Business, Science & Tech
Inspire Curiosity in Your Audience
Lesson time 07:55 min
Stoking curiosity is an essential component of effective communication. Neil demonstrates how to make the strategic delivery of information a powerful tool in your communication arsenal.
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Topics include: Inspire Curiosity in Your Audience
Teaches Scientific Thinking and Communication
Renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson teaches you how to find objective truths and shares his tools for communicating what you discover.
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[MUSIC PLAYING] - The most important thing you can be in life is curious-- curious about things you don't know, curious about things you do know or that you think you know, but that there's more to learn about it, curious about why other people think differently from how you think, curious about how data becomes information, becomes knowledge, knowledge becomes wisdom, curious about all of this. The more you can stoke curiosity, the more you can live a life, reaping the benefits of all that other fellow human beings have worked hard to discover. When I teach, I put a lot of thought into what level of information am I going to share with you in this moment versus a later moment-- more thought than might otherwise be apparent. For example, if you ask me, what's the shape of the earth? I'll say it's a sphere. It's definitely not a cube. It's a sphere. Once we get that far, I can add layers of detail on that basic shape to come closer and closer to what the actual shape of the actual earth really is. But in a first pass, it's a sphere. Do you want to know more? OK. Earth rotates, as we all know. It was rotating when it first formed. When it first formed, there was not yet a solid object. It was molten. And if you're molten, you're sort of squishy. If you're rotating, you can have the tendency to flatten pole to pole. So because of this, earth is not actually a perfect sphere. It's slightly flattened pole to pole-- a little wider at the equator. We have a word for this in mathematics. It's called an oblate spheroid. A spheroid is any sort of shape that is sort of round on all sides in some kind of regular way. So a perfect spheroid is a sphere. One that's slightly flattened is an oblate spheroid. If you squeeze it this way, and its longer pole to pole, you get a prolate spheroid. These are just the terms used in mathematics to describe them. So one is like a hamburger, one would be a dog-- each as extreme examples of those shapes. So are we done with that? Or do you need more detail? OK, let's keep going. Earth is slightly wider below the equator than it is at the equator, somewhere between 4 and 12 miles difference. That's small compared with a diameter of 8,000 miles. But it's still real. So it's actually a pear shaped oblate spheroid. But it makes for an interesting fact. You can ask, what is the highest point above sea level on earth? Of course, that would be the summit of Mount Everest, 28,000 feet or so up. Let's ask a different question. What is the farthest point on Earth's surface from Earth's center? That's a different question. That's not, how many feet above sea level are you? It's, how far away from Earth's center are you? That is not Mt. Everest. Mt. Everest is very far north of the equator. If earth is wider at the equator by several miles, and even wider just below the equator, let's look for some mountains there. Maybe there's a mountain there, when added to the extra oblateness, makes it the farthest d...
About the Instructor
With a hit talk show and bestselling books, Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the most popular figures in modern science. Now the influential astrophysicist teaches you how his mind works and how he connects with audiences. Learn to think like a skeptic, open your own mind through scientific literacy, distill data, and navigate bias to discover objective truths—and deliver your ideas in ways that engage, excite, and inspire.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson
Renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson teaches you how to find objective truths and shares his tools for communicating what you discover.
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