Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of Big Money Energy, where
Speaker 1: we talked to super successful and self made people to
Speaker 1: find out exactly how they did it, how they went
Speaker 1: from nothing to something. Today, I'm joined by astrophysicist, author,
Speaker 1: director of the Hayden Planetarium, and all around science megastar
Speaker 1: Neil Degrass Tyson. This episode is a little different than
Speaker 1: what we usually do because there's no one like Neil
Speaker 1: in the entire Milky Way. We discuss a lot of things,
Speaker 1: but we talk about the responsibility of using your platform
Speaker 1: to champion causes you care about. We go through how
Speaker 1: to keep your head above water when pursuing a passion
Speaker 1: until it pays the bills, and why the hell it's
Speaker 1: taken so long for space tourism to become an industry.
Speaker 1: Hint takes a couple of billionaires. Now let's get into it.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode. I genuinely cannot believe who I
Speaker 1: convinced to come on the show today. He is easily
Speaker 1: one of the most recognizable personalities in the world and
Speaker 1: by far one of the smartest people out there, and
Speaker 1: will definitely be the smartest person whoever comes on this podcast.
Speaker 1: From now through history, you can mark those words. He's
Speaker 1: an astrophysicist, a host of bestselling author, and the director
Speaker 1: of the Hayden Planetarium. And he's also, as we just
Speaker 1: found out, a New Yorker. And if that wasn't enough,
Speaker 1: in two thousand he was voted the sexiest Astrophysicist Alive
Speaker 1: by People Magazine. And I think that is a ranking
Speaker 1: we should never ever forget. So here to discuss how
Speaker 1: he makes it happen and all the insane things he's
Speaker 1: working on. Please welcome Neil the grass Tyson. Thank you
Speaker 1: for the introduction, But I need to clarify something in
Speaker 1: in two thousand when I received that designation by People magazine.
Speaker 1: You just have to consider the category that I was saying.
Speaker 1: There are categories way more competitive than sexiest Astrophysicist. In
Speaker 1: the People magazine issue Sexiest Man Alive, first, there's a
Speaker 1: sexiest Man Alive who transcends category that's on the cover,
Speaker 1: and that year it was Brad pitt okay got that one.
Speaker 1: And then other categories where there's just no contest if
Speaker 1: you're outside of that category, like sexiest action star, sexiest
Speaker 1: news anchor, sexiest professional athlete, sex and you don't you
Speaker 1: don't have to apologize for being sexies. See what you're
Speaker 1: doing here. You're trying to clarify. I'm a real estate broker.
Speaker 1: You know. My whole life is ranking. I don't clarify
Speaker 1: my sales volume is only x because of this. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just disclosure. I just want to make
Speaker 1: sure people plus that that was forty pounds ago. So
Speaker 1: you're New York born and Brad Yeah, yeah, born in
Speaker 1: the Bronx. Did the Bronx? Gotta say it right? If
Speaker 1: you always lived in New York? Did you ever leave?
Speaker 1: You go elsewhere? No? No, I look for college and
Speaker 1: part of graduate school. So if you added up those years,
Speaker 1: I've probably gone for ten years. And then I came
Speaker 1: back to finish graduate school at Columbia, and and then
Speaker 1: I left. I did post pH d work post doc
Speaker 1: at Princeton, so we moved to Princeton for a bit,
Speaker 1: but then came back. It is hard to define exactly
Speaker 1: what you do. Can you tell us all if you
Speaker 1: were to say, hey, this this is what my day
Speaker 1: looks like, this is my career, this is what I do.
Speaker 1: What you would say? What's your answer to that? The challenge?
Speaker 1: There is no day looks like any other day. So
Speaker 1: it's hard to characterize what I do. So if I
Speaker 1: step back and I can say what kind of things
Speaker 1: happened to me in a month over a month, so
Speaker 1: over a month, I will write more for whatever it
Speaker 1: might be my next book. I will have conducted probably
Speaker 1: uh ten interviews for national media, another ten teen interviews
Speaker 1: for just people who are interested in what I do.
Speaker 1: I have a very soft spot for fledgling podcasts, people
Speaker 1: who are trying to bring science through their own lens. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, I recently agreed to do There are two
Speaker 1: kids who are new in high school. So one is
Speaker 1: like a ninth grader, I other one was an eighth grader,
Speaker 1: and they have a podcast in high school because they
Speaker 1: love science. So it's their science podcast. And so they
Speaker 1: wrote to me to see if I'd be a guest
Speaker 1: on their podcast, and I said sure, and then they
Speaker 1: just freaked out so that we did the podcast. And
Speaker 1: and this was in Canada. Small town in Canada was
Speaker 1: only one high school, and that made like local headlines, right,
Speaker 1: and and I'm I was delighted to do that. And
Speaker 1: and I chuckle any time I get invited to be
Speaker 1: on a podcast, and they feel compelled to list famous
Speaker 1: guests they've already had, as though I would say, oh,
Speaker 1: you had this famous guest, therefore I want to be
Speaker 1: on your podcast. I don't give a rats ass who
Speaker 1: was on your cup podcast before? I really don't care.
Speaker 1: Just is your mission, um, noble? Do you want to
Speaker 1: do the right thing? Is it something? And and so?
Speaker 1: I have a soft spot for that. So so anyway,
Speaker 1: so it's another ten or fifteen podcast, um. And also
Speaker 1: I oversee programs at the American Museum of Natural History
Speaker 1: that relate to the universe. I also read from books.
Speaker 1: I have a collection of very old books on science.
Speaker 1: I read them because they tell me how we used
Speaker 1: to think about the universe and how what we learned
Speaker 1: later may have pivoted off of some correct assessment of
Speaker 1: the nature of the universe or incorrect assessment, and I
Speaker 1: tracked that. I also spend time reading books that are
Speaker 1: completely opposite anything I think or believe in, just so
Speaker 1: I can understand how people think who are very different
Speaker 1: from myself. You've successfully been able to take this passion
Speaker 1: for for knowing more and turn it into a very robust,
Speaker 1: diverse career that I think it's very hard for a
Speaker 1: lot of people to do. Do you have any advice
Speaker 1: for anybody who is struggling with the idea of I.
Speaker 1: You know, I've got this passion, but it doesn't pay
Speaker 1: my bills, so I've got to go and get a
Speaker 1: job and maybe i can come back to it later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really important question and an insightful question. And
Speaker 1: I've gone in and out of different understandings and explanations
Speaker 1: for this to myself. Let me just share one of
Speaker 1: them with you, and let me buy analogy. Mentioned a library,
Speaker 1: all right, a physical library like the old days. So
Speaker 1: you walk into a library, and so what is a library?
Speaker 1: A library is at place where they don't know in
Speaker 1: advance what book you're going to look for, and so
Speaker 1: one else who comes in five minutes after you was
Speaker 1: gonna look for. So they attempt to stalk everything that
Speaker 1: you could possibly look for on the expectation that you
Speaker 1: will find what you are looking for. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: for library to be successful, they need enough books in
Speaker 1: enough fields with enough depth, so that I'm picking number
Speaker 1: nine out of ten people find what they're looking for,
Speaker 1: picking a number, but it's got to be the majority.
Speaker 1: Otherwise the library is not really serving the needs of
Speaker 1: a reading community. Okay, so what are we as human beings?
Speaker 1: As pliable, flexible human beings, We often don't know what
Speaker 1: our first love will be. So what you can do
Speaker 1: is turn yourself into a kind of a library. Anything
Speaker 1: that interests you, pursue it, at least on the side
Speaker 1: that's not that hard. You do that for hobbies. If
Speaker 1: you have a hobby, you do an other side. You
Speaker 1: have no expectation you're gonna be paid for the attention
Speaker 1: you give to your hobby. All right, So think of
Speaker 1: your life as a library, and as was my life. Okay,
Speaker 1: so watch this happen. As a child, I'm criticized by
Speaker 1: my teachers for my social energy. I still have my
Speaker 1: report cards. One of them said, it's succinctly less social
Speaker 1: involvement and more academic diligence is in order three exclamation points.
Speaker 1: That was in fifth grade. Okay, My grades were not high,
Speaker 1: they would kind of average. And in school, the metrics
Speaker 1: for your evaluation as a student art pivot strongly on
Speaker 1: your grades and whether you shut up when you're told
Speaker 1: to shut up and pay attention in class. All right,
Speaker 1: So the perfect student is one who does not disrupt class,
Speaker 1: does all their homework, assignments on time, and gets high grades,
Speaker 1: and the entire system we have built educational system says
Speaker 1: that's the successful student. Meanwhile, look at practically every entrepreneur
Speaker 1: there ever was every successful person by most measures of
Speaker 1: a free society's metrics of success, and ask were they
Speaker 1: that perfect student? The answer is no, no, most of
Speaker 1: them if not a D, and then we're not that okay,
Speaker 1: So there's something else going on in successful people that
Speaker 1: are not cued, that are not indexed off of your
Speaker 1: exams and your behavior as a school child. So what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is, yeah, there are things that I got
Speaker 1: good at that no one cares about and no one
Speaker 1: is paying any attention at all. But that's the library problem.
Speaker 1: The library will have books that no one will ever
Speaker 1: check out again, but you don't know that in advance.
Speaker 1: So so there's no harm in building the portfolio of
Speaker 1: all the things you like and are good at. Then
Speaker 1: have that rise up. And I can tell you this,
Speaker 1: Everything I'm doing that is valued never appeared in anybody's
Speaker 1: job description that I replied to when I became director
Speaker 1: of the planting We need you to do this and
Speaker 1: run the program. And fine, okay, did it say host
Speaker 1: a series for for Cosmos. No to say, oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, the person who has this, we want you
Speaker 1: to host PBS series. Until that's not in the job description. No,
Speaker 1: most of what I'm doing is not in the job description.
Speaker 1: But when people see it, they they come to value it,
Speaker 1: and then everything I cared about and loved becomes the
Speaker 1: very job description itself. It's harder, and it's challenging. And
Speaker 1: by the way, I did not have a job where
Speaker 1: I made more than six thousand dollars a year until
Speaker 1: I was thirty three. Wow. Okay, So if you're distracted
Speaker 1: by money, then you can't rely on all of your
Speaker 1: inner passions to be compensated earlier in life. So yeah,
Speaker 1: go find a pre existing job with a pre existing
Speaker 1: job description that is a pre existing salary listed to it,
Speaker 1: and tune your training to fit that. Then they'll hire you.
Speaker 1: Then you'll have a nice salary coming right out of college.
Speaker 1: I did not were you worried about job prospects because
Speaker 1: after my PhD almost didn't matter what happened to me
Speaker 1: in my life. That was my life's goal as a child.
Speaker 1: Everything else would just be gravy. Plus it helped that
Speaker 1: I married someone who worked for the financial industry. That's
Speaker 1: not what I'm like, I'm looking for the secret. No, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: that helped. It just meant we lived, you know, we
Speaker 1: a nice place I could have lived. I mean I
Speaker 1: was living the way a student lived most of those years, right,
Speaker 1: so I could have kept living that way. The trappings
Speaker 1: of having more money, eating a nicer restaurant, drink a
Speaker 1: nicer bottle of wine, this sort of thing, um and so.
Speaker 1: But but anyhow, all of this sort of a cruise
Speaker 1: is what I'm saying. And I also started liking wine
Speaker 1: early on. We had wine regularly at home, mostly Gallo
Speaker 1: and Paul Masson when I was growing up. But the
Speaker 1: fact that wine was something associated with meals was a
Speaker 1: very early thing for me. And I then took an
Speaker 1: academic interest in wine and uh at at some point
Speaker 1: one of the wine magazines noticed me. Okay, Wine Spectator magazine,
Speaker 1: big magazine for the wine industry, and they did a
Speaker 1: profile on me and it says, um, uh astrophysicist with
Speaker 1: stars in his eyes sees wine, and that they tried
Speaker 1: there was I'm you know, clever title. And so you
Speaker 1: realize that these pockets of society that will find you
Speaker 1: if your interests have a sufficient depth of passion, and
Speaker 1: then it builds the entire profile of who you are
Speaker 1: and what you represent. Now, the fact that I'm visible
Speaker 1: in public, none of that was a goal, and I
Speaker 1: don't care if anybody knew anything about me. I just
Speaker 1: kept giving good sound bites to the news and then
Speaker 1: they kept coming back, and then people said, oh, you're
Speaker 1: a natural at that. No, they have no idea what
Speaker 1: I did to train for those sound bites. I stood
Speaker 1: in front of a mirror because the first time you
Speaker 1: didn't ask this, but I'm telling you, um, it's important.
Speaker 1: The the first time I was on national news for
Speaker 1: a cosmic event was a new planet around another star.
Speaker 1: Was the first exo planet was discovered, and so um
Speaker 1: NBC was NBC News sent a camera up to the
Speaker 1: Hayden Planetarium. By the way, they didn't know about me
Speaker 1: from Adam. They just knew I had title direct director
Speaker 1: of the Hayden Planetarium. So so they're interviewing the director
Speaker 1: of the Hayden Planetarium. I give them my best profitsial
Speaker 1: reply alright, because I'm an academic, and I say, here's
Speaker 1: how we found it. We my colleagues here's how it works.
Speaker 1: Here's the Doppler shift. There's a and and I said,
Speaker 1: you're looking at the response of the host star to
Speaker 1: the gravity of the of the planet in orbit around it.
Speaker 1: And that evening when they finally cut the piece. Basically
Speaker 1: the only part of that interview that made it in
Speaker 1: was me shifting my hips like this. And I thought,
Speaker 1: I said, oh, even though they came to me, they
Speaker 1: don't want my profits soil reply. They want to reply
Speaker 1: that will work in their format. The whole story last
Speaker 1: three minutes. They want sound bites. That was a revelation
Speaker 1: and for me and the and they will always tell you,
Speaker 1: oh no, don't sound by, just give us your thing.
Speaker 1: We'll fix it up later. Then I realized, no, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna use one sentence for me or three sentences
Speaker 1: and they're gonna be cut together, I'm gonna hand you
Speaker 1: those sentences so that you don't have to cut it,
Speaker 1: and then arm in control of that content. So I
Speaker 1: went home, looked in the mirror, had my wife just
Speaker 1: say random things from the universe to me, black holes, quasars,
Speaker 1: big bang, and with each word I came out with
Speaker 1: a three sentence sound bite, which has got to be interesting, tasty, informative,
Speaker 1: and and enticings enough to want to tell someone else,
Speaker 1: and you get it all. So test me on that,
Speaker 1: say anything in the universe. Test me black hole black
Speaker 1: Avoid them. If one comes near, you go the other direction.
Speaker 1: It's a region of space where the gravity is so
Speaker 1: intense that the speed of light is not even sufficient
Speaker 1: to escape. It is a whole in the fabric of
Speaker 1: ace and time, and we're still learning about what's going
Speaker 1: on inside of them. Boom about. You're taking that whole
Speaker 1: thing and putting that in just as I handed it
Speaker 1: to you, whereas there was a day when that same
Speaker 1: information would have been scattered across and they'd have to
Speaker 1: plug it together. So when people say, are you such
Speaker 1: a natural at that? No, I fucking worked at it.
Speaker 1: Please can we understand this? Please? All right? Sorry dropping
Speaker 1: f bomb on you. You're too welcome. I think it's
Speaker 1: it's so important to be listening to this. The man
Speaker 1: here is in a in a highly pressed shirt and
Speaker 1: a Wall Street tie, and I'm I'm in my morning pajamas.
Speaker 1: Just so weird over here. Okay, very nice pajamas though
Speaker 1: I didn't even ask you a lot of that. It's Uh,
Speaker 1: it's so important because I think people don't don't realize
Speaker 1: the work. But what I think it's so curious about
Speaker 1: you is you knew to do that work to build
Speaker 1: a career as a well known astrophysicist without anyone having
Speaker 1: to tell you to do that. No, because I didn't
Speaker 1: build it on purpose. It just oh, so I didn't
Speaker 1: finish the thought. So once I started giving them sound
Speaker 1: bites they like, they kept coming back for more. Then
Speaker 1: documentarians noticed it, and so then they came to me
Speaker 1: for an interview, and then people who wanted to do
Speaker 1: TV series Nova came to me to host a spinoff
Speaker 1: Nova Science Now. And so I'm not seeking any of
Speaker 1: this out. No it and so I so why am
Speaker 1: I doing it. I'm doing it because I judged that
Speaker 1: I would be irresponsible if I didn't. So there's responsibility, Yes,
Speaker 1: if if if I have a way I can communicate
Speaker 1: science to the public that is unique or has had
Speaker 1: flavors to it that people appreciate. And if I didn't
Speaker 1: do it in a society and in a culture that
Speaker 1: that depends on science literacy just for even its own governance,
Speaker 1: if I didn't do it, I don't know that I
Speaker 1: could feel like I was responsible participant in our society.
Speaker 1: What I long for. I fantasize about this, that we
Speaker 1: get enough others doing this, and there's more. It's a
Speaker 1: growing number of science sort of educator, sort of pop educator,
Speaker 1: science folk. You get enough of them on the landscape.
Speaker 1: I will just slowly step backwards and then exit the
Speaker 1: rear door, just slowly, and then when I exit, no
Speaker 1: one will notice because it's so full of others fully
Speaker 1: engaged in fun, interesting ways. And then I'll go right
Speaker 1: to the Bahamas and the Bahamas totally the Bahamas. And
Speaker 1: because I don't need to do this, I'm happy to
Speaker 1: do it, but I don't seek it out. Do you
Speaker 1: believe in fate? Well, so you can look at the
Speaker 1: statistics of it, all right, So there's very good reason
Speaker 1: for the saying fate uh favors the well prepared. Okay,
Speaker 1: so uh, if you unpack that statistically, it means put
Speaker 1: as many books in your personal library as you can
Speaker 1: so that when an opportunity arises, you say I can
Speaker 1: do that, and someone will other else will say, oh,
Speaker 1: you're the lucky person. Was it really luck or did
Speaker 1: you just recognize the opportunity because you had the receptors
Speaker 1: to do so. So no, I don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: fate as in it would happen to you no matter
Speaker 1: what I think. It's you've got to be ready for
Speaker 1: it and recognize it when it arrives. If you just
Speaker 1: look at how the numbers work out, um. If you
Speaker 1: say that there's no such thing as as coincidence, is
Speaker 1: all meant to be? Um, that is the product of
Speaker 1: a failure of the human cognitive system. It's it's why
Speaker 1: statistics as a branch of math, it was very late
Speaker 1: in the coming. I mean, calculus was practically fully fleshed
Speaker 1: out and developed long before statistics was formulated. And so
Speaker 1: that's evidence that statistics is just not a natural way
Speaker 1: for us to think about our life experience. We want
Speaker 1: to think that we're special, that the whole world is
Speaker 1: aligning for us. This is the source of so many religions,
Speaker 1: right if you're if you're in a heartless world, but
Speaker 1: someone in your religion cares about you, then you retain
Speaker 1: your sense of personal value, uh, in the face of that.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I don't know if knowing statistics helps
Speaker 1: you or hurt you in that state of mind, but
Speaker 1: I prefer to be plugged into an objective reality as
Speaker 1: often as I can. What are your thoughts on Elon
Speaker 1: Musk and what he's doing with with SpaceX. It should
Speaker 1: have happened decades ago. We should have had space entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: decades ago. Why do you think it's only happening now
Speaker 1: between Blue Origin. Well, it's expensive just because it costs.
Speaker 1: You need rich people to think to do it, because
Speaker 1: there's no initial return on investment. Really, um it's and
Speaker 1: Elon Musk famously said, how to make a small fortune
Speaker 1: in space industry, start with a big fortune. I think
Speaker 1: that's Elon Musk, and so it's really you need the
Speaker 1: passion of a rich person to try to make it happen.
Speaker 1: And that way they can plow through the years of
Speaker 1: no r O I that would have bankrupted anybody else,
Speaker 1: and they just keep pumping in their money until you
Speaker 1: get over that hump where oh, now I can send
Speaker 1: you up in space for just a million dollars, And
Speaker 1: there plenty of billionaires out there now that will spend
Speaker 1: a million dollars on a joy ride, and that becomes
Speaker 1: a business model for space tourism. But you have to
Speaker 1: get there first. You have to build the rockets that
Speaker 1: failed first. You have to can't just send anyone into
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. Do you want to go up
Speaker 1: into space as a space tourist. Most people's definition of
Speaker 1: space does not coincide with my definition of space. I'm sure.
Speaker 1: So Earth orbit is typically what people think of when
Speaker 1: they think of space. But that's the distance from New
Speaker 1: York to Washington, d C. But straight up, all right,
Speaker 1: And in fact, in lower th orbit, you are closer
Speaker 1: to Earth's surface than San Francisco is from Los Angeles, right,
Speaker 1: So that's that's to me, that's not space. That's just
Speaker 1: a really really really high airplane. Yes, thank you for
Speaker 1: a lot. It's the most expensive airplane ticket ever, perfectly worded.
Speaker 1: The differences. You'll be waitless and you'll see stars in
Speaker 1: the daytime, that sort of thing, because you're above most
Speaker 1: of the scattering of light and Earth's atmosphere. So that's
Speaker 1: that has an attraction to it. But yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna go to the Moon or Mars or beyond, yeah
Speaker 1: I'll sign up for it. But I joke, and I say, Elan,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna put me in your rocket, um let
Speaker 1: it be a rocket. You've already sent your mother on
Speaker 1: and brought her back safely, then I'll go on the rocket.
Speaker 1: So like interstellar like that, that would be your idea
Speaker 1: space exploration go that far? What what about interstelling? I
Speaker 1: mean going to other planets? Yeah, like if that's not
Speaker 1: a routine thing. These were pioneers um trying to find
Speaker 1: a new place to move. But if you have that
Speaker 1: much technology to fly to another planet through black holes
Speaker 1: and things, it seems to me you have enough technology
Speaker 1: to fix the blight on the crops on Earth. That'd
Speaker 1: mean that'd be way cheaper exercise in your science and
Speaker 1: engineering portfolio. You think so, But Michael Caine couldn't figure
Speaker 1: it out, so everyone had to leave. Everyone had to leave.
Speaker 1: What do you think about everybody moving to and setting
Speaker 1: up life on Mars? Do you think it's an exciting
Speaker 1: experiment or a kind of a fruitless waste of time
Speaker 1: and money? Yeah? I know, judge how people spend money
Speaker 1: and decide whether it's a waste or not. Just not.
Speaker 1: People should spend money however the hell they want if
Speaker 1: they earn it. So that's my first comments. Second I
Speaker 1: can give you, since some factual observation, Antarctica is ball
Speaker 1: mirror and whether that any place on the surface of Mars.
Speaker 1: But you don't see people lined up to build condominiums
Speaker 1: there and move. So the idea that you're gonna set
Speaker 1: up habitats on Mars on the expectation that people will
Speaker 1: live there permanently. If you needed evidence that that would happen,
Speaker 1: you would need to look to Antarctica to see if
Speaker 1: they're housing um tracks that have been set up, and
Speaker 1: there haven't been. So it's a little unrealistic for me
Speaker 1: to think that Mars would be a destination for people
Speaker 1: to live. Now, if you can create a hab module,
Speaker 1: they're like a domed city where you can control the
Speaker 1: environment and the temperature and all the rest of this,
Speaker 1: so you're not always having to wear a spacesuit. That
Speaker 1: could work, But then you're just living on Earth on Mars, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, so it's not really Mars. You're not having
Speaker 1: to navigate the hostile conditions of a different planet. So
Speaker 1: I can imagine that such a place would be like
Speaker 1: Disney World. You would go and visit it. It would
Speaker 1: be a vacation and you have rides in g You know,
Speaker 1: if your hundred um, you know, two hundred pounds on Earth,
Speaker 1: you are what is it a hundred and that so
Speaker 1: um eighty pounds, you'd weigh eighty pounds on Mars. That's
Speaker 1: kind of fun. You have all manner of fun sports
Speaker 1: and amusement park rides and things that exploit that fact.
Speaker 1: But then you'd come back to Earth and you'd be
Speaker 1: glad you came back to Earth when that happened. So
Speaker 1: the only meaningful way we become a multiplanet species is
Speaker 1: if we figured out how to terraform another planet. My
Speaker 1: favorite word of recent decades. When you take a planet
Speaker 1: that is not like Earth, steed them soils or the
Speaker 1: clouds with bacteria that create oxygen, this sort of thing, microbes,
Speaker 1: and then create an Earth and then you move there. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I don't have a problem with that, but I
Speaker 1: would ask what's your motivation? And this is where I
Speaker 1: part ways with Stephen Hawking. And there's even Carl Sagan
Speaker 1: who said we need to become a multiplanet species so
Speaker 1: that if if a disaster happens on one planet, the
Speaker 1: species survives. So then I asked, for what disaster are
Speaker 1: you imagining? Could be an asteroid strike? Okay, that's one,
Speaker 1: A killer virus, right, that's basically the plot of planet
Speaker 1: or the apes um and all right, or something we
Speaker 1: haven't thought of. All right, well, how about this. I'm
Speaker 1: betting that the effort, that's the cost and time involved
Speaker 1: in terraforming Mars and then shipping a billion people there,
Speaker 1: I'm betting that effort is more than deflecting an asteroid
Speaker 1: than funding viral research such that there will never be
Speaker 1: a virus that will harm us again. I'm kind of betting.
Speaker 1: I would bet that it would take less money and
Speaker 1: less time to accomplish that. That's the iron man cutting
Speaker 1: the cable. That's me on the on the on the
Speaker 1: trolley car um fixing the brakes, figuring out what's wrong
Speaker 1: in that instant with the brakes overcoming it and having
Speaker 1: the cable car stop. It's I don't I don't mind
Speaker 1: living on multiple planets if you think that's just a
Speaker 1: fun thing to do. But and then there people say, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be trashing Earth. We have to move to
Speaker 1: another planet because we're polluting Earth or global warming. If
Speaker 1: you terraformed Mars, if you turn Mars into Earth, then
Speaker 1: you have the geo engineering ability to turn Earth back
Speaker 1: into Earth. Let's get real here, My last question for you,
Speaker 1: and I really really appreciate you taking the time to
Speaker 1: to speak with me today. How optimistic about the future
Speaker 1: are you right now? My source of optimism comes from
Speaker 1: the fact that the next generation is way more woke,
Speaker 1: almost to a fault, but regardless, the way more woke
Speaker 1: and progressive minded and environmentally concerned than any previous generation.
Speaker 1: So for example, okay, let's go back to the beat
Speaker 1: nick piece, nick hippie era. What's not widely written about
Speaker 1: is that that was a fringe movement among highly privileged,
Speaker 1: young white students. Okay, highly that's what that was. These
Speaker 1: were kids who didn't really have to work, they could
Speaker 1: take time out and protest and and uh so, by
Speaker 1: the way it worked, largely we did exit the Vietnam
Speaker 1: War um, and peace as part of a cultural urge
Speaker 1: has remained ever since. And I don't think peace as
Speaker 1: a cultural urge predates the sixties. Really, Okay, make love
Speaker 1: not war, these kinds of slogan. No one really said that.
Speaker 1: In the Second World War, the people might have wanted peace,
Speaker 1: but not they didn't package it that way, all right,
Speaker 1: So whereas now the next generation, it's practically a dent
Speaker 1: of them. You just look at the voting trends by
Speaker 1: age in the demographics. So and they they understand environment,
Speaker 1: they understand science. They were not the ones duped by
Speaker 1: intern aunt rabbit holes that older folks. You know, that
Speaker 1: young generation is not the one who believed that pizza gate,
Speaker 1: that they were selling and eating babies in the basement.
Speaker 1: It's not that generation. So perhaps for the first time
Speaker 1: in the history of the world, I, as an adult, say,
Speaker 1: I can't wait till the next generation takes over so
Speaker 1: they can fix the world. Big Money Energy is hosted
Speaker 1: by me Ryan Sirhant. It's produced by Mike Coscarelli and
Speaker 1: Joe Lorresca and executive produced by Lindsay Haw. Find more
Speaker 1: podcasts like Big Money Energy on the I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: app or wherever you get your podcasts.