Neil deGrasse Tyson is Not Impressed With Your Alien Photos

(soft piano music) - Lemonade. - Thanks for listening to Hussam Minhaj Doesn't Know. Listen to and follow Hussam Minhaj Doesn't Know add free on Amazon Music or just ask Alexa. Alexa, play the podcast, Hussam Minhaj Doesn't Know on Amazon Music. Also with Amazon Music Unlimited, you can now listen to your favorite music, podcasts and audio books, all in the Amazon Music app. Listen to Hussam Minhaj Doesn't Know on Amazon Music. - We went to the moon to explore the moon and looked over our shoulder and we discovered earth for the first time. Oceans, land, clouds, no color-coded countries. In my cynical old age, I'm reflecting back, realizing that the point of that was to tell us who our enemies were and who our friends were, geopolitically. Why else are you gonna take something as beautiful as a planet and color-coded and cut it up and teach that to little children? What's that about? Space, change that. NASA, change that. - I always love talking to Neil deGrasse Tyson because he never gets sucked into the political moment of today. He always brings it back to big ideas. Zoom out, see the big picture, and I think that's beautiful because these days it's easy for our perspective to shrink down to the size of a cell phone, which makes it refreshing. You know what, I'm gonna say it's crucial to talk to someone whose perspective incorporates all of space and time. So I take every chance I get to talk to Neil because my man is constantly dropping bars. - Our worst nightmare is that we meet aliens who are just like us. It's not good enough to be right. You also have to be effective. The lowest form of evidence in the court of science is eyewitness testimony. ♪ Clean up, clean up, everybody down your share ♪ ♪ And I'm clean up, everybody everywhere ♪ - Yeah, of course. - Yeah, yeah. I hung out with chat NDT to talk about UFO's horoscopes and to basically play tangent traffic cop because this convo went everywhere. - Are you ready for this? - Talk to me. - No, take me three minutes. - No, I have to say something else. - Go ahead. - I forgot to mention. - By the way. - Yes. - By the way. - Oh, by the way. - By the way, oh, by the way, so. - So. - Oh, by the way. - Yeah. - In honor of Neil's book, just visiting this planet, he took a few questions from real kids, in character as Merlin and he gave them the hat and post because putting a hat on people in post is very funny. It's a classic bit, just a minute. It's hilarious. ♪ Hurry right away, don't be late, don't be late ♪ ♪ Make your daddy go, have hands on your hands ♪ - Let's get serious. - Let's get serious. - Let's talk about what everyone is talking about on the internet, which is weird health advice or UFO's. (laughing) - Weird health advice given by people we have no medical training. - Of course. - Yes, over to you by Google. Recently, the House Oversight Committee held hearings about unidentified anomalous phenomenon. I'm talking about UAP's, not to be confused with UTI's. What is your assessment of all this UAP stuff? - Do you have a more specific question? - Well, there's floating orbs, there's the floating triangles. What is going on? - I just remember what the U stands for. - What does it stand for? - Identify. - We're done here. You don't know what it is. So you can't not know what it is, and then in the next sentence to clear you know what it is. You should say you don't know what it is. In science, we celebrate the unknown. The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke in his book Letters to a Young Poet. I'm gonna mangle a little bit. I'm not a poem memorizer, so forgive me. But go something like be a piece with all its stirs within your heart. Learn to love the questions themselves. - Wow. As a scientist, we hack our way to the edge of what is known, peer out into the unknown. That's what attracts us. - Are you a Sufi saint? (laughing) - So, you're a whirling dervish. - When we find something that's unknown, it's reason to do more research. It's not reason to arrive at a conclusion that are you are sure is true right after you just said it's unknown. - Yes. - So, that's my first comment. - Okay. - Second. Have you seen images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope? - No, I have. - Highly detailed images of gas clouds, thousands of light years away. Images of galaxies at the beginning of the universe. You can zoom into them. We can do all of this across the universe with our greatest telescopes. And you're really gonna tell me that your best evidence for visiting aliens is a fuzzy tick-tack on monochromatic screen taken in restricted airspace by a military pilot in our own fricking atmosphere. That's your best image. Like, really? Okay, now we have AI making videos. It's gonna be hard to use a video as evidence. So, what we really need, fork up the alien. Until then, we are steeped in wishful thinking. Wishful thinking that what you see and don't know and don't recognize is a visiting alien from outer space. - Well, let's listen to witness testimony. - No, that, that, that, that, that. Can we take a look for it? Let's listen to the hearing. This is, what I'm saying is funded by our $2 dollars. - Two more things. - Okay. - Before you go to this thing. - I'm going to see Span. - Okay. - This is a real thing. I look, I know it looks like it was recorded on VHS, but this is the oldest form of evidence in the court of science is eyewitness testimony. And not only do scientists know this, psychologists know this, but we are somehow trained from TV or wherever else that I need a witness in the courtroom, right? Somehow the witness has all the answers and has the precision of objective truths in their delivery. We know that that's not the case, right? A person isn't lying if they don't know they're lying. Point is, the number of people who have seen UFOs is huge. I don't have a problem with that. Keep reporting it. Go right ahead. - Okay. - I'm waiting for someone to bring forth an alien. Let me say it another way. - Okay. - If we were being visited by aliens from space, when we have six billion smartphones in the world, capable of taking high-resolution photos and videos. - Sure. - And billions of photos are uplifted to the internet every day, millions of hours of video. We have a million people airborne at any given moment with a window looking out into the atmosphere. Okay. And nobody has a high-resolution image of either a flying craft or an alien itself. So I need you to bring the alien into Times Square. - Into Times Square? You want it in Manhattan? - But maybe they're already there. - Neil. - Sorry, not Times Square. We need a place that does not attract crazy people. - Neil. - I'll do you one better. - I'll get you evidence in Midtown. Have you heard of Enigma? The app called Enigma? - No, but one of the first computers was Enigma. It was called Enigma. - Well, this app is called Enigma and it's basically Yelp for UFOs. I want to get your thoughts about UFOs that have been spotted right here in Manhattan. Please bring up bright light, hovering, erratic, above Times Square per your request. - No, I want the alien, not the lights. But go on. - Hang on. - Love Times Square. The window NYC and look at photos afterwards and weird light in multiple photos cannot make out what they were many of the same pet sightings have been reported on this site exclamation point. Unexplained exclamation point. No, this is not a tweet from Donald Trump on Truth Social. This was uploaded and there's been two other witnesses. - Where's the bright light? - This is above Times Square. Computer, enhance. Computer, enhance. Computer, enhance. - I can see the aliens. 'Cause we agreed earlier in our conversation that they're naturally fuzzy. (laughs) - So you're making fun of me. - I don't know what that is. We should get a net and bring it in. - Okay. - Figure out how to do that. That's what a scientist would do. - You're making fun of this upload because it's in 240p. - Computer, please pull up video evidence. Please, this is large silver disc hovering. - Do you have to say that please, twice to the computer? - I try to be nice to both animate and animate objects. - Okay, got it. - Play video, computer. Look at how fast this thing is going. - Yeah, that looks like a reflection internal to the camera. 'Cause every time the camera jiggles, it jiggles. When the camera's stationary, it's not moving. So, you know what I mean? You see that? You see how it's moving with the camera? - Incredibly fast. That's the terrifying part. - But when the camera's not moving, it's not moving. So, that looks like an internal reflection to the lens. - See, there's a lens there? - Oh yeah, I've been to photography my whole life. Like since I was 11. And there's a lot of photographic artifacts. Artifacts as in things that don't belong in the photo, that the lens, the film, back then film, but even CCD chips, they're defects there. So, things that can happen in the camera. And if you don't know that, then you'll try to interpret that as something that's actually in your image. There are surely other cases that I can't explain so trivially as that, but that one is pretty obvious. That's, you move the camera to the thing, you do it again, the camera stationary just sits there. I'm just saying, I need better evidence. - Okay, then let's listen to the House Oversight Committee. Let's take a look. - And you want me to use their eyewitness testimonies, Evan. - You're 12, my team was on standby for a weather and I returned to my barracks on base and at approximately 0130. I saw an approximately 100-foot equal lateral triangle take off from near the NASA hangar on the base. The craft interfered with my telephone, did not have any sound, and the material it was made of appeared fluid or dynamic. I was under this triangular craft for a few minutes, and then it rapidly ascended to commercial jet level in seconds, displaying zero kinetic to disturbance sound or wind displacement. Cool. What do you make of that? It's a mystery. Okay. It's a mystery. By the way, it would be helpful if we had other measurements of that object that could verify that it actually went to aircraft level, that it was actually the size that he says. These are things that typically we will misinterpret. It's very hard to judge the distance to something for which you have no prior understanding of what it is. In airplane, if it's tiny, it's far away, if it's big, it's close up. We know how big airplanes are. So your brain can assess that distance with some reliability. But if he's seeing a big, old triangle, that's weird. That's liquidy. And then liquidy goes up high. Exactly. And it messed with the sound. And he says to aircraft heights. I'm curious how he made that measurement, just as an example. It'd be nice to have more data surrounding that observation so that we don't have to just listen to his testimony. We just look at data rather than listen to people report what they think they saw. Look, I think there's both a scientific analysis here, but there's also a psychological analysis here. But human beings have a deep fascination with aliens. Visa V, how advanced they are, and how friendly they are. You say visa V. Yeah. Okay, that's right. Let's take a look at this on the X and Y axis, because I really broke this down. Oh. Let's throw this down. Okay. So the aliens here can either be very dumb, too smart, too very peaceful to hostile. Everything that we've seen in pop culture is somewhere along this line. No, in movies, other than ET, they're all smart and hostile. So you put a dot up in the upper corner. Precisely. I call that predator. Hostel and smart. Boom. Predator. Predator, as shown in the film series. Correct. But it bleeds. Yeah. So we can kill it. But perhaps the most brilliant line ever uttered in a science fiction film. Because you don't know if you have any effect on it at all. Correct. If it bleeds, we can kill it. We can kill it. Yeah. Versus the Chupacabra, gin, ghosts, and other other worldly things. I forgot all about the truth. That's a South American. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That no one's seen, but everyone believes is there. You know, let me just tell you how I feel about the undead. I do respect them. I acknowledge them. And I stay away. One of the guests that they wanted to have come on the show said they were going to do a tarot card reading. I said, I don't f**k with that. That's spooky. Tarot cards are spooky. Precisely. Precisely. Okay. By the way. Yes. You two call me up and ask me if I wanted to be a tarot card. And I agreed. The multiple tarot cards that refer to cosmic things. We design one with me in it. But the catch was on the other side where YouTube links to content that. I and my podcast have put online. You get in through the tarot card. So you wanted to be the pipeline from the fringe to science. Exactly. Because how am I going to reach you? If you're a tarot card person and don't otherwise have access to science. Right. So somewhere on the line you can find a tarot card with me. Okay. So I'm not totally fearsome of them. But I do know a few sets. And they're of course stored in silk. You know, you have to, you know, the ritual. God. If we were my office, I'd reach for it tonight. Don't please. Please don't. Please don't. Again, it's a, it's a polite. We'll get you on my part. But I get you on my, I'm going on your pocket four times. Twice. Twice. Twice. Hard evidence. Let's do hard evidence, please. So let's go back to smart and hostile. Then we got predator. We have peaceful and smart. Shouldn't there be lines getting plotted here or dots? We'll do that in post. Oh, I got it. So then we have hostile and dumb. And that's small mean hamsters. Then we have peaceful and dumb. And those are just regular hamsters. Where do you think we are if the aliens were to come visit? What do I think the aliens would be? Or what are we to the aliens? Both. Okay. All of our tropes regarding hostile aliens. Yes. Are not based on any actual knowledge. They're instead based on actual knowledge. How we know we would behave in the presence of a civilization with lesser technology than ourselves. So I have no recourse but to declare that all portrayals of hostile aliens are mirrors to ourselves. It really is like AI. These large language models and social media is a reflection of ourselves. Before we know aliens are the most peaceful things ever. But we are violent against other members of our own species. If we have higher technology than they do. The history of exploration and colonization has shown. Either they are exterminated and enslaved. Or somehow reduced to lesser personhood than those who did the conquering. Our worst nightmare is that we meet aliens who are just like us. Wow. That's a whole new way to look at alien movies because the aliens are a reflection of the worst of us. I felt that way about the Walking Dead, which was human beings descending into their worst behaviors in being worse than the zombies themselves. No, wait a minute. Oh, I got you. I mean, the non-Zombies people. Yeah. As you continue to watch the Walking Dead. Yeah, because the people. The people are actually acting worse than the zombies. You're losing civilization. Yeah. Because what is civilization, if not a set of rules and regulations, to prevent us from behaving how we otherwise would without it? So is this whole alien thing just a call for mental health services? Or what is this really about, according to you, a scientist? Historically, when we encountered something that science has yet to explain, people say, "Oh, God is doing it. Yes." "God is there." Recently, I've been asked, "Well, what was around before the Big Bang is?" I don't know. We've got top people working on something had to be there. I don't know. Yes. God had, okay. I get it, all right, and that's a long tradition of people doing so. Yes. But if your understanding of God, and however you perceive him or it to be, is someone who lurks where science has yet to tread, then God to you is an ever shrinking pocket of scientific ignorance. Philosophers call that God of the Gaps. So the modern version of that is alien of the Gaps. Except, I prefer the assinance, so I would say, aliens of our ignorance. Something no quite understand, aliens. How they build the pyramids? Aliens. Where those lines come from in the Naska Plains in Peru? Aliens. It's intellectually lazy to just go to aliens and have that explain what you don't know. It's much harder to ask deeper and more probing questions about how to get further data, further evidence if you want to arrive at that conclusion. This is just me personally. I approach God as the chasm of understanding of what I don't even understand in my humility to all of that and the feeling, and this is just a feeling that I'm connected to all of these things in some way, shape, or form. Was that a question? Is that wrong? No, no, I'm not telling people how to worship. That's not my role in this world. I'm an educator and you want to learn objective truths about the world, go ahead. And if that if to you, so if that's your relationship to a spirit entity, I don't have a problem with that. But if for example, if your relationship to a spirit entity has you say that the universe was made in six days and that Earth is flat, plenty of jobs for you in this world. I just don't want you to run NASA ever. I never tell anybody what they should. I just offer information that you decide. What scares you? What scares me most? Yeah. The level of profound science illiteracy in people who have control over laws and legislation of the land. That scares me the most. Because that is a recipe for the unraveling of an informed democracy. And if that permeates around the world, it could dismantle civilization. And I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that. Because the methods and tools of science are the way. It's the best way we've ever come up with as humans to establish what is objectively true in the world. And while you're establishing what is objectively true, you also end up establishing what is objectively false. If people have different belief systems, that's fine in a country that protects that. But if you have a belief system that I don't have and you rise to power over laws and create a law based on your belief system, that is a recipe for disaster. That is a recipe for the ending of the American system of governance. Your right to worship is protected constitutionally. But the constitution doesn't say you also have a right to coerce other people by making laws forcing them to have your same religion and your same religious rituals. The day that happens would become a theocracy and that is not what the founding fathers ever wanted. And that's why the word God does not appear in our constitution. But appears once in a very minor way when they dated and signed the constitution. The year of our Lord 1789 is a very tiny minor way. It's not in the constitution. Controversial in the day. You know why you don't put God in the constitution? What is that? That means they're all free masons. - It means nobody can make a law about someone's God. It was the most brilliant, it assures constitutionally, that the government cannot establish a religion, because God is not in the constitution at all. God, Jesus, no mention of it at all. Do you wanna know where God appears? - Sure. - Oh, I mean, obviously when you pledged allegiance. I always thought that was funny. You know, I pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. One nation, under God, indivisible. I was like, we're very divisible. That was added in the 1950s, the under God part, the pledge of allegiance. There was, during the Cold War, where we wanted to establish that we are God-fearing nation against these communist atheists over there in the Soviet Union. So that's when we added in God we trust in our currency, in the paper currency. - That was in the '50s. - Yeah, late '56, '57, '58 around there. It's when they added in God we trust in the back of the House of Representatives. It's up on the wall. That's a latter day declaration that we are God-fearing people that does not derive from the Constitution. - Let's talk about your new book. - Please. - You have a brand new book. - It's spankin' brand new. - Spankin' brand new, called just visiting this planet further scientific adventures of Merlin from on mission. - And it's got iridescent foil in the cover so you can move that around, yeah. - And thanks for talking about the book. - Of course. - Now you was Merlin. - That was a pen name I had for a column that I wrote for 15 years. I went on back to 1982. - Going back, going back. - What is the purpose of the Merlin character? - Thank you, thank you. - I mean, wasn't answering scientific questions already nerdy enough? - Yes, but I wanted to have fun. Part of it was selfish. I don't want to just answer questions. I want to have fun answering questions and I want the person reading them to have fun with me. 'Cause the whole book is just Q and A asked by real people, but answered by this fictional character from Andromeda. - So look, I'm gonna ask you questions from the book. You're gonna answer as Merlin, but if you're gonna answer as Merlin, you're gonna need a Merlin hat. So what do you want? We can add this in post. Do you want a top hat? Do you want a fedora? Do you want a sorting hat? Or do you want one of those old school just dumbledore joints? - Sorting hats? Why not a sorting hat? - Sorting hat. - Yeah, let's do it. - Here we go. First question of the book is from Hank Young. Dear Merlin, how come the North Pole is warmer than the South Pole? - Well, give me the book and I'll be Merlin for you. - Jesus, okay. (laughing) Two reasons. As the real Santa knows there is no land at the North Pole. It is just. - I can't read this without my glasses. - Sure. - It's a horn. - By the way, you're gonna still have, by the way, your sorting hat on. - Again, it's gonna be in. - It'll be there in post, yep. There's no land near the North Pole. It's just a spot on a floating ice sheet in the Arctic Ocean. Heat stored in the ocean over the summer months. Slowly re-radioize to the ice and air. During the winter months. Conversely, the South Pole is centrally located in the Antarctic continent, far away from the Antarctic Ocean. Earth is about 3% farther from the sun during the Antarctic winter July than during the Antarctic summer in January. When combined, these two effects provide a mid-winter South Pole temperature of about minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit. - Yikes. - While a typical mid-winter North Pole temperature is a toasty minus 40. So, here's the thing. Merlin, who, by the way, is friends with Santa Claus. We talk about the future of climate change. And if we lose all the polar ice caps, Santa, he's gonna be in a tank shirt. (laughing) - Yeah, totally. Santa's gonna be in Florida. - That's a different Santa than what anyone has drawn. - Look, Merlin, there's a lot of people that know a lot more than me and they have sent in some questions for you. So, these are some of our smartest listeners and viewers sending you, Merlin, some questions. Let's take a look at the pictures. - Bring it in. - Why did a meteor come? How did a meteor come and hit dinosaurs? And it's gonna be another one. - Cool. - Do you hate to give them the bad news? - It's not that the meteor has come to hit us. That's true. But what's happening more than that is Earth is plowing through a debris field that remains ever since the formation of the solar system. So, it's not just the meteor coming to hit us, it's we and the meteor hitting each other. And yes, Earth plows through several hundred tons of meteors a day. Most of them are small, they burn up, and you see them as shooting stars. Big ones will make it through, they'll make a crater. The really biggest ones will render us extinct. We wanna make sure we can deflect these in the future so we don't face the same fate as the dinosaurs. Now, how do we help this kid sleep at night? - He asked the question. He better deal with the answer I give him. You don't wanna need help going to sleep at night. - Well, I do. Let's go to the next question. - So, what happens when you go inside of Black Hole, do you just go like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa? Or like, does anybody come back from Black Hole? Or Black Hole is even real. - So, there's a multi-part one, but let's start with the big idea. Are Black Hole is even real? And then let's get to, do you go whoa, whoa, whoa? - They were theoretical for a long time, hypothetical, and then we found evidence for them in the physical universe. - Yeah. - Even though you can't see them directly, you see their effect on everything around you. Hence, no one is denying the Black Hole that's causing it. - Right. - Big. In the first of the two Merlin books, this is actually the sequel. Someone asked that very question of Merlin, and Merlin was driven to rhyme. On a feet first dive to this cosmic abyss, you will not survive because you will not miss. The title forces of gravity will create quite a calamity when you're stretched head to toe. Are you sure you want to go, to go, to go? - Yeah, yeah. So I actually don't think it's gonna be a whoa, whoa, whoa. It's gonna be more of a-- (screaming) - Yeah, until your head separates from your body. - Correct. - And then your vocal cords won't make any sound at all. (laughing) - Why do turtles breathe through their butts? - Great question, I was wondering the same thing. - I didn't know turtles breathe through their butts. In fact, weeks ago, I was in the Galapagos Islands, and nobody told me that those giant tortoises breathe through their butt. As an astrophysicist, this is outside of my awareness. - I always had a question in anatomy and physiology class. Why does our sex stuff happen near our poop stuff? - Yeah, this is perfect evidence of bad design. - Got it. (laughing) - Yeah, I mean, we have an entertainment complex in the middle of a sewage system. No engineer would design that. - Yeah, yeah. - There are people saying, oh, Earth is the manifestation of intelligence, of an intelligence. It really doesn't look that way, if you get close. - But evolution got us there. So I'm like, why is the fun park close to the outhouse? - Apparently, the outhouse didn't stop people from using the fun park. - Got it. (laughing) - If they were like spikes and things. - Sure, nobody got extinct long ago. - Let's go to the next one. - Hi, I'm Harvey. Why does time go slow and space than on Earth? Bye. - Hey Harvey, I've wondered the same thing. - Cool, it actually goes faster in space than on Earth. - What do you mean? - What part of that sentence was not clear? - No, it was really clear, but it just seemed kind of like. - When you are either moving fast or in the vicinity of a strong source of gravity, time slows down for you as other people see it. So on Earth's surface, time will proceed at a given rate. Where the GPS satellites are orbiting, they're farther away from Earth's surface than we are, obviously. - Right. - They do not feel the slowing down that gravity would bring their clocks. And so GPS keeps faster time than we do. And we need to pre-correct GPS time by Einstein's general theory of relativity before it gives it to your cell phone. Otherwise, the GPS targeting would be often the military and grandma's house would be in the wrong place on your directions and your car. - Copy that. - Hey, are you a fan of music? - Yes, I think so. - Let's take a look at this question. - Okay. - Hi, I'm Roger, and I have a question. What would happen if you played music very, very, very loud in space? Bye. - Hey, Roger, that's a great question. - Great question. As the first alien movie correctly noted, in space, no one can hear you scream. Which means no one would hear the loud music you played because there's no medium to transmit the pressure waves, which we otherwise call sound. And you would just be moving your lips and I wouldn't know what the hell you were saying. You just got to stop scaring the children. - And in the latest series, Alien series on TV, the alien comes to Earth. I did a small voiceover for them 'cause the Alien series, you got to do right by it. - Sure, sure. - And I offered them a line, they never used it. - What was the line? - On Earth, everyone can hear you scream. - Oh, no, I know. - Why do you keep scaring children? - These are innocent children, man. - These are the same children that love T-Rex, and they must know that T-Rex, they'll be hors d'oeuvres to T-Rex if they ever meet one. And they love T-Rex. So I think kids love things that can eat them. That's why they respect and love them. Practically every fairy tale, the end point is someone is gonna eat them. The wolf in a little red riding hood. The three bears, you don't get shot, you get eaten. That's the scary part. - This is crazy, they're very comfortable with-- - Come through with getting eaten by something with big teeth. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And that's why Barney, 'cause you were sesame street, you were a PBS fan, Barney, they didn't give him sharp teeth. Yeah, he has perfectly straight teeth. - Yeah, I felt like Barney was insulting my intelligence. I did not fuck with Barney. No, for real, I was like, you're treating me like a child. - However, might take away from Barney? - Go ahead. ♪ Clean up, clean up, everybody, every share ♪ ♪ Ain't no clean ♪ ♪ Everybody everywhere, yeah. - Yeah, of course. - So, this last question is from my son, who's five years old. Sometimes I'll be driving him home in our Kia Serrento, not trying to brag, but we do have a Kia. And he'll be on the back seat. We'll be looking out the window and he'll see the moon. And he'll go, "Dad, the moon is following us." And I'll look out the window and be like, "Yeah, yeah, the moon is following us." And so my question is, is the moon following us? - That's a question in this book. Merlin answers that question. - That's great. - That brother illustrated this book. - Oh, incredible. - He went to the high school of music and art. And I went to the Bronx High School of Science. And this is our second collaboration. - That's incredible. - And so Merlin answers it. Merlin answers it better than I will right now. It feels like it's following you. But it's not. You go 50 miles an hour. If you continue that for a hundred years, you leave the moon behind, okay? Going 50 miles an hour, the shrubbery along the roadside goes right by you. - Right. - The farther away something is from the side of your car, the slower it appears to pass. The horizon goes even more slowly. Something at basically infinity, like the moon, will go the slowest. - Right. - But it's still moving past you just much more slowly and it has to do with the angle that you are subtending as the word, as you drive past. That's how you can make something look like it's farther away. If you're a designer or you're a special effects person working on a film. So yeah, it is moving, but not very quickly. - Got it. That's why it feels like the moon's being a stalker. - Yes, yes. In fact, I brought a cues off of little quippy things that Merlin says. He drove this road that just leaves earth. He goes off with a little smoke. - Oh great. - He's moving behind it. Oh yeah, it's a kids ask that question all the time. Adults stop asking the question even though they don't have an answer to it. Adults lose their curiosity. It's upset to me. - It's upset. - Yeah. - Ronnie Chang. Ronnie Chang will not watch movies, but he will read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia. - That means he is trusting the interpretations of others rather than his own. If he continues this way, he will become a shell of himself. - I mean, he already has a shell. - To be filled with the thoughts, opinions, views, and attitudes of others. - Wow. - And I never want that to happen. I don't mind machines, replacing the efforts of my body, but never will they replace the efforts of my mind. How could it not a single hair out of place on your head? - So that's a combination of prayer, pomade, coconut oil. - Oh, I see. - Let's talk about everybody's favorite planet, the sun. - Earth, yes, we're going. Someone wants a planet, that's correct, in ancient Greece. - No, no, it's still a planet. - No, no. - We're talking about it. - So a planet Greek is planetess, meaning wanderer. And there were seven wandering lights on the sky against the background stars. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the sun, and the moon. Seven classical planets. - So you're saying the sun is not a planet? - The star. - I don't know. Stars are whimsical, they represent magic, and that something auspicious or good is happening. - Yeah, if you don't know science. Yeah, it could be all of that to you. The sun is a fiery circle thing that is demonic and gives people skin cancer. - Right, so what are you saying? What is the sun? - The sun is also a star. - So the world is. - And I'm going to use some of that pomade when you get a chance to give some. - Pomade? - Yeah. - Sure, we can call it tomato, pomada. (laughing) - The world is undergoing a solar boom. Renewables are spiking, especially in China. Australia has so much solar energy. It is literally giving it away for free. Do you think the sun has enough juice in it to power all the AI data centers that we are going to inevitably using in the future? - Of course. - And are we living through a solar boom? - Of course, most of the solar power just hits the earth and radiates back. But there's not only the sun as a source of power, which you only have access to in the daytime when there are no clouds. Nukes are making a comeback. Safe nukes, portable nukes, portable not backpack portable, but like flatbed truck portable power stations that are completely transforming the life of people who live in a deeply, the rural is not even the right word. For example, in Alaska, something we don't think about - Yes. - A city folk. - Yes. - There are towns in Alaska, my wife was raised in Alaska. So I have an awareness sensitivity to these challenges in the state. There are towns that get deliveries of diesel fuel to run their generators over the winter. If the river freezes, which it almost always does, and the roads are taken out, there's the risk of running out of power through the winter and then they'll freeze to death. So the military is working on these portable uranium power stations, turn it on, goes for 10 years, and you plug everything into it and everything's fine. So it's portable and it's instant power at any time, which the sun cannot provide. So what you need are advances in storage devices, batteries or some other clever means. Here's a clever way. When you lift up a heavy object, that object now has energy, it didn't have when it was on the ground. It's called gravitational potential energy. If you let it go, it'll fall and break your toe. It took energy to break your toe, where that energy come from. The energy it took you to lift it up in the first place. So one future possible design of power plants that have solar power or tidal power, whenever that power is available, they use it to lift heavy blocks. Then the sun sets and now the block will descend with pulleys and levers and however, and it converts back. So you converting solar power to mechanical gravitational power. And then it gets to the bottom, the sun rises and it goes up again. - It's awesome. - Hold on, hold on. - It's incredible. - And it's a hundred percent conversion. There's not this chemical losses you get by converting it into a battery and then getting it back out of the battery. - So do you believe that if we properly harness solar energy? - I believe anything. - Okay. Do you have a hunch? Inkling. A tingling of your spirit. - I love tingles. - That these advancements in solar will actually be able to put a dent and climate change. - Yes, the question is how quickly, how quickly would we adopt these measures? - Yeah. - By the way, if we converted all carbon deposits into atmospheric greenhouse gases, we'll still be here. We're not going to render ourselves extinct, but the map of the world will be completely redrawn. If we lose the ice caps, Antarctica, where I just visited this past December, it's summertime. And Greenland, if they melt back into the oceans, the level of the oceans will rise to the Statue of Liberty's left elbow. Barrying underwater, all the world's major cities. Because on the water's edge, you have access to its transportation, irrigation, commerce. Most of the world's greatest cities are on the water's edge for exactly that reason. They'll all just get flooded. Denver doesn't have to worry about this, okay? But practically every other city does. London, Paris, everybody's got rivers going through it. There it is. - And then Montana will just basically become the new Manhattan. Montana becomes the lone land mass in the world. Yeah, so the entire mountain time zone basically is a pretty high elevation. Point is, I don't know that we can pick up a city and move it inland fast enough. Many people will die. Whole countries will go away in the South Pacific. And it's not that they're going to wait around for the water to get higher, and then they have to leave. You'll get covered by a storm, storm surges. As the temperature moves just this little bit, the tail of your weather extremes goes out even farther. So you'll notice this water problem well before the water level gets to that point because storm surges will take you out. It's what happened here in New York City during Hurricane Sandy. If you drive down the West Side Highway in the 20s, there's the Con Edd station. There's a new wall there. That's now higher than whatever the previous wall was. That's the new normal. That'll be good, certainly for another Hurricane Sandy. But will it be good for a Hurricane Joey? What? I mean, these are ridiculous names. Hurricane Joey, it just sounds so friendly. Oh, by the way, we name hazardous asteroids after gods of destruction and death and pestilence. To be scary. Why not? For example, we have an asteroid up office that's going to make a close approach to Earth. And what do you have close to? And what year? 2029. Ask me how close? How close? It'll dip below our orbiting communication satellites. There'll be the closest-- It'll go below Starlink? No. Starlink is lower than that. It'll be above Starlink. Above Starlink, but below Direct TV. Oh, my. Which goes off your communication satellite. So we'll still have Wi-Fi, but there'll be a goddamn. OK, so it's going to come by. Comment, comment, close. And we don't know if Earth's gravity is going to break it apart. We don't know how structural integrity of this thing is because as you come near strong sources of gravity, there's stress in your physical body. Google Calendar? April 13th in 2029, which, by the way, is a Friday. Okay. So, but it's not gonna hit us, but we're gonna study it. Why didn't you open with this? Because we started with this. I don't want to impress you. You're a happy man. You are a happy person. You are generally happy person. Yeah. I'm here to change that vibe. We started with UFOs and aliens. You should have just started with, hey, April 13th, 2029, just doing all day hold. Friday, April 13th, 2029, just doing all day hold in your Google Calendar. Hey, guess what? A comet may hit Earth. Then we could have gone to the ask. It's why science works because we know it's not gonna hit us. But for a while, we didn't know whether it would hit us. And that doesn't terrify you? NASA just demonstrated the dark mission, the double asteroid redirect test. NASA sent a space probe with this deployable space observing platform, which I think was made by the Italians, the name Luca, I think. Anyhow, it went into slam into this asteroid to try to change its orbital period around, because it's a moonlit around the main asteroid. And it succeeded. Change the orbital period by half an hour. And it would have been counted as a success, had it changed it by 73 seconds. So, NASA is working on its muscle to deflect asteroids, which is what you're gonna need in the future. And by the way, in the year 1900, if you say, "What do you fear most?" People would say, "Oh, population, outstripping food, polio, the list is not on anybody's list today." Or maybe polio's coming back. Yeah, polio's making it. Yeah. That's making it come back. Thank you, RFK. We're gonna come back. So, now we know about asteroids putting us at risk. So, that's something on our list today that was not on our list back then, plus rising sea levels that could take out cities. That was not on anybody's list in 1900. So, when you ask me, "What am I concerned about in the future?" I don't know. In the year 2100, what list are we gonna provide that is undrempt of today, since everything we're concerned about today was undrempt of 100 years ago. I worry about the unknown, unknowns. The socks. I'm not here to depress you. You're a happy man. I like happy people. Okay. Via science and government, these two things work together or sometimes not together. That's why we have the National Academy of Sciences, which was signed into law under President Lincoln in 1863 when he clearly had other things on his plate. Wow. The National Academy of Sciences is back to Lincoln. Yes, it does. Wow. And that's usually, it's the pre-roll right before I watch stuff on PBS. This episode of Arthur is brought to you by a dinner from the National Academy. I'm a fan of Arthur. I'm a fan of Arthur. I'm a fan of Sesame Street. I'm also a fan of Lila in the loop. That's a new show on PBS Kids. PBSKids.org. You know what kind of animal Arthur is? He's an antiter. Hard work. Yeah. So, did you see the original book of Arthur? He's f*cking demented. Mark Brown, I'm a huge fan. Mark Brown would love to meet you. Mark Brown, Beverly Cleary, you guys are. No, no, in the original illustrations. Yo, those early editions. The terror-flying. They are terrifying. Yeah. All the animals are like real animals. Arthur has a full, full, hard, hard note. Yeah. Remember when Sonic, they dropped the trailer and they were like, what the f*ck is going on with Sonic? Well, Sonic fans didn't. They didn't like that. That was the way I felt when I was, I got super into Arthur, Mark Brown, a fan. I had to go back to the original archive. I'm like, let me listen to the first record. Yeah, no. Right? You like Jay-Z? You like the blueprint? Go, go check our reasonable doubt. When I saw those first few Arthur books, they were written either in the early 70s or late 60s. I was like, dude, this dude was dropping acid. These are terror-flying creatures. Yeah. You need empathy for your main character. I don't feel any empathy for that. I was like, let him back in the wild. Yeah, they'reitarian. I pick up from Arthur loses a tooth and we move on from there. Okay. I don't acknowledge the previous stuff. Anyways, let's get back to. Why were we talking about that? Well, because here's. Oh, you said the sponsor. The sponsor. The National Academy of Science. No, no, no. You're thinking of National Science Foundation. Yeah, don't confuse those. That came about after the Second World War. Okay. In response to a document written by the first ever President Science Advisor, oh, that wasn't his title at the time. That's the role he played. Yes. Van Averbush is his name. He wrote a document called Science, the endless frontier. And in it, chapter by chapter, science and its role in our health, science and its role in creating industries and jobs, science as its role in security and developing wealth and your health. Yeah. It was the blueprint for how America did science in the 20th century. And it was informed by the fact that science physics specifically won the war. Okay. The Second World War coming right out of that. Yeah. And so the role of science, not just only bravery, science matters. The National Science Foundation definitely would be pumping money. Shout out to the NSF. Yes. Now, I have to say something else. Go ahead. Because since I've been seeing you on bus stanchions, that's very distracting. Why? Because that's my man. What do you want a bus stanchion for? What, what are you? With a shirts, you know, okay. So I just want you to know. I'm old enough to remember. 30 years ago. Yes. It was, have you, have you bathed yet? Have you, you haven't shaven today? Clearly. Yeah. Yeah. Stubble was like go groom yourself. Right. Right. But now everybody's got it. Yeah. Everybody's got a thing. A little thing. A little thing. Yeah. And so razor companies must be losing money, handle, refist, because nobody is shaving with razors anymore. Well, you'll love this as a fan of sciences. The razor companies win either way. Because what you have with the taper, the fade, how you get lined up. Oh, you need precision instruments. Of course. Yeah. So some of these, I mean, you don't have barbershops here in New York. You know, you got your Russian barbers. You got your Dominican barbers. And then you got your black barbers. I have a Japanese barber. But you talk about how much you love algebra to trigonometry. Oh, man, they are getting perpendicular, which is a natural or a line. So you're talking on a Y equals X square landscaping. Totally, this is landscaping with with hypotenuses and totally, totally. Some people go the full 90 degree. I mean, we talk about some of the dudes. We go to the Bronx. We can go uptown. You got dudes doing full perpendicular. Wow. Yes, it comes straight down right here on the on the temple. Of course, X, Y, access. Yes. Up top here. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now, when I say I want it a little bit more natural, what I'm doing is I just want like I want healthy. It's almost like anybody's been doing geometry on your face. Bingo. Back to where we're at. Go modern practical solar panels. Yes. We're invented in 1954. Why has it taken 70 years for them to take off? I thought they were even older than that. But okay, modern, I mean, high efficiency. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because schools became integrated. Oil comes out of the ground for free. Well, not for free. Once you dig the hole, it comes out for free. Okay. And you can put it in a truck and move it to wherever you want on earth surface and you build roads. But 1954, we were just beginning the interstate system. And so tax money paid for the roads that the automotive company and the oil companies would have you drive on. And so they didn't invest that infrastructure. We did as a country. So if you want to ask what is the total cost of oil, it is our tax money creating a landscape on which you can burn gasoline. We paid for that, that entire infrastructure. So you pull it out of the ground. Yeah. Put it in a truck, send it wherever you want. And now that's why if you were to drive to California from New York, you don't need all the gas you would ever use to get across the country. Everyone had to have their own tanker, right? So you just have, you know, 15 gallons of gas to get you to the next gas station. And you refill on your, well, someone put the gas there in front of you. Space exploration, space, habitation will not become a regular thing until we have filling stations spread around along the solar system. Correct. Because otherwise you got to carry all the fuel you need with you. And if you ever see like the Saturn 5 rocket, the astronauts are up here, any rocket, the astronauts are up here and all the rest is bomb, regulated bomb, okay? Fuel. So you don't need that if you're going to refill later on. Point is, that's why we use oil. It was fast and easy and relatively cheap. Plus back then we didn't have a good way to store solar power. So they're sensible reasons why this was the case. Plus it's not in the oil company's interest to have you not use oil. So their business, the consumers and interests at the time, there wasn't a big movement describing the risks of climate change. We knew what role extra CO2 would play in warming the planet. Right. Those data were available. But it didn't really work its way into people's consciousness as to what would happen if we continue this unabated. Well, we've seen China now invest huge in solar. Meanwhile, America is investing in ballrooms, new ballrooms that we're paying for. What's going on here? Why the disconnect? I don't know why people do anything, but I can describe the consequences of it. Okay. Yeah. If we don't, how will this bite us in the ass? We'll bite the whole world in the ass. Oh, by the way, China is still digging coal. So it's not like they're, they're completely green yet. They may be one of the biggest coal producing countries out there. Right. But they're investments in renewable energy. is the future. So if you have foresight and you're a country and you care about the future of your country, that's the kind of investments one should be making. That's an if statement. I'm not telling you to do anything. If you don't wanna invest in it, we're free country. People establish laws and legislation who you voted for, right? So, you're not telling what you are alluding. One of our spiciest moments from the previous episode. - When we were all in the caves, half of everyone born was dead before the age of 30. - Jesus. - Science matters here, okay? All right? You can run around and eat all the organic you want. - Okay. - You'd be dead by the 30 unless some doctor came in and said, "We can increase your life expectancy "using science." - You're directing this at me as if I'm RFK Jr. I'm not. - You were giving an impassioned speech, so you were alluding to the power of science and how it can change the world. And I agree with you. Now, do you think I thought when Elon Musk gave Donald J. Trump that red Tesla in front of the White House? I thought DJT was gonna go big on solar and see its power. I also had my doubts because I knew that door handle was gonna probably confuse the president. I was like, "He's not gonna figure it out." - Approach that door handle, it's kind of mysterious. - You gotta push. - It's flush with the door. - Yeah, so it's flush with the door, but you gotta know how to, you gotta push far right in. It's a little-- - No, you push it with a thumb. - Yeah, and then it goes-- - Your fingers come in. - That's correct. - Yeah. So I was like, "Trump's not gonna be able to figure that out." - This is a different panel than I've had. Everything's computer. - But how much of a bite or incentive do you think that possibly gave the president, the government, and the nation at large? Do you think Elon helped shape discourse in this way? - I think this is America where capitalist democracy money matters, only and ever does money matter. My father used to tell me that, and I didn't wanna believe it. I didn't understand it. When I was a kid, I said, "Isn't this just the right thing? It doesn't matter if the money doesn't go there." - You mean financial incentives? There has to be a financial incentive for somebody. - He said it won't happen unless somebody can make a buck off of it. And I didn't, that was too mature, a concept for me to grasp. You know, when I was eight, my father was active in the civil rights movement in city governance. He worked under Mayor Lindsay. So he was very much in the 1960s. And I'm just this kid, the scientist, right? - Man, you are cut from special cloth. - I stayed grounded. - That's incredible. - I stayed grounded. - Yeah. - I care about the human condition in ways that I don't know that I would have otherwise if I was just a scientist kid coming from scientists. Not that that's a prerequisite for caring about others, but it's deeply in my DNA, if I may. - This care for, and having this deep empathy for humanity. - Yes, yes, precisely. He had another point though. He said, "It's not good enough to be right. You also have to be effective." You can say the right things and march down the street, but if you're not affecting change, go home. You're just patting yourself on the back, saying, "Oh, look at how noble I am in all of my declarations." If you're not actually in the trenches making change happen, you're not in the game. - Damn, pops is dropping bars. - He was dropping it, dropping them. - And ahead of his time, completely sh*tting on Reddit in the comments section, and just going on. - Hard in the paint. - The 1670s was last I checked. - Is your followers? - We were Reddit. - Is he still alive? - No, we lost him in 2019. - Prayers up to him, do us to him, man. What a giant. - Yeah. - What an amazing human being. - In fact, there's a New York Times obit on him, if you wanna dig it up. - Beautiful. - Yeah, Cyril DeGrasse Tyson. Yeah, it's a picture of him. - Please. - He used a capital D for the DeGrasse. I'm a little lowercase D, in my middle name. So point is, if you can create a financial incentive for something to happen, then the river's just flow in that direction. And then you don't have to convert people's emotional states. - Where money flows change goes? Perhaps. - I love that phrase. Thank you. That encapsulates what I'm trying to say for 15 minutes of money talks and bullshit walks. So you were asking about AI farms. So if you have an AI farm, you can make a law that says generate your own damn power. So they'd have to get the portable nukes or build a wind farm or solar farm or tidal farm, build it near a place where they can get their own power. That's no different from what factories used to do. When they needed, you know, you had saw mills, they would be on the water's edge. They used stream power, which is basically gravity using water to turn their mills before electricity, for example. So that's not a different challenge than business has ever experienced in the past. This is a really interesting pocket that we're in right now because hearing about your father, how that influenced you, the lessons you learned, you being a scientist, there's three buckets that I'm seeing here. You have scientific progress, you have governance, and then you have money. You recently dropped a video explaining, dare I say, a misquote that you had in regards to Elon Musk. But you said he quote, hasn't done anything that NASA hasn't already done. Can you elaborate on that? That way we can get clarification on that and not offend anyone who owns a Cybertruck. When Elon delivered cargo to the space station five years ago, something like that, it was banner headlines. Private enterprise brings cargo to space. It's a new frontier. Yes. You bought cargo to the space station. NASA's been doing that itself for like decades. It's not what Elon has done in space, that is the moving frontier here. It is the cost of access to space that he has pioneered and brought that number down. Opening up the accessibility of space to new and innovative industries. That's his contribution here. He is making access to space cheaper. And no one would have been talking about at the levels they are. Electric cars weren't not for Elon Musk. He made a conversation about electric cars in America a daily thing. So there's that. And does that shift governance? Does that shift culture? And does that shift people or people to governments? If he makes money off of it, it'll shift everything. Got it. You make money, do you realize in 1905, you ever see this photo of Fifth Avenue Easter Sunday? There's like 19 horse-drawn carriages for every one model T. Model T's have just come out. 10 years later, there's 19 Model T's and one horse-drawn carriage. We literally and figuratively built civilization on the backs of horses. And after 10 years, you couldn't give away a horse. Why? Because the car was cheap. He made sure that people on his assembly line could buy the cars that they're making on that assembly line. What a concept, okay? So the cars are inexpensive. You know how they work or there's someone down the street who knows how they work. They don't die on you. Whatever your challenges were with horses, you didn't have it with cars. And it changed like that. Point is, it happened rapidly. Yeah. Because the money equation. The economics of it made it possible. Thank you. Now my question is, how do we get real innovation that helps move society forward and hopefully doesn't hurt us from a government that feels bloated and from a private sector that oftentimes feels like it's hurting us? Vote for scientifically literate people. But what else can I say? We're a democracy. I feel like I'm the opposite of a lobbyist, all right? Lobbyists go to the people you elected and you get them to do what they want. No, I'm an educator. So I turn to the electorate and I say, if you want young earth creationists on the science committee, here are the consequences to that. We will recede in the dominance we have enjoyed and take it for granted since the Second World War in our role in science in the world. And other countries will rise up China, especially among them. And that's the consequence. And then I walk out of the room. Hey, it's Julia Louis-Dreyfus from The Wiser than Meat Podcast, among other things. And I've got a little holiday wisdom for you. Hosting during the holidays means lots of cooking and that means your trash is going to be full of smelly, rotting food yuck. So here's the wisdom, get a mill food recycler. I did. We've had ours for years and it has totally transformed our kitchen. It's unbelievable how much cleaner everything is now. Plus, it's so easy to use. You toss in basically any food you don't eat. Peels, pits, meat, dairy bones. Last year we put in a whole turkey carcass, really. While you sleep, mill automatically dries and grinds all your food waste down to about a fifth of its size. That means at night you can fill it after a big, elaborate dinner and by morning, they'll be room for breakfast. Nothing rots, nothing stinks, no fruit flies. And my favorite part, no more of those gross, drippy, mid-dinner garbage runs. If you want a cleaner, calmer kitchen this holiday season, go to mill.com/wiser for an exclusive offer. That's mill.com/wiser. Happy hosting. How do you feel about humanity being multi-planetary in us trying to get off of Earth? We're not going to be multi-planetary. Why aren't we? There's no reason for it. Well, let me be more precise. Would that be an expensive endeavor, would you agree? Yes. It would be one of the most expensive things we ever did. Would you agree? Yes. If you look at the most expensive things we ever have done in civilization, The only thing that's left is the whole thing. all have only three common drivers for what funded them. - And what are they? - One of them is the, I don't want to die driver, great. That gives you the Manhattan Project. That gives you the Great Wall of China. That gives you all the things that were done defensively or offensively in the history of the world. Next, which doesn't happen much anymore, is praise of royalty or deity. And that's when we get the pyramids. So we get the cathedrals of Europe. It's a very expensive, huge investment, multi-generational investments of time, energy, money, commitment. Nobody explores in the service of kings or God anymore. - I mean, we do have the pyramids and we have the White House Ballroom. (laughs) - No, when I talk about, I'm not talking about just something that looks expensive. I'm talking about something that's a major fraction of the GDP of a nation. That's what I'm talking about, okay? And the wealthier of the nation, the higher is the level where you can spend money on things that have nothing to do with these causes. The James Webb Space Telescope was billions of dollars. But it's below a radar level where above which it'll be analyzed for whether it is in the interest of American security or if there's a chance you can make a buck off of it, okay? So those three drivers, praise of royalty or deity. I don't wanna die and I don't wanna die poor, okay? So now, why would we terraform Mars and ship a billion people there? Give me a reason for doing that. - I mean-- - If it's not one of these three, it's not gonna happen. So make it one of these three. - I mean, have you been to Florida? (laughs) - So we will not be multi-planetary. - You know how you get to Mars? China says they wanna put military bases on Mars. We'll be in Mars in 10 months. One month to design, build and fund the craft, nine months to get there. And NASA, I don't think they have a craft that'll get us to Mars. So then Elon says, I have a rocket that'll get to Mars. And then we take Elon's mark, rocket to Mars. But that's not a business model that involves money other than tax base. - Neil, you've been in this country much longer than I have, but I know this game. If we say al-Qaeda is on Mars, we're going to Mars. - Correct, and that's the, I don't wanna die driver. That's how we'll become a multi-planet species. All the reasons given? Oh, well, suppose something bad happens on Earth, we need to protect the species. Give what bad would happen on Earth. Oh, an asteroid might come. - Yeah, it's 2029, bro. - Hold on. - It's coming. - Hold on. I'm thinking that whatever effort it takes to terraform Mars and ship a billion people there is more than the effort to deflect the asteroid. I'm just thinking, just spitballing here. Oh, there'd be a killer virus though. I'm thinking whatever is the effort to terraform Mars and ship a billion people there is more than, now that we have the genome cracked and we have genomes of more and more species cracked that we can find a perfect antiviral serum. I'm thinking that would be easier than shipping a billion people to Mars. Think of whatever possible disaster you can and investing money to solve that problem is gonna solve it faster and more effectively than shipping a billion people to Mars. If you wanna go to Mars, do it because it's fun. Do it because you wanna explore. Do it because you wanna take a vacation there but to justify it by saying we need to be a two planet species has no actual foundation in actionable decisions. - Okay, let's do the last question in regards to this. I hear this every two weeks. Do we save Earth or do we explore space? - Why is it a choice? Why don't we do both? Next question. - Okay, great. Why is everything a choice? Do you know how much we spend on NASA? With this James Webb and the space station and all the astronauts and the Artemis mission back to the moon, you know what that is? It's four tenths of one penny on your tax dollar. If you held up that dollar and cut four tenths of one percent across its width, that won't even get you into the paint. I could remove that, you wouldn't even know it's missing. And you gotta tell me, stop spending on that because we have these other problems. What the hell are you spending 99.6% of the budget on? - Military. - Take a look at that. No, it's not that high, but it's high. - It's very high. - Look at all the other things we're spending money on. And almost anything you deeply care about, we're spending more on it than we're spending on space. It's just that space expenditures are way more visible. A Hubble photo, James Webb photo, whatever happens there is headlines. I wanted to create a movement and I'm not a movement guy. - Oh, let's do the movement. - Where every federal agency gets funded, how much people think they're getting. (laughing) - This is great. - This is great. - NASA would have like 30% of the budget. - Yeah, people, there's the imaginations of what it's spending versus what it is. - If we have private enterprise, what do we need NASA for? - Oh, because private enterprise cares about the quarterly report and the annual report. And shareholder value and all sheets. Whereas exploration can take the long view on the question you pose and the answer you deliver. And a nation, it is in a nation's longterm interest to always take the long view. And so NASA, you cannot expect private enterprise to explore space the way NASA does because there's no return on that investment in the quarterly report or in the annual report. There are longer term investments. Do you know what are the greatest drivers? Nobody talks about this. One of the greatest drivers for personal electronics was because your parents, how old are you? - I'm 40 years old. - You're 40. - Your grandparents had a radio that was a size of furniture in their living room. - My grandmother didn't have a radio, - Yeah, yeah, no, she didn't have a radio. - And she would let you know. And you know, Nani, I know you're seeing me from above. I'm just gonna let me let me other grass ties to know you didn't have a radio. - Okay, those who had radios of her generation, it was the size of furniture in the room, okay? Now we walk around with it in our pocket. That miniaturization was driven by the fact that to put anything in orbit, cost money by the ounce. And NASA went through great pains to diminish the size of its electronics so that it wouldn't have to burn as much fuel as would otherwise have been unnecessary to put it into orbit. And that push to miniaturize electronics birthed the miniature electronics industry, which we can't imagine life without it. From the Sony Walkman to the portable transistor radios. - You're not even mentioning the Nintendo Switch. - For example. - So there are benefits. And one other benefit, the environmental protection agency. - Of course. - The EPA, my dad worked for the Cal EPA for 35 years. - There you go. - Do you know that NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, know that? Do you remember that TV public service announcement where the Indian was tearing? - Yes. - The crying Indian. - People start pollution, people can stop it. - By the way, he was Italian, but back then you could do that. - Got it. - So he was Italian, yeah, indigenous, got it. - Okay. - Interesting. - Casting, casting issue. Let's get that going. - Yeah, casting, but back then. - Go ahead. - You did that, okay. Who looks Indian on the line today? - Sure, sure. - This guy's just a really tan Sicilian. - Tan Sicilian. Well, let's keep going. - The banning of, let it gas. - Okay. - The banning of DDT, all of that happened. While we were walking on the moon, we went to the moon to explore the moon and looked over our shoulder and we discovered earth for the first time. As an only nature would reveal it to us, oceans, land, clouds, no color-coded countries, which in my cynical old age, I'm reflecting back, realizing that the point of that was to tell us who our enemies were and who our friends were geopolitically. What's that about? Space changed that. NASA changed that. The Apollo missions changed that and that was not in the manifest. Well, what shall we have Apollo do for us? The goal was to beat the godless Russians to the moon. That was the goal because we were scared witless that godless commies would somehow take over the world. It was another part of the I don't wanna die driver, which is why we'd spend $100 billion to do that in today's dollar, $100 billion. - Right. - All right? So, there was a firmware upgrade in our consciousness over those years. We're all of a sudden, Earth became something we would and should all care about, got it holistically. Not just, oh, this company is polluting this river, we gotta clean that up. No, Earth. That's where we got Earth Day. You could have had Earth Day in 1960, 1950, 1980. It happened while we were walking on the moon. And the hippies from the 1960s, they didn't start talking about the environment until after we saw Earth rise over the lunar landscape In 1968, go back and look at the rhetoric. It was all free love and big love not war the environmental movement was later Yes, you want to talk about the value of going into space. Oh my gosh the perspective that it gives And if you're going to say why are we spending money up there when we can't we're spending money down here Go back to caveman days Imagine it They're young ins and they say we want to go explore out the window Yes, but we got to check with our elders, right? So they go to the 30 year olds who are the elders According to them. Yeah, yeah, so we want to go out to and where with the caucus and they say no You cannot leave the cave because we have cave problems that we need to solve first That's what you sound like to me. It's sad to me that governments need violence or fear as a driver or The promise to get rich money does it - that's what we get to get any of it the Columbus voyages that money can drive it If there's enough of an expectation on a return, right? And I will tell you that Queen Isabella and King Fernanette sent Columbus only after Columbus figured out where well what did he find who the friendlies are who the hostels? What are the trade winds doing only then did the Dutch East India trading company rise up and make a buck off of that because to do something first Does not make a business case? The businesses come afterwards Not first and somebody's got to do it first and it's not somebody who's looking at a quarterly So you're an educator. Yes, I count myself among the ranks Okay, so then the only way we're going to get America smart again reading again and caring about science again and to care about space It's to say Hamas is in space ISIS is doing chemistry. Al Qaeda is doing physics and Boko Haram is reading Have you subscribed to lemon out of premium yet? 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