This week on the Startalk podcast, America’s best-loved astronomer talks with my favorite whistleblower (MP3).
The two cover a wide range of subjects, including SETI (!).
In this week’s episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson chats with whistleblower Edward Snowden via robotic telepresence from Moscow. The two card-carrying members of the geek community discuss Isaac Newton, the difference between education and learning, and even how knowledge is created. They also dive into the Periodic Table and chemistry, before moving on to the more expected subjects of data compression, encryption and privacy. You’ll learn about the relationship between private contractors, the CIA, and the NSA, for whom Edward began working at only 16 years old. Edward explains why metadata tells the government much more about individuals than they claim, and why there’s a distinction between the voluntary disclosure of information and the involuntary subversion of individual intent. Part 1 ends with a conversation about Ben Franklin, the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the CIA’s oath of service, and government Standard Form 312, which is the agreement Snowden violated.
A Conversation with Edward Snowden (Part 1)