Speaker 1: Guess what will what's that mango? So I know everyone
Speaker 1: loves to make that joke, like it's two thousand eighteen.
Speaker 1: Where's my jet pack? Like everyone was promised a jet pack? Yeah,
Speaker 1: where's my flying car? I'm still curious where exactly. But
Speaker 1: the stuff I want is the stuff we were actually
Speaker 1: reported on. I mean, in the last fifteen years, we've
Speaker 1: talked about things like contact lenses you wear at night
Speaker 1: that would adjust your eyes so that you take them
Speaker 1: out in the mornings and have perfect vision through the day,
Speaker 1: which is cool, right, Or I remember writing about peanut
Speaker 1: butter and jelly slices so you can just slap those
Speaker 1: on bread for faster sandwiches. I mean, I was with you.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure about the peanut butter thing. I feel
Speaker 1: like spreading peanut butter on bread doesn't take that much
Speaker 1: time or effort, I know, but I can't outsource that
Speaker 1: job to my kids. Plus, you know, when I'm rushing
Speaker 1: out in the morning, so I don't want to leave
Speaker 1: like a dirty butter knife in the sink, which I
Speaker 1: realized is I'm saying it is like a very minor gripe.
Speaker 1: But that's the kind of future I want to live
Speaker 1: in I mean, that's my favorite part about a P.
Speaker 1: B and J is actually licking the peanut butter off
Speaker 1: the knife after that. But anyway, I actually looked up
Speaker 1: these newspaper predictions for the future for this episode, and
Speaker 1: there's this article from I think it was nineteen hundred
Speaker 1: in the Boston Globe, and the author makes all these
Speaker 1: predictions about the year two thousand, no pollution, moving sidewalks,
Speaker 1: and for some reason he thinks there will be an
Speaker 1: AM and PM newspaper, which I mean, I guess there
Speaker 1: is if you consider the round the clock reporting on
Speaker 1: the Internet. But the thing I loved about it was
Speaker 1: that he refused to make any predictions about the weather
Speaker 1: because he assumed that, you know, a hundred years from then,
Speaker 1: it would still be impossible to predict. Speaking of genius,
Speaker 1: we've actually got Zach Weener Smith on the program today.
Speaker 1: He's the co author of the book Soon Ish, and
Speaker 1: it's basically the super fun textbook of the future. It's
Speaker 1: almost more a guide to the hurdles will face, plus
Speaker 1: a status check on how things like asteroid mining or
Speaker 1: nuclear powered toasters are coming along. And I'm already doing
Speaker 1: too much talking. Let's get him on the line. M
Speaker 1: Hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 1: Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
Speaker 1: friend man guest Ticketer and sitting behind the soundproof glass
Speaker 1: playing with his doc Brown bobble Head. I didn't know
Speaker 1: Tristan was a Back to the Future fan. Well, apparently
Speaker 1: he only likes the first and the third one, so
Speaker 1: so do not talk to him about Back to the
Speaker 1: Future Part two. He gets really emotional. But but that's
Speaker 1: our pal and producer Tristan McNeil. Now I want to
Speaker 1: jump right into this interview. Today we've got a very
Speaker 1: special guest, the super funny cartoonist and the co author
Speaker 1: of the book soon Ish ten Emerging Technologies that will
Speaker 1: improve and or ruin Everything, Zach Wiener Smith. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius. Than now, Zach, we should mentioned up
Speaker 1: front that this is a book that you wrote with
Speaker 1: your super smart wife, Kelly, who's a professor at RICE.
Speaker 1: Can can you remind us what she what she does
Speaker 1: at Rice? Her research pertains to parasites that manipulate host behavior.
Speaker 1: So if your audience is familiar with any of this,
Speaker 1: they probably heard of toxoplasmosis, which perhaps manipulates a lot
Speaker 1: of human behavior cats right in cat litter. Yes, yeah, precisely,
Speaker 1: lots of us have it. Um. I actually don't know idea,
Speaker 1: I probably do. I group with cats. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: so they're they're never of claims about it, like it
Speaker 1: reduces reaction time, which you can kind of understand if
Speaker 1: if you wanted to have if you were the parasite
Speaker 1: and you were trying to make a mouse get etn
Speaker 1: my cat. Uh, it makes mice less averse to the
Speaker 1: small cat urine. Um. There, there's some there's some studies. Uh,
Speaker 1: Kelly knows this stuff better than I do, but minderstaining
Speaker 1: from talking to her is there's some studies that try
Speaker 1: to correlate the stuff to humans, and they're very tantalizing.
Speaker 1: But obviously you're you're not allowed to like get a
Speaker 1: hundred humans and then put parasites in them and see
Speaker 1: what changes. Meanwhile, Kelly's at work right now doing exactly that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't talk about that. So this book soon is
Speaker 1: is so fun and funny, and especially the nota Benet
Speaker 1: sections which are just so great. But can you tell
Speaker 1: us why you chose to write a book about the
Speaker 1: future and why you concentrated on the ten subject areas
Speaker 1: that you did. Sure. Um, so we were kind of
Speaker 1: just interested in future stuff. And also we we both
Speaker 1: had this thing where we're sort of generally interested in
Speaker 1: space travel and realize we know really nothing about it.
Speaker 1: The tent technologies in particular, we got into sort of
Speaker 1: a process of cutting away. We actually started with a
Speaker 1: list of fifty and some got cut because they turned
Speaker 1: out to just not really exist. We thought maybe it
Speaker 1: was a thing, and it's not a thing. Uh so
Speaker 1: we we have to give an example of that. Like
Speaker 1: we we thought, hey, what is anyone working on like
Speaker 1: perfected economic forecasting or something like that, Like, is there's
Speaker 1: gonna be some future like you know, super computer devices.
Speaker 1: I mean there are things that kind of do related
Speaker 1: suff but no one's trying to sort of forecast like
Speaker 1: the weather gets forecast, right. So Yeah, it was sort
Speaker 1: of willing away to stuff that we thought we could
Speaker 1: do properly in five to ten thousand words and which
Speaker 1: was interesting, and also stuff that we thought maybe people
Speaker 1: hadn't heard about. Um that's not true every chapter, but
Speaker 1: stuff like programmable matter I think most people have not
Speaker 1: heard of, Um, maybe synthetic biology most people have not
Speaker 1: heard of it, and I think probably most of the
Speaker 1: like cheap access to space technology stuff is not the
Speaker 1: exception of a couple of things is probably not on
Speaker 1: people's radar. Yeah, and we we definitely want to ask
Speaker 1: you about a few of those things. I will say
Speaker 1: one of our favorite sections was the note on the
Speaker 1: End for humanity and you know and why you and
Speaker 1: Kelly are are pessimistic about betting on humans if robots
Speaker 1: ever revolt. So can you tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about promobod and guyas specifically? Sure? Problem about we kind
Speaker 1: of just throwing for a cute seas this is this
Speaker 1: Russian robot or maybe maybe sort of set the table.
Speaker 1: Is this Russian robot designed to assist people like to
Speaker 1: assist the elderly. So the idea is basically elder care.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of people who want to do it.
Speaker 1: It's not well paid work. It would be really nice
Speaker 1: if you could have a machine to do a lot
Speaker 1: of the basic tasks of elder care. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: there's this robot a Russian company is working on called
Speaker 1: promo Butt. I think I'm sure I'm pronouncing that wrong,
Speaker 1: but anyway, it uh tried to escape from the facility
Speaker 1: we're working apparently twice and one time it escaped and
Speaker 1: like died in traffic, which I presumably wasn't like a
Speaker 1: choicebody who knows, Um, guy is this robot made by
Speaker 1: Serena Booth who's was doing an undergraduate thesis at Harvard.
Speaker 1: And the basic deal on Guya is it's just a
Speaker 1: dumb remote control robot and she would secretly control it
Speaker 1: so to an onlooker would look like, you know, for
Speaker 1: all you know, it was like a startup autonomous robot
Speaker 1: deal because it's it's Boston after all. And uh, the
Speaker 1: robot would go up to students near their dorm rooms
Speaker 1: or their dorms and say, well, you let me into
Speaker 1: the building, which which is a big no no. It's
Speaker 1: especially big no no and on Harvard because Harvard is
Speaker 1: you know, the world famous, so they're like lots of
Speaker 1: looky loose and weirdos trying to get into buildings. Uh.
Speaker 1: And actually, so to speak fortuitously, around the time of
Speaker 1: the experiment, there apparently been bomb threats. Um and so
Speaker 1: I forget that the numbers are in the book, but
Speaker 1: it's something like twenty percent of students will let people
Speaker 1: in which is, you know, not not a high number.
Speaker 1: I remember it's harvardson so they're supposed to be ultra
Speaker 1: genius is um And and furthermore, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: cause some trouble and you only have to try five times, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, that's not great odds. But but they're the
Speaker 1: really interesting thing that there are a number of permutations
Speaker 1: of this, and there's a different set of experiments by
Speaker 1: another researcher, but the really the one we were really
Speaker 1: interested in was she didn't experiment where all she did
Speaker 1: was load the robot with cookies, like she just got
Speaker 1: a box of cookies to put them on top, and
Speaker 1: the rowbout what compeist didn't say, I'm here delivering cookies,
Speaker 1: will you let me in? And it's shot up to
Speaker 1: the exact numbers in the book, but it's something like
Speaker 1: three quarters of students would let that robot in. Um. So,
Speaker 1: I mean it's sort of a funny experiment, um. But
Speaker 1: but there is a sort of serious side to it,
Speaker 1: which is the way we like to say in talks
Speaker 1: we've given on this is essentially, if you look at
Speaker 1: movies we humans make about what it would take to
Speaker 1: fool us into obeying the robots. The robots always have
Speaker 1: to really put out right, like build an exoskeleton with
Speaker 1: like stem cells or I don't know what, Like the
Speaker 1: terminator looks exactly like a human except for it's got
Speaker 1: a metal endoskeleton and this and that, Like they bulot
Speaker 1: a tea one thousand like this a possible complicated robot
Speaker 1: just to like look kind of human. It just turns
Speaker 1: out we'll we'll like opening a trash can with cookies. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so so it is. It is kind of I
Speaker 1: don't know, I suppose ominous um or I think you
Speaker 1: think about it hard. PUD should cause you to rethink
Speaker 1: your relationship to machines a bit like yeah, and well
Speaker 1: and cookies. It is kind of analogous to something like um.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us have been rethinking our
Speaker 1: relationship with Facebook, right, which is kind of the same deal.
Speaker 1: It's giving us something cool, which is the sort of
Speaker 1: proverbial cookies, and in exchange, it's taking something or I know,
Speaker 1: for example, like I used to second guess my GPS,
Speaker 1: and I discovered literally every time I did that, I
Speaker 1: was wrong. The machine is always right, and so now
Speaker 1: I will obey the GPS, even if it appears to
Speaker 1: be doing something stupid to me, I've completely gotten rid
Speaker 1: of my my like regard for self. As it as
Speaker 1: it pertains to mapping, it is a little ominous. I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't even have deposit sentient machines to be scared.
Speaker 1: It could be just some bad actor. Well, let's let's
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about the positive applications because
Speaker 1: imagine it sticking with robots and programmable matter. I'm really
Speaker 1: fascinated by the benefits in medicine and then also in
Speaker 1: the home that you talked about. Could you explain a
Speaker 1: little bit about to our listeners. So the basic idea
Speaker 1: with programm will matter is something like, you know, the
Speaker 1: neat thing about a computer is a computer is not
Speaker 1: just one machine. It's potentially infinite machines. You computer does
Speaker 1: almost everything for you. That's why your phone can be
Speaker 1: a radio and a clock and well phone to it occasionally. Um.
Speaker 1: And the idea with programmable matter is to be able
Speaker 1: to do that sort of thing but with stuff. So
Speaker 1: it's like if you had a sort of object that
Speaker 1: could be a cup, or it could be a phone,
Speaker 1: or it could be anything else. And the the way
Speaker 1: we like to describe it is it's like having the
Speaker 1: T one thousand, only it's not trying to kill you.
Speaker 1: So obviously that level of stuff that sort of like
Speaker 1: shimmering good that turns into whatever, that's really far off
Speaker 1: if it's even possible. But there are lots of intermediate versions.
Speaker 1: And so one idea is what's called Oregonmy robots. And
Speaker 1: so if you think about it in terms of universality,
Speaker 1: Oregonmy is basically this thing where you take a piece
Speaker 1: of paper and the piece of paper can be almost
Speaker 1: infinite things. It might be literally infinite the math on
Speaker 1: it um, but it's something like infinite. Right. You can
Speaker 1: get many different shapes out of one thing, and many
Speaker 1: of them could be useful. And so one idea is
Speaker 1: you could um do Oregonmy robots that do stuff in
Speaker 1: the body. Right. Um. So, the the the really cool
Speaker 1: version of this that we were interested in was done
Speaker 1: by a woman named Danielle Rouse, or done by her
Speaker 1: lab at M I. T. And the basic idea was
Speaker 1: you have a pilly swallow in the pill. The pills
Speaker 1: made of ice, but in it is this little um
Speaker 1: it's actually piece of sausage casing with some wiring in
Speaker 1: it so that it can fold along preprogrammed axis. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you swallow it, it it melts. Well, it's in your gut.
Speaker 1: And now there's this little machine that you can manipulate
Speaker 1: remotely that can fold the different configurations. Uh and and
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of like future optimal version. It's
Speaker 1: it's completely self powered and could do all sorts of
Speaker 1: cool stuff. In this version, it's it's I think we're
Speaker 1: out controlled by like a magnet you have outside the body.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the reason why would you want this? Why
Speaker 1: would why do you want an orgony robot in your guts? It? Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out in America thirty of us every year
Speaker 1: swallow a watch battery. Which thing gets lodged in our guts?
Speaker 1: And I I hasten to add that's just the people
Speaker 1: who a report and and who'd be didn't pass it naturally.
Speaker 1: So there's like a like a shockinglar high number of
Speaker 1: people swallowing watch batteries. I don't know why. Presumably most
Speaker 1: of them are children, but I we didn't get that
Speaker 1: set um so. Uh So, But to the idea is
Speaker 1: you just have a slow machine that walks in kind
Speaker 1: of grabs the battery and then the whole thing passes
Speaker 1: right out as nature intended. This one's about the size
Speaker 1: of a postage stamp. You can imagine ones that are
Speaker 1: much more mentorized. Um and why that would be exciting
Speaker 1: or something like this. So you know, if you have
Speaker 1: a headache, it's not like your whole body hurts, but
Speaker 1: you take a pill, it lowers the inflammation your whole body. Right, So,
Speaker 1: so aspirin is good whether you have like a banged
Speaker 1: up knee or a headache or what have you. Ideally,
Speaker 1: and be nice if you could get machines to deliver
Speaker 1: the medicine to a specific location. And you know, an
Speaker 1: aspirin it's not a big deal. But if you imagine
Speaker 1: like really toxic like chemo medication, it would be really
Speaker 1: nice if you could dose only the necessary areas. UM.
Speaker 1: So that's a sort of very futuristic application of this
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Um it could be really interesting. I
Speaker 1: think you asked about programmable homes. I I'm trying to
Speaker 1: remember what they think. There are a couple of different
Speaker 1: versions of that we talked about. I think the thing
Speaker 1: I was fascinated moths about was just that because I
Speaker 1: lived in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and the fact
Speaker 1: that you know, your whole room could transform so quickly
Speaker 1: or and French and assembly, un assemble and like that.
Speaker 1: That's all just amazing to me. Yeah, it's funny because
Speaker 1: so pregimal matter we call it that. It actually goes
Speaker 1: under a lot of different names. But but yeah, so
Speaker 1: there's a lot more sort of you know, macro stuff.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. Um, there's there's a group we talked
Speaker 1: about called room bots and rombots. Basically, these cube like
Speaker 1: things about the size of a baseball. Uh, it's sort
Speaker 1: of a cross between a cube and a circle, so
Speaker 1: can sort of roll around and and then it's just
Speaker 1: that and then it has a little sensing ability and
Speaker 1: it can doc with other versions of itself and it's needs.
Speaker 1: Then they can self assemble into like chairs or tables
Speaker 1: or whatever. So if you're really wanted to be you know,
Speaker 1: Swedish about your your room, you could just have a
Speaker 1: pile of these robots in the corner and you could say,
Speaker 1: assemble into like my kitchen set up or whatever whenever
Speaker 1: you need. Of course, they're very slow right now, but
Speaker 1: you can imagine a future right where it doesn't take
Speaker 1: you know, ten hours. I don remember if we put
Speaker 1: this in the book, but actually people worked on systems
Speaker 1: of room buts that mate with each other to produce
Speaker 1: like um terrifying Yeah right, it's like implementing genetic algorithms
Speaker 1: in the real world. Dogs everywhere shivering the promise. It's
Speaker 1: really slow. And again I don't remember mentioned this this
Speaker 1: in the book, but there's one group that actually did
Speaker 1: basically like machine breading via a three D printer. If
Speaker 1: that makes sense that you have two machines the quote
Speaker 1: unquote agree to mate in whatever sense machines do that,
Speaker 1: and then you have a three D printer sort of
Speaker 1: print the outcome. Uh. And what it was funny is,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, the group decided to have the robots
Speaker 1: kind of rubb on each other. But they were like
Speaker 1: completely needlessly. Uh. I don't know. It just gets lonely
Speaker 1: working on these projects. I think these people are kind
Speaker 1: of fulfilling other needs. But the speaking of multiple robots
Speaker 1: of it. What about these robotics swarms and robots that
Speaker 1: work in teams. Can you talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: the applications there? Yeah, robot swarms, So we talked about
Speaker 1: them in two contexts. Is robot swarm is what it
Speaker 1: sounds like. It's a swarm of robots, and you might
Speaker 1: ask yourself, why why would I want that instead of
Speaker 1: one robot or one large robot. So there are a
Speaker 1: couple of contexts where might be valuable. One is suppose
Speaker 1: you UM have some kind of disaster areas, so there's
Speaker 1: like a nuclear accident, or there's just a lot of
Speaker 1: rubbles something where you wouldn't want to send people in.
Speaker 1: UM with a store of robots, you can have a
Speaker 1: lot of small cameras sort of going all over the
Speaker 1: place to explore an area. And also if one breaks,
Speaker 1: it's less of a big deal. Yeah. In addition, UM,
Speaker 1: you can design them. There's some groups that work on this.
Speaker 1: You can design them so they can do stuff with
Speaker 1: each other, so they can their modular So you know,
Speaker 1: there's one group we looked at where they had this
Speaker 1: this clever trick where I suppose you have You can
Speaker 1: imagine a little tiny robot about the size of your
Speaker 1: fist that's rolling around and it comes across a chasm
Speaker 1: it can't cross on its own. It then signals like
Speaker 1: five other of the same robot to dock with it
Speaker 1: to form a sort of train and now it can
Speaker 1: go over or for example, of it has to cross
Speaker 1: like on a narrow passage, you can configure so that
Speaker 1: it has the sort of robot equivalent of holding two
Speaker 1: arms out to the sides. Uh and so it can
Speaker 1: balance the stuff like that. So you can imagine it
Speaker 1: was some fairly simple algorithms that can navigate all sorts
Speaker 1: of terrain more effectively. The other context in which we
Speaker 1: talked about robot sworms is we have trapped on what's
Speaker 1: called robotic construction, which is again what it sounds like,
Speaker 1: it's machines sort of taking over the work of construction
Speaker 1: workers or even extending it. The opposite of a swarm
Speaker 1: would be this this one idea, which is to have
Speaker 1: a sort of giant gantry, like basically a huge three
Speaker 1: D printer that kind of prints out a house, which
Speaker 1: is cool, but like might be limb to say, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to build in New York. That's a little
Speaker 1: tough to do. A robot swarm would be building upward,
Speaker 1: kind of like termites do. Right, So you have like
Speaker 1: a lot of little robots delivering small amounts of material
Speaker 1: um and and sort of coordinating with each other. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so there would be sort of an interesting different
Speaker 1: way to do it. Um like like pretty revolutionary for
Speaker 1: better end worse. Um. But but to me that that
Speaker 1: seems kind of like plausible because the idea that is
Speaker 1: is essentially what might happen is like a semi shows
Speaker 1: up and it's loaded with you know, a thousand or
Speaker 1: whatever little robots, and they come out and they slowly
Speaker 1: assemble your house, kind of like a team of ants.
Speaker 1: Um And again it has the same virtue of if
Speaker 1: one breaks or something screwy, it doesn't matter. So it's
Speaker 1: just like an ant colony. One dies, it's no big deal.
Speaker 1: And they can do this trick of building up structures.
Speaker 1: They're very simple. They're not ready for prime time. They
Speaker 1: can't put in things like plumbing, etcetera. But it's really
Speaker 1: cool to see it done. They can build structures and
Speaker 1: they can even climb up the structures to add more concrete.
Speaker 1: It's a really cool potential future paradigm for construction. Wow,
Speaker 1: I kind of want to see this. There are there
Speaker 1: videos of this. They totally are. If you have a
Speaker 1: good section in the about construction chapter about swarm robotics.
Speaker 1: There are a bunch of different ways it might go down.
Speaker 1: If this is the paradigm we choose that there's there's
Speaker 1: also two reasons that it might not work. You know,
Speaker 1: we talked about a guy named Justin Warfel who was
Speaker 1: sort of a friend of ours now who works he
Speaker 1: studies termites to kind of see how they do it.
Speaker 1: Because the neat thing with termites is no particular termite
Speaker 1: knows what the structure is supposed to. Like the new
Speaker 1: Blueprint system, they have some sort of algorithm they're running
Speaker 1: um or or however you want to say it, um
Speaker 1: and and so it's sort of fascinating that I learned
Speaker 1: a new word. I don't remember if we put it
Speaker 1: in the book, but the word of stigmer g, which
Speaker 1: is embedding information in an environment, which is really interesting
Speaker 1: because you say, how to termites do this? Well, one
Speaker 1: thing they can do is they can leave a chemical
Speaker 1: trail that says something like don't go here or don't
Speaker 1: build here. Um, I don't actually know what. You know,
Speaker 1: literally every termite chemical trail does. But they can leave
Speaker 1: chemical trails. And it's interesting because they don't even know
Speaker 1: I have to know what the trail does, right, They're
Speaker 1: just acting out part of this process of building. It's
Speaker 1: sort of fascinating. Now there's so much more we want
Speaker 1: to ask you about, from the future of poco sticks
Speaker 1: to the important of breathing through both your nostril. But
Speaker 1: before we get to that, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: So I want to switch gears a little bit and
Speaker 1: and talk a little bit about travel to space, because
Speaker 1: you know that this week we watched the SpaceX launch
Speaker 1: and one of the things you talk about in your
Speaker 1: book is why cheap travel to space will be important. Um,
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about why that is
Speaker 1: and what's the real hindrance right now? And also can
Speaker 1: this idea of a giant pogo stick or super gun
Speaker 1: really help us get there? Yeah? Good, Okay, So the
Speaker 1: first question was why does it matter? I actually I
Speaker 1: want to punch a little of the mattering thing. Actually,
Speaker 1: I feel bad because I've had We've been on economics
Speaker 1: podcasts and they'll say, like, so, what's the economic benefit
Speaker 1: of space? And I'm like, I just don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know if there is one. I'm giving you some
Speaker 1: arguments that might work. There are minerals in space, it
Speaker 1: might be valuable. The question you always have to ask
Speaker 1: yourself is would it be cheaper to just dig a
Speaker 1: big hole on Earth, and often it probably isn't more valuable.
Speaker 1: I I really think the value of going to space
Speaker 1: you have to be a bit poetic about it. I
Speaker 1: think Carl Sagan wrote a bit about how it just
Speaker 1: kind of satisfies the fundamental human urge um to to explore.
Speaker 1: And then you know, an economists I talked to a
Speaker 1: pointed out, well, you know, the deal is we don't
Speaker 1: know so that there could be developments were not imagining
Speaker 1: yet um in these other environments. So who knows. But
Speaker 1: I think we we just kind of want to do
Speaker 1: it um so, and the basic deals we can't now,
Speaker 1: mostly because it's expensive. You know, people will say we
Speaker 1: don't find NASA enough. I think there's a good argument there,
Speaker 1: But NASA is funded about half as much as in
Speaker 1: the glory days of Apollo, and a lot of technology
Speaker 1: is a lot cheaper um. So I don't think it
Speaker 1: comes down to funding. It comes down to just the
Speaker 1: the general extreme difficulty and expensive going to space, and
Speaker 1: because until very recently the technology had not developed that much.
Speaker 1: Because I think it's mostly you know, it's mostly governmental technology.
Speaker 1: And I'm not in any way against governmental science research.
Speaker 1: But there wasn't they that drive to get cost down
Speaker 1: that you get with you know, companies like SpaceX that
Speaker 1: have a bottom line. Um. And so I would say
Speaker 1: the best argument in Favorite cheap space flight is basically
Speaker 1: that it's awesome. It would be amazing, it would be wonderful.
Speaker 1: You I. I really think there's no no stronger argument Favorite.
Speaker 1: And there's also sort of let's find out what we'll
Speaker 1: do in space. We don't really know what we're going
Speaker 1: to do up there. Um. If you want to be
Speaker 1: a little more cynical, they're they're incredibly strong military applications. Um.
Speaker 1: Just space. You know, if you go to g geosynchronous
Speaker 1: orbit and you can drop a rock, it's space, just
Speaker 1: like a hunk of metals. Say, it's like dropping nuclear weapon. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's a nuclear weapon. It's actually worse than a
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon because it's very hard to stop. Um, because
Speaker 1: you're just it's just Newton who's throwing the piece of
Speaker 1: metal down at you. It's not you know, a little
Speaker 1: ticklish nuclear warhead. Um that that could be diffused. Uh.
Speaker 1: So they're they're tremendous military applications. They're also their communication
Speaker 1: satellite applications. That's a little less sexy, but it's you know,
Speaker 1: impartant and so so those are some arguments I do think.
Speaker 1: If you if you want to talk about like why
Speaker 1: is it valuable to go to Mars? The only legit
Speaker 1: argument I think is that we want to do it.
Speaker 1: And it's sort of in a way. I mean that seriously,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a glorified art project. It just sort
Speaker 1: of satisfies some desire we have. There are two things
Speaker 1: that really allows you about taking a rocket to space
Speaker 1: and most uses. Um So the first thing that's a
Speaker 1: lousy is in in every company but SpaceX, we throw
Speaker 1: away the rocket. And it's actually pretty close in terms
Speaker 1: of price point. If you imagine you wanted to fly
Speaker 1: from London to Los Angeles, uh, and imagine the only
Speaker 1: way to do that would you get in the plane
Speaker 1: and you fly until your over Los Angeles and then
Speaker 1: you jump out in a parachute and then the plane
Speaker 1: crashes into the ocean. That is essentially what we do
Speaker 1: with rockets. These rocket launches, they cost at the very cheapest,
Speaker 1: like SpaceX rates. You're talking like sixty million dollars and
Speaker 1: that's for a pretty ho hum mission. That's just putting
Speaker 1: like satellites and in lower thorbit um and and it's
Speaker 1: about the same for planes. Like if you had to
Speaker 1: if you had to crash the plane every time you
Speaker 1: went to London, you probably would have to pay a
Speaker 1: million dollars to seet maybe more so. Part of why
Speaker 1: it's so exciting that SpaceX can land part of its rocket.
Speaker 1: It can't land the whole thing yet, but maybe one
Speaker 1: day is that that's the major part of the cost.
Speaker 1: The the the fuel is minimal, right, so we said
Speaker 1: sixty million, it's generally more than that. Let's say sixty million.
Speaker 1: The cost for fuel is under a million dollars. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the cost for like staff is, and
Speaker 1: we don't know yet what the cost of refurbishment is
Speaker 1: or even if SpaceX notices, I don't think they're telling
Speaker 1: um yet. But but it's like planes, right, Your plane
Speaker 1: ticket from London is now, you know, maybe a thousand
Speaker 1: bucks instead of the million bucks it would be. So
Speaker 1: you can do the same for space travel. It's kind
Speaker 1: of wild, right, So you as a first approximation, imagine
Speaker 1: you get the price of all space stuff down by
Speaker 1: a factor of ten. Uh. Take any space mission you
Speaker 1: care about, and multiplied by say a factor of two
Speaker 1: or three, you know, so instead of two dudes on
Speaker 1: the moon, it's four or five dudes or well and
Speaker 1: four or five ladies. So that's just awesome. That's great,
Speaker 1: and nothing is bad about that. The other thing that's
Speaker 1: standing in the way with rockets. Uh, people don't realize this.
Speaker 1: If you look at rockets sitting on the pad ready
Speaker 1: to launch, about of it by mass is propellant. It's
Speaker 1: fuel and oxidizers. The stuff you're gonna burn in order
Speaker 1: to go up and over about sixteen sevent is just
Speaker 1: the machine itself, like the metal and plastic and silicon
Speaker 1: that go into you know, going up. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: the stuff you might call actually going to space is
Speaker 1: on on a really lower thorbit. Efficient mission is about
Speaker 1: three and a half percent, right the little tippy top.
Speaker 1: It's so it's it's essentially like you have to launch
Speaker 1: a skyscraper into space to put the first floor into space. Uh,
Speaker 1: And which you might imagine is is is pretty inefficient. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are also some environmental concerns, but but in terms
Speaker 1: of costs that it's pretty dramatic. Right, So as a
Speaker 1: way to think about it, if you could just get
Speaker 1: the fuel usage from pent to you know, seventy six
Speaker 1: and a half percent, you've cut the cost in half
Speaker 1: of any card goo going up. The tricky part is
Speaker 1: is rocketcern Like they're pretty optimized to my understanding, Like
Speaker 1: you know, it's just it's the rocket equation. It's it's
Speaker 1: pretty Newtony, and it's it's there's not a whole lot
Speaker 1: you can do to make it better. There's some wacky ideas.
Speaker 1: Um but I'll get to the pogo stick in a
Speaker 1: moment um. But but but so, uh I can I
Speaker 1: can get a lot more into that. But but so,
Speaker 1: like a lot of the proposals for how to get
Speaker 1: to space without using a rocket or in one way
Speaker 1: or an they're essentially fighting this problem of the idea
Speaker 1: that most of what you're doing when you go to
Speaker 1: space is lifting fuel that you're gonna burn on your
Speaker 1: way to space, and not stuff that you want to
Speaker 1: go to space. Right, I hasten to add to for
Speaker 1: like Apollo going just to the moon, just the moon,
Speaker 1: not very far at all in a solar system sense,
Speaker 1: that was about one point five percent stuff going to space.
Speaker 1: Um so the Poco stick. So how might you improve. Well,
Speaker 1: so remember I said, only let's say three percent is
Speaker 1: going it's just for efficiency and math. So that means
Speaker 1: if you just get three percent more efficiency, you double
Speaker 1: the amount of cargo, you cut the price in half.
Speaker 1: So well, so part of the fuel, as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: is just getting the like the initial launch, because right
Speaker 1: when you launch, most of what you're lifting is other fuel. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: so if you could spare yourself just a little of
Speaker 1: that need to get that fuel up to speed, you
Speaker 1: you get like that. Our guy we talked to it
Speaker 1: NASA said you could get like one or two percent
Speaker 1: more efficiency maybe. So the basic idea, it's a poco
Speaker 1: stick rocket up some height I don't know, let's say
Speaker 1: a hundred feet, You drop it, it bounces. Now you've
Speaker 1: got some speed, uh, and off you go to space.
Speaker 1: And so there might be some people who are thinking,
Speaker 1: I don't see how the physics of this checks out.
Speaker 1: The way to think about it is just, um, you know,
Speaker 1: you're imparting some of your energy just by lifting it
Speaker 1: up and then dropping it, and so it's it's a
Speaker 1: more efficient use of energy than having to burn the
Speaker 1: fuel in the rocket to move the rocket. We have
Speaker 1: we have some sort of analogies for for how to
Speaker 1: explain that in the book. But but, but the basic
Speaker 1: idea is, as long as you're burning fuel, it's a
Speaker 1: little more fuel, it's bad or is it is a
Speaker 1: simple way to think about it. The best way to
Speaker 1: fly to space would be a magic pixie dropped a
Speaker 1: drop of fuel in the tank every time you needed it,
Speaker 1: so you'd only be looking stuff, so that the popo
Speaker 1: gets you just a nudge towards that. Um and at
Speaker 1: least a card of the guy we talked to it.
Speaker 1: And now it would work in the sense of physics. Uh,
Speaker 1: whether I said I just like rocket just bouncing slowly
Speaker 1: getting high off back, yeah, I'd be like t minus
Speaker 1: you know one second to pogo drop. But I do
Speaker 1: understanding solutions aren't tried because it went wrong, you'd look
Speaker 1: like such an idiot. Um So, but yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: the pogo stick method. More with Zach Weener Smith right
Speaker 1: after this break. One last question for you. Your book
Speaker 1: is so good to encover so many topics from you know,
Speaker 1: synthetic biology through d printing for food, like like there's
Speaker 1: there's just so much in their asteroid mining, which we
Speaker 1: didn't even get to, which is really great. But um,
Speaker 1: but I did want to ask you about this one
Speaker 1: experiment that you guys found on the effects of breathing
Speaker 1: through one nostril. Yes, talk about that. Yeah, if I correctly,
Speaker 1: there was an acronym. It was like unilateral force nose
Speaker 1: breathing something like that. You you and B or so anyway,
Speaker 1: So uh yeah, so let me set the table a
Speaker 1: little for that. So we we did the chapter I
Speaker 1: think this is in the chapter and augmented reality. And
Speaker 1: so in the book we have these things called not
Speaker 1: to bannis, which are generally just little tidbits of weirdness
Speaker 1: we came across that had nothing to do with anything
Speaker 1: where just didn't fit the chapter, but that we still
Speaker 1: wanted to write about. And so this one was on
Speaker 1: uh noses. And the reason it's relates to augmented reality
Speaker 1: is when you put on an augmented reality helmet, one
Speaker 1: of the obvious things that has to do is offset
Speaker 1: the image you see in each eye in order to
Speaker 1: convey a three D environment, right, because of course in
Speaker 1: the real world, your eyes are offset from each other. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so you actually would if if you would have
Speaker 1: an augmented reality system for the ears. You have to
Speaker 1: do the same thing. You have to offset sounds a
Speaker 1: little like so you know something's to your right because
Speaker 1: you hear the sound from it a little earlier in
Speaker 1: the right ear. And so we thought, well, let's see,
Speaker 1: you've got two eyes, you've got two ears. The only
Speaker 1: other thing on your face you have two of is
Speaker 1: your nose, And so can you sort of triangulate with smell?
Speaker 1: And we realized either had an answer to that, so
Speaker 1: we started like, how can we explode this question? And
Speaker 1: and it turned out Kelly happened to know a guy
Speaker 1: who worked on snakes, and it's a sort of similar question.
Speaker 1: Why do snakes have forked tongues? And it turns out
Speaker 1: snakes and the number of other species might have the
Speaker 1: ability to do something like that to say like, I'm
Speaker 1: getting a little more chemical on this side of the fork,
Speaker 1: therefore I should go this way when I'm I'm trailing
Speaker 1: a rat. Uh. And so then our crush was can
Speaker 1: humans do this? And it basically turns out the answer
Speaker 1: is probably no. Very sadly, you cannot probably tell where
Speaker 1: the bad smell of the room is by by using
Speaker 1: you know, offsetting your nostrils. Um so then the question
Speaker 1: we had was, then why do you have two nostrils
Speaker 1: line up one big, giant, awesome nostril um. And it
Speaker 1: turns out the best argument is, essentially your your nostril
Speaker 1: is this sort of um, your your You have this
Speaker 1: mucous line system that protects you from pathogens and other stuff,
Speaker 1: and it has to be kept moist in order to
Speaker 1: do its job. And so the you don't realize it,
Speaker 1: but you constantly have one nostril dominant quote unquote, you
Speaker 1: have one dominant nostril that has this engorged tissue that's
Speaker 1: the term in the field and gorged uh um in
Speaker 1: one nostril. So so one one side is essentially getting
Speaker 1: a break. Uh and um you really noticed this, by
Speaker 1: the way, when you have a cold, you know, when
Speaker 1: when when one nelson was just not doing anything? Um
Speaker 1: and uh so um, so what does this have to
Speaker 1: do with abuse to undergrads? Uh So, it turns out
Speaker 1: there's some weirdness that goes with this. There's some evidence
Speaker 1: we're i would say, pretty skeptical of that when you
Speaker 1: force people to use their non dominant nostril, they perform
Speaker 1: worse in all sorts of ways. Uh and so um,
Speaker 1: so they they're apparently this was done to undergrade. There
Speaker 1: are these tests that do unilateral force. I think it's
Speaker 1: nostril breathing or nose breathing. Anyway to the book where
Speaker 1: you guess compel students to breathe through the wrong nostril
Speaker 1: and do stuff like I I think it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, just like intelligence tests. And there's there's even
Speaker 1: some argument that there's some correlation with like schizophrenia, uh
Speaker 1: like using the wrong nostril. Yeah, like weird of Um,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty skeptical of any of it, but I just
Speaker 1: love the idea that, you know, someone was like, hey,
Speaker 1: we need undergrads for a test. You're like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna come in and take a test, and it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: breathe through the nostril you don't feel like breathing through
Speaker 1: and answer questions. That's what that's what they're good for. Right,
Speaker 1: Bring out of that nostril and now go get on
Speaker 1: that poco stick. We're sending that's right, and we'll see
Speaker 1: what happens. Yeah, before we let you go, I do
Speaker 1: have to know after all of this research for this book,
Speaker 1: and by the way, the amount of research and the
Speaker 1: amount of fact checking that must have gone into this
Speaker 1: project was just tremendous and really impressive to see. I
Speaker 1: can only imagine. But I'm curious after putting this together,
Speaker 1: you know what, what about the future excites you the most?
Speaker 1: And then on the flip side of that, what terrifies
Speaker 1: you the most now that you've you've you know, dug
Speaker 1: into so much of this. Sure, UM, I would say
Speaker 1: the technology that is in some ways less or sexy
Speaker 1: spacy than the other technologies, but it is really exciting
Speaker 1: is what's called UM precision medicine. Uh. We have chapter
Speaker 1: on this in the book. And the basic ideas you
Speaker 1: just have a sort of stats approach to medicine. UM.
Speaker 1: So maybe some of your listeners have heard of all
Speaker 1: these blood tests now coming out that can detect cancer early,
Speaker 1: maybe heart attack early, all sorts of stuff. So the
Speaker 1: idea is maybe maybe in thirty or forty years will
Speaker 1: be a new system where essentially when you go to
Speaker 1: the doctor and so of UM instead of the basic stuff,
Speaker 1: the fight still do the basic stuff blood pressure and
Speaker 1: talking to your doctor, etcetera, or you exercising enough, but
Speaker 1: they'll also take a blood test that will be run
Speaker 1: through a fancy computer and and we'll spit out a
Speaker 1: lot of results. And what's exciting to that is is
Speaker 1: potentially it means you drastically drop healthcare costs. A lot
Speaker 1: of healthcare costs have to do with unprevented stuff, um,
Speaker 1: discovering cancers late, that sort of thing. I'm not to mention,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of like a lot of why,
Speaker 1: for instance, pancreatic cancer is dangerous is because you don't
Speaker 1: detect it early, um, and so stuff like that, like
Speaker 1: subtle heart to detect cancers you can detect early, would
Speaker 1: save a lot of money, but it would also obviously
Speaker 1: save a lot of you know, horror, a lot of
Speaker 1: badness in human life. Um. And so to me, that's
Speaker 1: that's really exciting, especially because it kind of comes at
Speaker 1: a time when, especially in the US, but also this
Speaker 1: is happening in other countries where healthcare costs are really
Speaker 1: getting high and it's not exactly clear how the system
Speaker 1: can say solvent over the long term, this could be
Speaker 1: a way out. It might take us in the other
Speaker 1: direction of the short term, but in the long term,
Speaker 1: you know, you can imagine a paradigm where it's like
Speaker 1: Star Trek, where someone weighs a little wand over you.
Speaker 1: More likely the one is like poking you and taking
Speaker 1: tissues and but still uh, and it just tells you, hey,
Speaker 1: and this is this is apparently literally possible. It might
Speaker 1: be able to say, hey, you're headed for a heart attack.
Speaker 1: You have dying heart tissue. If this goes on for
Speaker 1: three more days, you're gonna be here for a heart attack.
Speaker 1: And so instead of you know, having it in your
Speaker 1: car or at work or whatever and having to be
Speaker 1: worked to the hospital, you come in early and they
Speaker 1: take care of it. Um that the amount of prevented
Speaker 1: in medicine that could be done is amazing. UM. So
Speaker 1: I'll just say that, I mean, I'm on a visceral level,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I suppose more excited about like this space stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: But but that's really that's really sort of I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've ever known someone who's who's died of
Speaker 1: cancer or some sort of prevent a littleness, especially the
Speaker 1: young agents, it's very sort of moving to think about
Speaker 1: being able to do these things. Um. In terms of scary,
Speaker 1: I would say far and away the most scary one
Speaker 1: for me is we do have to on brain computer interfaces,
Speaker 1: which again is what it sounds like. Uh, and what
Speaker 1: scares me a little. So let me give you a
Speaker 1: scenario we wade about that was proposed as a positive,
Speaker 1: which is something like this. Suppose you're on the job, uh,
Speaker 1: and you lapsed and focus. Well, that's bad for your job.
Speaker 1: But suppose you have a brain computer face it to
Speaker 1: texts that you're not focusing and does something. Maybe he
Speaker 1: tells your boss Bob isn't focusing. Maybe it just gives
Speaker 1: you a little something, a little uh, little shock or
Speaker 1: a does of chemical or something, and then you focus again. Now,
Speaker 1: of course that that sounds instantly dystopie on the way
Speaker 1: I'm describing it. There is a plausible good version, which
Speaker 1: is something like if you're you know, you don't want
Speaker 1: that on the job. You might want the guy piloting
Speaker 1: your plane to do that. You might want a surgeon
Speaker 1: to do that. There are situations where it's reasonable. Um.
Speaker 1: But but the scary thing is once the cats out
Speaker 1: of the bag, like once this is a possible thing, um,
Speaker 1: then there's a sort of race to the bottom or
Speaker 1: race to the cydeboard, however you want to say it. Uh,
Speaker 1: just something like um, so I don't know. I assume
Speaker 1: y'all are either an academia or cross swords with it. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, you're you're familiar with that world. You may
Speaker 1: not know that on surveys, something like fifth to a
Speaker 1: quarter of elite American researchers will admit to using mind
Speaker 1: enhancing drugs. And I don't mean like they're dropping acid.
Speaker 1: I mean like they're taking adderall or moda, phanil or
Speaker 1: what have you to to you know, or or or
Speaker 1: illegal stuff like a cocaine or or what have you.
Speaker 1: Maybe crack, I don't know, um to to be able
Speaker 1: to put out more papers, uh, you know, sleepless, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I think drugs are sort of morally neutral, but there
Speaker 1: is an externality problem, which is if the top researchers
Speaker 1: are all on crack, and presuming crack actually helps by
Speaker 1: the way that these are some of the questions, but
Speaker 1: I think it's probably possible that it does, especially if
Speaker 1: you're like a post talk or something, you have an
Speaker 1: narrow time band to do a lot of work. There's
Speaker 1: an externality, which is it means that people who aren't
Speaker 1: willing to do this stuff, um are putting in a
Speaker 1: bad position. Uh, and so we kind of I feel
Speaker 1: like most of us don't care if it's happening with
Speaker 1: researchers because there's an extent to which you're like, well
Speaker 1: I get more science. Uh so whatever, I don't care
Speaker 1: that much. And also anyway, they're already elite people, so whatever.
Speaker 1: But you can imagine a situation where this goes all
Speaker 1: the way down, Like, you know, the worker who is
Speaker 1: willing to release their data to an employer, um, and
Speaker 1: allow the employer to manipulate that data is more employable. UM.
Speaker 1: So do we get into a situation where everyone has
Speaker 1: to be wearing one of these and publicly sharing their
Speaker 1: data or at least not publicly maybe but sharing it
Speaker 1: with employers or what have you. That there's a really
Speaker 1: ominous scenario where where we're all, you know, being forced
Speaker 1: to become cyborgs or whether we want to or not,
Speaker 1: you know, over over the next hundred years, say not
Speaker 1: not anytime soon. Yeah, Well, to make sure that we
Speaker 1: finish on a positive note, maybe we should just we
Speaker 1: should just repeat the term pogo stick to space. Let's
Speaker 1: just let's just maybe close with that. What do you
Speaker 1: think I think pogo stick to space? I should have
Speaker 1: done the precision medicine thing. Second, we have two in
Speaker 1: the wrong order. But this this book, I know we've
Speaker 1: already said it. It is so fascinating and so fun
Speaker 1: to read. I hope all of our listeners will check
Speaker 1: it out. It's called soon Ish Ten Emerging Technologies that
Speaker 1: will improve and or ruin Everything. But Zach, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining us today, Thanks for having a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. That's it for today's show, but be sure
Speaker 1: to check out Kelly and Zach Wienersmith's new book soon Ish,
Speaker 1: which is on shelves everywhere right now. And if you
Speaker 1: like the program or just have anything to add, remember
Speaker 1: you can always hit us up on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: You can email us part Time Genius at how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com or hit us up one fact hot line.
Speaker 1: That's one eight four four pt Genius. Thanks again for listening.
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