0:01

Welcome back to another episode of Big

0:03

Money Energy, where we talked

0:05

to super successful and self made people

0:07

to find out exactly how they

0:09

did it, how they went from nothing to

0:12

something. Today, I'm joined by astrophysicist,

0:16

author, director of the Hayden Planetarium,

0:19

and all around science megastar

0:22

Neil Degrass Tyson. This episode

0:24

is a little different than what we usually do

0:26

because there's no one like Neil in

0:28

the entire Milky Way. We discuss

0:31

a lot of things, but we talk about

0:33

the responsibility of using your platform

0:35

to champion causes you care about. We

0:38

go through how to keep your head above water

0:40

when pursuing a passion until it pays

0:42

the bills, and why the hell it's taken

0:44

so long for space tourism to

0:47

become an industry. Hint takes

0:49

a couple of billionaires. Now let's get into

0:51

it. Welcome to another episode.

1:07

I genuinely cannot

1:09

believe who I convinced

1:11

to come on the show today. He is

1:14

easily one of the most recognizable

1:16

personalities in the world

1:18

and by far one of the smartest

1:20

people out there, and will definitely

1:22

be the smartest person whoever comes on

1:24

this podcast. From now through history, you can mark

1:27

those words. He's an astrophysicist,

1:29

a host of bestselling author, and the director

1:31

of the Hayden Planetarium. And he's also, as

1:34

we just found out, a New Yorker. And

1:36

if that wasn't enough, in two thousand he was

1:38

voted the sexiest Astrophysicist

1:40

Alive by People Magazine. And

1:43

I think that is a ranking we should never

1:45

ever forget. So here to discuss how he

1:47

makes it happen and all the insane

1:49

things he's working on. Please welcome Neil

1:52

the grass Tyson. Thank you for the introduction,

1:54

But I need to clarify something in

1:56

in two thousand when I received that designation

1:58

by People magazine. You just have to

2:01

consider the category that I was saying.

2:04

There are categories way more competitive

2:07

than sexiest Astrophysicist. In

2:09

the People magazine issue Sexiest

2:12

Man Alive, first, there's a sexiest Man Alive

2:14

who transcends category that's

2:16

on the cover, and that year it was Brad

2:19

pitt okay got that one. And

2:21

then other categories where there's just no

2:23

contest if you're outside of that category,

2:26

like sexiest action star, sexiest

2:28

news anchor, sexiest professional

2:31

athlete, sex and you don't you don't have to

2:33

apologize for being sexies. See

2:35

what you're doing here. You're trying to clarify.

2:38

I'm a real estate broker. You know. My whole

2:40

life is ranking. I don't clarify

2:44

my sales volume is only x because

2:46

of this. You know, you know, it's just disclosure. I

2:48

just want to make sure people plus that that

2:50

was forty pounds ago. So you're

2:53

New York born and Brad Yeah, yeah, born

2:55

in the Bronx. Did the Bronx? Gotta say

2:57

it right? If you always lived in New York? Did you ever

2:59

leave? You go elsewhere? No? No, I look for college

3:02

and part of graduate school. So

3:05

if you added up those years, I've probably gone

3:07

for ten years. And then I came back to

3:09

finish graduate school at Columbia,

3:12

and and then I left. I

3:15

did post pH d work post

3:17

doc at Princeton, so we moved

3:19

to Princeton for a bit, but then came back.

3:22

It is hard to define exactly what

3:24

you do. Can you tell us all if you were

3:27

to say, hey, this this is what my day looks

3:29

like, this is my career, this is what I do. What

3:31

you would say? What's your answer to that? The challenge?

3:33

There is no day looks like any other day.

3:36

So it's hard to characterize what

3:38

I do. So if I step back and I can say

3:40

what kind of things happened to me in a month

3:43

over a month, so over a month, I will

3:45

write more for whatever it might be my next

3:47

book. I will have conducted

3:50

probably uh ten

3:54

interviews for national media, another

3:58

ten teen interviews

4:01

for just people who are interested in

4:03

what I do. I have a very soft spot

4:05

for fledgling podcasts, people

4:07

who are trying to bring science through their own

4:11

lens. Uh. In fact, I

4:13

recently agreed to do There

4:15

are two kids who are new in high

4:17

school. So one is like a

4:19

ninth grader, I other one was an eighth grader, and

4:22

they have a podcast in high school

4:24

because they love science. So it's their science podcast.

4:27

And so they wrote to me to see if I'd be a guest

4:29

on their podcast, and I said sure, and then

4:31

they just freaked out so that we did the

4:33

podcast. And

4:35

and this was in Canada. Small town in Canada

4:38

was only one high school, and that made like

4:40

local headlines, right, and and

4:42

I'm I was delighted to do that. And

4:45

and I chuckle any time I get invited to be

4:47

on a podcast, and they feel

4:49

compelled to list famous

4:53

guests they've already had, as

4:55

though I would say, oh, you had this famous

4:57

guest, therefore I want to be on your podcast.

5:00

I don't give a rats ass who was on your cup

5:02

podcast before? I really don't care.

5:04

Just is your mission, um, noble?

5:07

Do you want to do the right thing? Is

5:09

it something? And and so? I

5:11

have a soft spot for that. So so anyway,

5:13

so it's another ten or fifteen podcast,

5:16

um. And also

5:19

I oversee programs at the American

5:21

Museum of Natural History that relate to the

5:24

universe. I also read from

5:27

books. I have a collection of very old books

5:29

on science. I

5:32

read them because they tell me how we

5:34

used to think about the universe and

5:36

how what we learned later may

5:39

have pivoted off of some correct

5:42

assessment of the nature of the universe or

5:44

incorrect assessment, and

5:46

I tracked that. I also spend time reading

5:49

books that are completely opposite

5:52

anything I think or believe in, just

5:54

so I can understand how

5:57

people think who are very

5:59

different from myself. You've successfully

6:01

been able to take this passion for

6:04

for knowing more and

6:07

turn it into a very robust,

6:11

diverse career that I

6:13

think it's very hard for a lot of people to do.

6:15

Do you have any advice for anybody who

6:18

is struggling with the idea of

6:21

I. You know, I've got this passion, but it doesn't pay

6:23

my bills, so I've got to go and get a job

6:25

and maybe i can come back to it later. Yeah,

6:27

that's a really important question and an insightful

6:30

question. And I've gone in and out of different

6:32

understandings and explanations for this to

6:35

myself. Let me just share one of them

6:37

with you, and let me buy

6:39

analogy. Mentioned a library,

6:42

all right, a physical library like the old days.

6:45

So you walk into a library, and

6:48

so what is a library? A library

6:51

is at place where

6:54

they don't know in advance what

6:56

book you're going to look for, and

6:59

so one else who comes in five minutes after you

7:01

was gonna look for. So they

7:04

attempt to stalk everything that

7:08

you could possibly look for on

7:11

the expectation that you will

7:14

find what you are looking for.

7:17

All right, Well,

7:20

for library to be successful,

7:23

they need enough books in enough

7:25

fields with enough depth, so

7:29

that I'm picking number nine out of ten people

7:31

find what they're looking for, picking

7:35

a number, but it's got to be the majority.

7:37

Otherwise the library is

7:39

not really serving the

7:41

needs of a reading community.

7:44

Okay, so what are we as human

7:46

beings? As pliable, flexible

7:49

human beings, We often

7:52

don't know what our first

7:55

love will be. So what you can do is turn

7:57

yourself into a kind of a library.

8:00

Anything that interests you, pursue

8:02

it, at least on the side that's

8:04

not that hard. You do that for hobbies. If

8:07

you have a hobby, you do an other side. You have no expectation

8:09

you're gonna be paid for the attention

8:11

you give to your hobby. All right, So

8:16

think of your life as a library, and

8:19

as was my life. Okay, so watch this

8:21

happen. As a child,

8:23

I'm criticized by my teachers for my

8:26

social energy. I still

8:28

have my report cards. One

8:30

of them said, it's succinctly less

8:34

social involvement

8:37

and more academic diligence

8:39

is in order three exclamation

8:42

points. That was in fifth grade. Okay,

8:46

My grades were not high, they would kind of average.

8:49

And in school, the metrics for

8:51

your evaluation as a student art pivot

8:53

strongly on your grades and

8:56

whether you shut up when you're told to shut

8:58

up and pay attention in class. All

9:00

right, So the perfect student is one who does

9:03

not disrupt class, does all their

9:05

homework, assignments on time, and gets high grades,

9:07

and the entire system we have built

9:10

educational system says that's the

9:12

successful student. Meanwhile,

9:15

look at practically every entrepreneur

9:17

there ever was every

9:20

successful person by most measures

9:22

of a free society's metrics of success,

9:26

and ask were they that perfect student? The

9:28

answer is no, no, most

9:31

of them if not a D, and then

9:33

we're not that okay,

9:36

So there's something else going on in successful

9:39

people that are not cued,

9:42

that are not indexed off of your exams

9:45

and your behavior as a school child. So

9:47

what I'm saying is, yeah, there are things that I got good

9:49

at that no one cares about and no one is paying

9:51

any attention at all. But that's the library

9:54

problem. The library will have books that no one

9:56

will ever check out again, but you don't

9:58

know that in advance. So

10:01

so there's no harm in building

10:04

the portfolio of all the things you

10:06

like and are good at. Then

10:11

have that rise up. And I can tell

10:13

you this, Everything I'm doing that is valued

10:16

never appeared in anybody's job

10:18

description that I replied to when

10:22

I became director of the planting We need you to do

10:24

this and run the program. And fine, okay,

10:26

did it say host a series for for

10:29

Cosmos. No to say,

10:31

oh, by the way, the person who has

10:33

this, we want you to host PBS series.

10:36

Until that's not in the job description. No,

10:39

most of what I'm doing is not in the job description. But

10:41

when people see it, they

10:44

they come to value it, and

10:47

then everything I cared about and loved

10:50

becomes the very job description itself.

10:52

It's harder, and it's challenging. And by the

10:54

way, I did not have

10:56

a job where I made more

10:58

than six thousand dollars

11:00

a year until I

11:03

was thirty

11:07

three. Wow. Okay,

11:10

So if you're distracted by money,

11:14

then you can't rely on

11:17

all of your inner passions to be compensated

11:20

earlier in life. So yeah,

11:22

go find a pre existing job with a

11:24

pre existing job description that is a pre existing

11:27

salary listed to it, and tune

11:30

your training to fit that. Then they'll

11:32

hire you. Then you'll have a nice salary coming

11:34

right out of college. I did not were you worried

11:36

about job prospects because

11:39

after my PhD almost

11:41

didn't matter what happened to me in my life. That was my life's

11:43

goal as a child. Everything else would

11:46

just be gravy. Plus it helped that I married

11:48

someone who worked for the financial industry.

11:50

That's

11:53

not what I'm like, I'm looking for the secret. No, no, yeah,

11:56

that helped. It just meant we lived,

11:58

you know, we a nice place I

12:01

could have lived. I mean I was living the way

12:03

a student lived most of those years, right, so

12:06

I could have kept living that way. The trappings

12:09

of having more money, eating a nicer restaurant,

12:11

drink a nicer bottle of wine, this sort of

12:13

thing, um

12:15

and so. But but anyhow, all of this

12:17

sort of a cruise is what I'm

12:19

saying. And I also

12:22

started liking wine early

12:24

on. We had wine regularly at home, mostly

12:27

Gallo and Paul Masson when I was growing up. But

12:30

the fact that wine was something associated with

12:32

meals was a very early thing

12:34

for me. And I

12:36

then took an academic interest in wine and

12:40

uh at at some point

12:42

one of the wine magazines noticed me.

12:45

Okay, Wine Spectator magazine, big magazine

12:47

for the wine industry, and they

12:49

did a profile on me and it says, um,

12:52

uh astrophysicist

12:56

with stars in his eyes sees wine,

12:58

and that they tried there was I'm you know,

13:01

clever title. And

13:03

so you realize that these pockets

13:05

of society that will

13:08

find you if your

13:10

interests have a sufficient depth

13:12

of passion, and then

13:14

it builds the entire profile of

13:16

who you are and what you represent. Now, the

13:19

fact that I'm visible in public, none

13:21

of that was a goal, and I don't care if anybody

13:23

knew anything about me. I

13:25

just kept giving good sound bites to

13:29

the news and then they kept coming back,

13:32

and then people said, oh,

13:35

you're a natural at that. No, they have no idea

13:37

what I did to train for

13:39

those sound bites. I stood in front of a mirror because

13:42

the first time you didn't ask this, but I'm telling you, um,

13:45

it's important. The the first

13:47

time I was on national news

13:50

for a cosmic event was a

13:52

new planet around another star. Was

13:55

the first exo planet was discovered,

13:57

and so um NBC

14:00

was NBC News sent a camera up

14:02

to the Hayden Planetarium. By the way, they didn't

14:04

know about me from Adam. They just knew I

14:06

had title direct director

14:09

of the Hayden Planetarium. So

14:11

so they're interviewing the director of the Hayden

14:13

Planetarium. I give them my best profitsial

14:16

reply alright, because I'm an

14:18

academic, and I say, here's how we found

14:20

it. We my colleagues here's how

14:22

it works. Here's the Doppler shift.

14:24

There's a and and I said, you're

14:26

looking at the response of the host

14:28

star to the gravity of the

14:31

of the planet in orbit around

14:33

it. And that

14:36

evening when they finally cut the piece.

14:38

Basically the only part of that interview that made

14:40

it in was me shifting

14:42

my hips like this. And I thought,

14:44

I said, oh, even

14:46

though they came to me, they don't want my

14:48

profits soil reply. They

14:51

want to reply that will work in their

14:53

format. The

14:55

whole story last three minutes. They want

14:57

sound bites. That was a revelation

15:00

and for me and the and they

15:02

will always tell you, oh no, don't sound by, just give

15:04

us your thing. We'll fix it up later. Then I realized,

15:06

no, if you're gonna use one sentence for

15:08

me or three sentences and they're gonna be cut together,

15:11

I'm gonna hand you those sentences so

15:13

that you don't have to cut it, and then

15:15

arm in control of that content. So I

15:17

went home, looked in the mirror, had my wife

15:19

just say random things

15:22

from the universe to me, black holes, quasars,

15:24

big bang, and with each word I came out

15:27

with a three sentence sound bite, which has

15:29

got to be interesting, tasty,

15:31

informative, and and enticings

15:34

enough to want to tell someone else, and

15:36

you get it all. So test me on that, say

15:38

anything in the universe. Test me black

15:41

hole black Avoid them.

15:46

If one comes near, you go the other direction.

15:49

It's a region of space where the gravity is

15:52

so intense that the speed

15:54

of light is not even sufficient to escape.

15:57

It is a whole in the fabric of ace

16:00

and time, and we're still learning about

16:03

what's going on inside of them. Boom

16:05

about. You're taking that whole

16:08

thing and putting that in just as

16:10

I handed it to you, whereas there was a

16:12

day when that same information would have been

16:14

scattered across

16:18

and they'd have to plug it together.

16:20

So when people say, are you such a natural at

16:23

that? No, I fucking worked at it.

16:25

Please can we understand this?

16:28

Please? All right? Sorry

16:31

dropping f bomb on you. You're too welcome. I

16:33

think it's it's so important to be listening

16:37

to this. The man here is in a in a

16:39

highly pressed shirt and a

16:41

Wall Street tie, and

16:44

I'm I'm in my morning pajamas.

16:46

Just so weird over here. Okay, very

16:48

nice pajamas though I

16:58

didn't even ask you a lot of that. It's

17:00

Uh, it's so important because I think people don't

17:02

don't realize the work. But what I think it's so

17:04

curious about you is you

17:07

knew to do that work

17:10

to build a career as

17:12

a well known astrophysicist

17:15

without anyone having to tell you to do that. No,

17:17

because I didn't build it

17:19

on purpose. It just oh, so I

17:22

didn't finish the thought. So once I started giving

17:24

them sound bites they like, they kept coming

17:26

back for more. Then documentarians noticed

17:28

it, and so then they came to me for an interview, and

17:30

then people who wanted to do TV

17:33

series Nova came to me to host a spinoff

17:36

Nova Science Now. And so I'm

17:38

not seeking any of this out.

17:41

No it and so I

17:43

so why am I doing it. I'm doing it because

17:45

I judged that

17:47

I would be irresponsible if

17:50

I didn't. So there's responsibility,

17:53

Yes, if if if I have a way I

17:55

can communicate science to the public

17:57

that is unique or has

18:00

had flavors to it that people appreciate.

18:04

And if I didn't do it in a

18:06

society and in a culture that

18:08

that depends on science

18:10

literacy just for even its own governance,

18:13

if I didn't do it, I don't

18:16

know that I could feel like I was responsible

18:18

participant in our society.

18:21

What I long for. I fantasize about this, that we get

18:23

enough others doing this, and there's more.

18:25

It's a growing number of science sort

18:27

of educator, sort of pop educator,

18:30

science folk. You get enough of them on the landscape.

18:32

I will just slowly step

18:35

backwards and then

18:37

exit the rear door, just

18:39

slowly, and then when I exit, no one will

18:41

notice because it's so full of

18:44

others fully engaged

18:46

in fun, interesting ways. And then I'll go right

18:48

to the Bahamas and the

18:52

Bahamas totally the Bahamas. And

18:55

because I don't need to do this, I'm

18:57

happy to do it, but I don't seek

18:59

it out. Do you believe in fate? Well,

19:03

so you can look at the statistics of

19:05

it, all right, So there's

19:07

very good reason for the saying fate uh

19:10

favors the well prepared. Okay,

19:13

so uh, if you unpack

19:15

that statistically, it means put

19:17

as many books in your personal library as you

19:19

can so that when an opportunity

19:22

arises, you say I can do that, and

19:24

someone will other else will say, oh, you're the lucky person.

19:26

Was it really luck or did you

19:29

just recognize

19:31

the opportunity because you had the receptors

19:34

to do so. So no, I don't. I don't think

19:36

fate as in it would happen to you no matter what I

19:38

think. It's you've got to be ready for it and

19:41

recognize it when it arrives. If

19:43

you just look at how the numbers work

19:45

out, um. If

19:47

you say that there's no such thing as as

19:50

coincidence, is all meant to be? Um,

19:53

that is the product of a failure

19:56

of the human cognitive system.

19:59

It's it's why statistics as a branch of math,

20:02

it was very late in the coming.

20:05

I mean, calculus was practically fully

20:08

fleshed out and developed long before statistics

20:11

was formulated. And so that's

20:13

evidence that statistics is just not a natural

20:15

way for us to think about our life experience.

20:18

We want to think that we're special, that

20:20

the whole world is aligning for

20:23

us. This is the source of so many

20:25

religions, right if you're if you're in a heartless

20:27

world, but someone in your religion cares about

20:29

you, then you retain your

20:31

sense of personal value, uh,

20:34

in the face of that. And so

20:37

yeah, I don't know if knowing statistics

20:40

helps you or hurt you in that state

20:42

of mind, but I prefer

20:44

to be plugged into an objective reality

20:47

as often as I can. What

20:49

are your thoughts on Elon

20:52

Musk and what he's doing with with SpaceX. It

20:54

should have happened decades ago. We should have had

20:57

space entrepreneurs decades ago. Why do

20:59

you think it's only happening now between

21:01

Blue Origin. Well, it's expensive just because it

21:03

costs. You need rich people to

21:05

think to do it, because there's

21:07

no initial return

21:10

on investment. Really, um

21:12

it's and Elon Musk famously

21:15

said, how to make a small fortune in space

21:17

industry, start with a big

21:19

fortune. I

21:22

think that's Elon Musk, and so

21:25

it's really you need the passion of a rich person

21:27

to try to make it happen. And that way they can

21:30

plow through the years

21:32

of no r O I that

21:35

would have bankrupted anybody else, and they just

21:37

keep pumping in their money until you get

21:39

over that hump where oh, now I

21:41

can send you up in space for just

21:44

a million dollars, And there plenty of

21:46

billionaires out there now that will spend a million dollars

21:48

on a joy ride, and that becomes a

21:51

business model for space tourism.

21:53

But you have to get there first. You have to build the rockets

21:55

that failed first. You have to

21:58

can't just send anyone into thank

22:00

you, thank you. Do you want to go up into

22:02

space as a space tourist. Most

22:04

people's definition of space does not coincide

22:07

with my definition of space. I'm sure.

22:09

So Earth orbit

22:12

is typically what people think of when they think

22:14

of space. But that's

22:17

the distance from New York to Washington,

22:20

d C. But straight up,

22:24

all right, And in fact, in

22:26

lower th orbit, you are closer to Earth's surface

22:28

than San Francisco is from Los Angeles,

22:31

right, So that's that's

22:33

to me, that's not space. That's just a really

22:36

really really high airplane. Yes, thank you

22:40

for a lot. It's the most expensive airplane ticket

22:42

ever, perfectly worded. The differences.

22:45

You'll be waitless and you'll see stars in the daytime,

22:47

that sort of thing, because you're above most

22:49

of the scattering of light and Earth's atmosphere.

22:51

So that's that has an attraction to it.

22:54

But yeah, if you're gonna go to the

22:56

Moon or Mars or beyond, yeah I'll sign up for it.

22:58

But I joke, and I say, Elan, if you're gonna put me

23:00

in your rocket, um let

23:03

it be a rocket. You've already sent your mother on

23:05

and brought her back safely, then I'll go on

23:07

the rocket. So like interstellar like

23:09

that, that would be your idea space exploration

23:11

go that far? What

23:14

what about interstelling? I mean going to other planets?

23:17

Yeah, like if that's not a routine

23:19

thing. These were pioneers um

23:22

trying to find a new place to move. But

23:25

if you have that much technology to fly

23:27

to another planet through black holes and things, it

23:30

seems to me you have enough technology to fix the

23:32

blight on the crops on Earth. That'd

23:35

mean that'd be way cheaper exercise in

23:37

your science and engineering portfolio.

23:39

You think so, But Michael Caine couldn't figure

23:42

it out, so everyone had to

23:44

leave. Everyone

23:46

had to leave. What do you think about everybody

23:48

moving to and setting up life

23:51

on Mars? Do you think it's

23:53

an exciting experiment

23:56

or a kind of a fruitless waste

23:58

of time and money? Yeah? I know, judge how

24:01

people spend money and decide whether it's

24:03

a waste or not. Just not. People

24:06

should spend money however the hell they want if

24:08

they earn it. So that's my first comments. Second

24:10

I can give you, since some factual observation,

24:13

Antarctica is ball

24:15

mirror and whether that

24:18

any place on the surface of Mars. But

24:21

you don't see people lined up to build

24:23

condominiums there and move.

24:27

So the idea that you're

24:29

gonna set up habitats

24:32

on Mars on the

24:34

expectation that people will live there permanently.

24:38

If you needed evidence that that would happen,

24:41

you would need to look to Antarctica to see

24:43

if they're housing um

24:45

tracks that have been set up, and there haven't been. So

24:48

it's a little unrealistic for

24:50

me to think that

24:53

Mars would be a destination for people to

24:56

live. Now, if you

24:58

can create a hab module, they're

25:00

like a domed city where

25:03

you can control the environment and the temperature

25:06

and all the rest of this, so you're not always having to wear a spacesuit.

25:09

That could work, But then

25:11

you're just living on

25:13

Earth on Mars, right,

25:16

I mean, so it's

25:18

not really Mars. You're

25:21

not having to navigate the

25:24

hostile conditions of a different planet. So

25:27

I can imagine that such a place would be like

25:30

Disney World. You would go and visit

25:32

it. It would be a vacation and

25:34

you have rides in g

25:38

You know, if your hundred um,

25:40

you know, two hundred pounds on Earth, you are

25:42

what is it a hundred and that

25:46

so um eighty pounds, you'd

25:48

weigh eighty pounds on Mars. That's kind

25:50

of fun. You have all manner of

25:52

fun sports and amusement

25:55

park rides and things that exploit that fact.

25:57

But then you'd come back to Earth and you'd be glad

25:59

you came back to Earth when that happened.

26:02

So the only meaningful way

26:05

we become a multiplanet species is if we

26:07

figured out how to terraform another

26:10

planet. My favorite word of recent decades. When

26:12

you take a planet that is not like

26:14

Earth, steed them soils

26:16

or the clouds with bacteria

26:19

that create oxygen, this sort of thing, microbes,

26:22

and then create an Earth and then you move there.

26:25

Okay, so I

26:27

don't have a problem with that, but

26:30

I would ask what's your motivation? And

26:33

this is where I part ways with Stephen Hawking.

26:36

And there's even Carl Sagan who

26:38

said we need to become a multiplanet species

26:40

so that if if

26:42

a disaster happens on one planet, the

26:45

species survives. So

26:47

then I asked, for what disaster are you imagining?

26:50

Could be an asteroid strike? Okay, that's one,

26:54

A killer virus, right,

26:56

that's basically the plot of planet

26:58

or the apes um and

27:01

all right, or something we haven't thought of. All

27:03

right, well, how about this. I'm betting

27:06

that the effort, that's

27:09

the cost and time involved

27:12

in terraforming Mars

27:15

and then shipping a billion people there,

27:18

I'm betting that effort is more than

27:20

deflecting an asteroid than

27:23

funding viral research such

27:26

that there will never be a virus that will harm

27:28

us again. I'm kind of betting.

27:31

I would bet that it would take

27:33

less money and less time to accomplish

27:35

that. That's the iron man cutting

27:37

the cable. That's me on the on the

27:39

on the trolley car um

27:42

fixing the brakes, figuring

27:44

out what's wrong in that instant with the brakes

27:46

overcoming it and having the cable car stop.

27:49

It's I don't

27:51

I don't mind living on multiple planets if you think that's just a

27:54

fun thing to do. But and

27:56

then there people say, oh, we're gonna be trashing Earth.

27:58

We have to move to another planet because we're

28:00

polluting Earth or global warming.

28:02

If you terraformed Mars, if

28:04

you turn Mars into Earth, then

28:07

you have the geo engineering ability to

28:09

turn Earth back into Earth. Let's

28:11

get real here, My last question for

28:14

you, and I really really appreciate you taking

28:16

the time to to speak with me today. How

28:18

optimistic about the future are

28:21

you right now? My source of optimism

28:23

comes from the fact that the next

28:25

generation is way

28:28

more woke, almost

28:31

to a fault, but regardless, the

28:33

way more woke and progressive

28:35

minded and

28:38

environmentally concerned than any

28:41

previous generation. So

28:44

for example, okay,

28:47

let's go back to the beat nick piece,

28:49

nick hippie era. What's

28:52

not widely written about is that

28:55

that was a fringe movement among

28:58

highly privileged, young white

29:00

students. Okay,

29:03

highly that's what that was.

29:06

These were kids who didn't really have to work,

29:09

they could take time out and protest

29:12

and and uh

29:14

so, by the way it worked, largely

29:18

we did exit the Vietnam War um,

29:20

and peace as part of a cultural

29:25

urge has remained ever since. And

29:27

I don't think peace as a cultural

29:29

urge predates the sixties.

29:31

Really, Okay, make love not war,

29:33

these kinds of slogan. No

29:36

one really said that. In the Second World War,

29:38

the people might have wanted peace, but not

29:41

they didn't package it that way, all right,

29:43

So whereas now the next generation,

29:46

it's practically a dent

29:48

of them. You just look at the voting trends

29:50

by age in the demographics.

29:53

So and they they understand environment,

29:55

they understand science. They were not the

29:57

ones duped by intern

30:00

aunt rabbit holes that

30:02

older folks. You know, that

30:05

young generation is not the one who believed

30:07

that pizza gate, that they were selling and

30:09

eating babies in the basement. It's

30:11

not that generation. So perhaps

30:13

for the first time in the history of the world, I,

30:16

as an adult, say,

30:19

I can't wait till the next generation takes

30:21

over so they can fix the world. Big

30:24

Money Energy is hosted by me Ryan

30:27

Sirhant. It's produced by Mike Coscarelli

30:30

and Joe Lorresca and executive produced

30:32

by Lindsay Haw. Find more

30:34

podcasts like Big Money Energy

30:36

on the I Heart Radio app or wherever

30:39

you get your podcasts.