing oneself to focus on just one area.
12:00 - 14:00: Final Thoughts and Conclusion The chapter focuses on the lasting impact of advice received throughout one's life, whether positive or negative. It emphasizes personal growth through embracing one's unique interests and the integration of diverse experiences into one's identity. This understanding has developed over decades, suggesting a journey of self-discovery and acceptance.

Neil & Charles Exchange Advice They Got Growing Up Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 Charles, welcome back. I am so happy to be here. I want to compare notes. Yeah. of advice we've received from mentors or otherwise throughout our lives. Wow. It's about time. [Music] Let me offer you some elixir. Oh, that was that's advice worth having. Elixir.
00:30 - 01:00 Beautiful mugs, by the way. There you go. Yeah. In fact, these are handcrafted. Wow. By a big fan of Star Talk. Oh, wonderful. Joel Jericho. Jericho pottery. I bet you whatever is in here, it'll taste much better because it's coming out of this. So, what's happened in your life? I'm I'm I'm quite sure we didn't receive similar I'm sure we received different advice because we're from different
01:00 - 01:30 generations. Uh not like entire generations but from a different time. When I was coming into the field, the Hubble Space Telescope was about to be launched, right? Things were gearing toward a new era, a true era of space astronomy. And so people were thinking in different ways than they were say um before back in my day. So where'd you grow up? I grew up in Ithaca, New York. Ithaca. Okay. Yes. Uh where the Cornell University kind of
01:30 - 02:00 influence was significant at that time. There was a lot of landing when I was a child. Viking landed. Viking space that went to Mars and things like that. Of course Carl Sean was a big player in that at that time. Exponent. Okay. So that's your environment. Yeah, that was my childhood in. So, it's a university town. That's right. It's has a university culture. That's right. Okay. So, I grew up in the Bronx. Yes. A different kind of Not that the Bronx doesn't have universities, but I No one would say the Bronx has a university culture, but I did attend the Bronx High
02:00 - 02:30 School of Science. So, tell me some early advice people might have given you. When did you know you wanted to do the study the universe? I didn't. I always loved everything. All right. I loved everything from humanities to the arts to performance to music and you know all these in between musical theater and even science. I loved all that stuff. Okay. And so in
02:30 - 03:00 college you sang for your I did for the the Glee Club. Okay. Uhhuh. And we traveled the world and we performed and we had little groups and we sang ac cappella as well as master works. Were you in between? I was a bass. It's all about that base. So, I've always had everything. And so, the first piece of advice I got from people is you got to focus on something. Mhm. Put your energies on the thing that matters. That was crappy advice. And you
03:00 - 03:30 know what? Wait, did you know it at the time? At the time, I sensed it was crappy advice, but I couldn't articulate it. And I was like, "Oh, yeah, you're right. I'm I'm messed up. I'm I'm too spread out. I I better focus on something. And then I try and then that was really interesting. And so then I tried something else and that was really interesting and then everything got all messed up. Right? So the lesson that I got from that advice was quite the opposite of the advice that was given.
03:30 - 04:00 So, this is why I would say that what we're talking about right now is not the best advice I ever got, but the advice I got that shaped No, what we're after here is things people said that shaped who you became, whether or not it's positive or negative advice. It's taken me decades to understand that this is just the way I am. If I am a person who likes many different things, I should embrace that. If my mind, my brain, my soul, my consciousness is based on bringing everything I see together into
04:00 - 04:30 a beautiful chaotic hole, that's how I should live my life. Society doesn't always allow that to happen, right? And that's a challenge that I faced all throughout the rest of my learning. It wasn't until high school that I decided I actually want to do science at all. It wasn't until late in college I decided I wanted to do astronomy. All through that time, even when I So, so what did you major in? Uh, astronomy and astrophysics and physics, while I was singing, while I was performing, but you did figure out
04:30 - 05:00 my college that that would be your major. That was what the major wound up Well, I couldn't decide. I actually wound up, you know, putting a bunch of names after my degree. So even in graduate school um I very much was at risk of not succeeding in academia because I could not fit easily into a well-focused mold. My advisers, a mold shaped by others who pass judgment on your arc of Yes. And not necessarily on
05:00 - 05:30 me. These are well-meaning, talented, successful people in the field. They were seeing how I was interacting with the field and making an assessment that in order for me to be successful, I got to do this instead of that. Right? And so I got that kind of information to me a lot. Uh one of the things was indeed, you know, if I were to write a letter of reference for you for a post-doal position or whatever, I would say this is someone speaking of you. That's right. He this person was well-meaningly
05:30 - 06:00 giving me advice. I had probably actually asked uh this person, you know, for what do you think? And he would say, if I were to write a letter of reference for you for a job application, I would say this guy has loads of talent, but maybe not quite enough focus to do a particular thing really well that you need to as you move forward in society. And this was a very meaningful piece of information for me. And so for decades, I continued to try to focus. And it turns out that I was able very fortunately to focus just enough on
06:00 - 06:30 certain things to make people feel like, okay, you can fit into this whether you are a square or a round peg. My career, my life, were you square or were you round? I was iicasahedral. Okay. How many sides does an iicasahedron? 20. Yes. Yes. Yes. DND percentile dash. You know, you roll d20. No. No. Sorry. You didn't play D and D. I had friends in high school. We all should remember and this is the lesson that I got from these pieces of advice,
06:30 - 07:00 right? We have to see how the world will receive us. But then we have to know who we are inside to work into that world as true selves as opposed to squeezing ourselves into those positions that will make us suffer in our lives. This is a really really valuable insight. What that's missing is the resolve and the drive to maintain a self-identity in the
07:00 - 07:30 middle of the forces that would shape you to fit their hole. Resolution and drive are not what I would attribute to myself for that. What I would attribute is luck, support of friends and family, adviserss, even those who saw those weaknesses in me, they still supported me who I was. And then the self-confidence to try was produced or was fostered by an environment of people
07:30 - 08:00 who supported me. I cannot claim any special ambitional power or other kind of you know human quality. I like that word that makes me, you know, better than anybody else in this succeed. It was just how it turned out and I was very fortunate that way. You also have an extraordinary memory. Oh, it's uncommon. Okay. Just in case. Okay. You didn't know that about yourself. Uh, does this resonate? I mean, your advice very important overlaps between what you
08:00 - 08:30 describe and my life. So, in the ven diagram, that overlapping portion is important. Yeah. Oh, for those of you who don't know what a ven diagram, take a look at the visuals. You'll see I wanted to do astrophysics since age 11. Well, I knew the universe was calling me since age nine. So, this this goes deep. It goes deep. So, so in that we vary with that ambition, I was perennially intrigued by how often people would recommend I do something
08:30 - 09:00 else. Oh my goodness. Now, keeping in mind you are Asian. Oh my gosh. And I am black in America. Okay. Expectations. No one is explicitly racist. They're just, "Oh, we see you. You're in the physics club, but don't you really want to do these sports?" Wow. Don't you won't you be really good at that? Wow. I don't want to equate them with the hoses and the dogs. Yeah.
09:00 - 09:30 You know, on on civil rights protest. Fundamentally different. fundamentally different and yet there right I mean these days we call that microaggressions or just biases so it's just it was systemic yes and so at every turn no one was embracing my ambitions I'm so sorry and uh plus I had all these activities outside of school um like as did you I had a very broad interest so in school
09:30 - 10:00 the metric that matter matters to teachers to judge whether you are going to be successful is your grades. It's not what kind of person you are. It's not what kind of resolve you have. It's not what you do outside of school cuz they don't know that. They don't even care. They just care. What did you get on this exam? I was not their A student. I got A's, B's, and C's my whole life. Oh, here's an interesting fact. Okay. I was profiled in The New Yorker a few
10:00 - 10:30 years back. Okay. The good kind of profiling. I said I I was a B student. Now the New Yorker has fact checkers. So once an article gets submitted, they call you up. Yeah. They say I were you really a B student. I said yes. What they didn't tell me was how that was interpreted by the journalist who wrote the article. Oh my. It was interpreted as Neil's a mediocre student. Oh. And I thought to myself, what? So there I am like head of the physics club. I I bought my own telescope from monies I
10:30 - 11:00 earned from walking dogs. I built a dark room in my home to print photos. Yeah. Whoever doesn't know that that's what that was for. There are astrophotographs you took as a kid that are in your books. Yes. And I I was on expeditions. I was an expedition to Stonehenge. Uh which inspired me to think about Manhattan. And so I'm doing all of this and they're saying I'm a mediocre student. So there's there's factchecking and then there's meaning checking. Mhm.
11:00 - 11:30 So just to see how I was received. Mhm. And the bias that derived from what people saw that was persistent in my life. Wow. No teacher Wow. would have said, "See that guy Tyson? He'll go far." Wow. And one day I'm going to publish my report cards. Okay. Uh I have them all back to third grade. Fantastic. Okay. By the way, I was highly social. Okay. Anathema for
11:30 - 12:00 scientist at the time. What is the ideal student in a class is someone who shuts up, gets the work done, gets high grades, sits in the front row, and answers teachers questions. That person will go far. I wasn't that. So there is no teacher. Wow. Who at the time would have said, "Watch him. He'll go far." Wow. And so I have to kind of go far on my own. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so in your case, your personal ambition and commitment was much stronger and much more necessary than my life. You know,
12:00 - 12:30 it was necessary. Absolutely. Yeah. And there I am on the roof of my apartment building with my telescope. Okay. And someone from another high floor of an adjacent building calls the police. Yeah. Because they see me on the rooftop. I don't know if they would have called the police if they saw you on the rooftop. That's right. Maybe still. I don't know. But they called it on me. So, it was clear. Oh, by the way, I did do athletics. Yeah, don't get me wrong. Oh, yes. Okay. I've seen pictures of you.
12:30 - 13:00 I had to ask myself, did I do sports not from any genuine interest from within, but because I was fulfilling the expectations Wow. of others. Wow. where the visible black people then in society were either athletes or entertainers. And that was an important revelation for me. Wow. So I I had to be mostly self-driven and but very
13:00 - 13:30 important and this I think you'll resonate with this. You you need an honest assessment of what your actual abilities are. Yeah. Because if you don't, you'll delusionally think you're greater than you are or less than you are. Yes. Going into graduate school and I had attended conferences and I knew what questions I had in the talks that were given and I heard other questions. I said, "Yeah, I belong here. This is my place. These are my people." Yeah. And I'm feeling it. Yeah. And uh at the time I got my PhD. There were seven at most
13:30 - 14:00 nine black PhDs ever. Wow. in astrophysics out of at the time two or three thousand. You couldn't measure it by percent. You it was just raw numbers. So, not to play the race card here, but I'm just telling you that I I had to overcome that. Wow. So, what I learned from my father who was active in the civil rights movement is uh when people feel this way about you, they just don't know any better. And why don't you use their hatred or their indifference or
14:00 - 14:30 use it as a as fuel to excel so that at the end of the day they have to confront your excellence even if they would have ignored it well past a point where they would have paid attention to others. It means you actually be have to be that much better. Wow. And women face this as well. This is constantly constantly. So this is not a unique issue here. Right. So there are my teachers complaining about my social energy. Wow. Because I'd be passing
14:30 - 15:00 notes in class and and one of them says less social involvement and more academic diligence is important. Exclamation point. But then then then I'm hired here to be director of the planetarium and we're fundraising and I'm positioned at tables where I have to like socialize with potential donors. Absolutely. And I'm thinking to to to your point, you have this portfolio of all the things that are you and in that portfolio was a social element. Yeah. Of
15:00 - 15:30 me and I'm in a job that taps that. I don't have any regrets at all for that. And and I hope I'm I host a podcast that I think requires some socialization. So these are things that the teachers would have suppressed. Yeah. And I hope that you will take comfort from the fact that in the intervening years since you and I were in school, there has been a much greater awareness amongst educators. I see more and more
15:30 - 16:00 students benefiting from teachers who recognize that it's not just the letter grade or the number between zero and four that is your grade point average that marks your potential that figures out where you're going to go that defines you as a learner or as an individual in life. on my verbal SATs. Yes, they were kind of they were average for collegebound people, but no one would say, "Hey, watch him. He's look at
16:00 - 16:30 that verbal score. Watch what he'll No, none of that." Okay. So, like several years into being director here, I'd already started my column for Natural History magazine. All right. Somewhere in there, like three years in, I got a a letter in the mail from the educational testing service. They wanted to use your stuff. No, wait. So, these are the purveyors of the SAT and I'm reading it just to show what kind of a grip they have on it. It was like Did they resend my scores? Like, what just kind of grip
16:30 - 17:00 they had? Then I said, "No, they must know something." Because it addressed Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. So, I opened it up and said, "Uh, dear Dr. Tyson, we recently uh read one of your essays uh in and we were impressed and we want to use it in the verbal part of the SATs and it was like you you're welcome. So people trying to get me to not do
17:00 - 17:30 things that were fundamentally part of who I was which resonates with your story. You have to at some point be who you are and make that work. Yeah, occasionally you have to trim it so it fits in a in a in a place. But if on fitting in the place, people see that you're bigger than that trim profile, then they might value everything you can be for filling out that volume. for people who are listening to this conversation between us trying to
17:30 - 18:00 glean what advice we might give to them as they pursue their careers or their interests. Might it be something along the lines of be who you are, use your friends and your knowledge to know who you are and then just forget what anybody else tells you who you are. Is that is that it? All I know is that every successful person I've ever met has a list of people who said they would not succeed.
18:00 - 18:30 So that tells you there's got to be a lot of ignoring going on of people's assessments of your promise and performance. Okay. In this world, I live with that. Yeah. Works for me. Yeah. Be be yourself. All right. We got to end it there. Wow. These are to being yourself. To being oneself on Earth and in the universe. Star Talk Conversations with Charles Lou. Keep looking up.
18:30 - 19:00 [Music]