Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. My name is Julie Douglas,
Speaker 1: and we have a guest for today's episode. As you
Speaker 1: probably gathered from the title, we are talking once again
Speaker 1: with Neil deGrasse Tyson, that's right, via the phone. Um.
Speaker 1: We have a bunch of questions that that we locked
Speaker 1: at him, Uh, mainly having to do with his wonderful
Speaker 1: book which is called Space Chronicles, and it really is
Speaker 1: a retrospective of NASA and space exploration, and it is
Speaker 1: so fascinating and has every single aspect of space that
Speaker 1: you would ever want to cram into your brain, including
Speaker 1: killer asteroids and whether or not aliens might exist. Um,
Speaker 1: So we had a chance to read that and then
Speaker 1: to ask some questions, and we also had a chance
Speaker 1: to give Dr Tyson some of your questions that you
Speaker 1: provided on Facebook. Yeah, you might remember about a month back,
Speaker 1: well maybe a little a little longer, when we first
Speaker 1: learned that we were going to do this interview. I
Speaker 1: put the call out on Facebook or Facebook addressed by
Speaker 1: the way, it's uh, stuff to blow your mind. Just
Speaker 1: type that in do Facebook and you'll find us put
Speaker 1: the call out for questions that you guys had for
Speaker 1: Dr Tyson, and we received a whole list of them,
Speaker 1: and so we went in, we picked like the five
Speaker 1: best and then asked as many of those as we
Speaker 1: could during the time that we had him. And really,
Speaker 1: I think some of the answers to your questions were
Speaker 1: the best, uh as you'll as you'll discover in this
Speaker 1: this episode. Yeah, I think you guys excited his imaginations.
Speaker 1: So but first of all, I do need to mention
Speaker 1: again this is a great book, um Neiodle grass Tyson.
Speaker 1: For those of you who are not familiar with him,
Speaker 1: there's and really you have no excuse not to be
Speaker 1: familiar with Neiodo grass Tyson because he's everywhere. He is
Speaker 1: a mass communicator. He is out there as a spokesman
Speaker 1: for science uh or our understanding of the cosmos, for
Speaker 1: our continued exploration of the cosmos, and for just science
Speaker 1: literacy in our culture and UH in this book is
Speaker 1: just another great example that it's very readable. It is
Speaker 1: not a you know, and it's not a heavy, heavy,
Speaker 1: hard to read science book. It is a very readable
Speaker 1: uh text that that is I mean It even has
Speaker 1: his tweets in there, which I thought was and I
Speaker 1: touched because he's a he's a big, big time tweeter.
Speaker 1: Become Twitter user if you if you would rather, and
Speaker 1: you can find him on Twitter at Neil Tyson. That's
Speaker 1: in E I L T Y s O N. Follow
Speaker 1: him there. He's always throwing out some some neat little
Speaker 1: tidbits about the scientific world, or he's questioning the science
Speaker 1: of a major motion picture. He's always a lot of fun,
Speaker 1: that's right, And uh, I think I had mentioned it,
Speaker 1: but he really does lay out, um some some of
Speaker 1: the mysteries of the universe in a very elegant way,
Speaker 1: and of course with his signature humor, which is pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: All right, Well that being said, let's let's break into
Speaker 1: the interview itself. Well, first of all, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. Well, thank you. On our podcast
Speaker 1: we when we're all about trying to communicate science and
Speaker 1: mind blowing topics with our listeners and so you you were,
Speaker 1: of course one of our heroes, so it's always a
Speaker 1: pleasure to have you on the show. Well, thank you.
Speaker 1: Now I have to live up to that. Uh well,
Speaker 1: we thought we'd just go ahead and start talking a
Speaker 1: little bit about space chronicles, Facing the Ultimate Frontier UM,
Speaker 1: the collection of essays that you have and really addressing
Speaker 1: I think, from soup to nuts space exploration. UM. I
Speaker 1: wanted to to talk about the political party partisanship that
Speaker 1: that you talked about in the book, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to sort of ask you if you thought that showing
Speaker 1: the sausage making part of that would kind of help
Speaker 1: the public to better understand some of the challenges that
Speaker 1: face NASA in terms of budget constraints. Well, almost everything
Speaker 1: is partisan today except for maybe veterans benefits, you know,
Speaker 1: some things that are so sacred in the budget. And
Speaker 1: I think the more people see the sausage making, the
Speaker 1: more they might become disgusted with the fact that there's
Speaker 1: sausage making at all for things that are fundamentally bipartisan
Speaker 1: or or better yet, fundamentally nonpartisan. So to expose it,
Speaker 1: I think is a good thing. Not that I had
Speaker 1: any secret access to what's going on in Washington, but
Speaker 1: I offered an analysis of how progress on NASA's budget
Speaker 1: and progress in space had been had fallen victim to
Speaker 1: partisan grandstanding. And you know, space historically has never been
Speaker 1: partisan at all. In other words, if you liked space,
Speaker 1: so you didn't like space, it was uncorrelated with whether
Speaker 1: you were left or right, or Democrat or Republican or anything.
Speaker 1: It was just simply because you had an opinion. And
Speaker 1: that's a good thing about topics, I think, and it
Speaker 1: means you don't sort of ascribe to how other people
Speaker 1: want you to think about something. You can come up
Speaker 1: with your own views. And that's in a way has
Speaker 1: transcended that and that's I think it's been one of
Speaker 1: its strong points. And in fact, most people, particularly in
Speaker 1: the past forty years or so, most people who think
Speaker 1: of America and listed things about America that they liked,
Speaker 1: most people that is, around the world, NASA would be
Speaker 1: like number one on that list, Number one. Right, It's
Speaker 1: not the President's and it's not the FBI or the
Speaker 1: CIA or the military or anything. It's NASA. So what
Speaker 1: a you know, what a what a point of diplomacy
Speaker 1: that represents when you think about it in a geopolitical way.
Speaker 1: So I think it's it's it's high time that people
Speaker 1: just sat down and recognize the value of projects that
Speaker 1: allow you to dream, empower you to dream about tomorrow.
Speaker 1: The value that those projects have on our ambitions, on
Speaker 1: our culture, on our educational pipeline, and and the urge
Speaker 1: to get people interested in the STEM field of the science, technology, engineering,
Speaker 1: and man. Excellent well, Dr Tyson. In your book, you
Speaker 1: point out that half a penny on the tax dollar
Speaker 1: is the total cost of all space born telescopes, planetary probes,
Speaker 1: the rover on Mars, the International Space Stations, space Shuttle,
Speaker 1: and telescopes in orbit. You also point out that space
Speaker 1: exploration has yielded myriad indirect benefits, everything from cordless tools
Speaker 1: and vitable braces and long distance telecommunications to two water filters.
Speaker 1: So if you had your druthers, how much more would
Speaker 1: you allocate to NASA on the tax dollar and what
Speaker 1: might that yield in terms of the direct and indirect returns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so that I think that's important and excellent question.
Speaker 1: But I want to unpack it into sort of multiple
Speaker 1: variables that are contained within it. So, for example, we
Speaker 1: could list spinoffs from NASA direct spinoffs, and I give
Speaker 1: a list in the book. Although I don't do well
Speaker 1: on that list, I just offer the list and then
Speaker 1: I keep going. Because if you went to the list
Speaker 1: of direct spinoffs which would include temper foam and and
Speaker 1: cordless power tools, high torque battery operated tools that all
Speaker 1: came from UH pioneering efforts to enable space walking astronauts
Speaker 1: to repair things while they're in space. You can't just
Speaker 1: look for the nearest hunter in ten volt plug to
Speaker 1: plug in your tools, and UH you know, things like
Speaker 1: the inexpensive and accurate lasic surgery. The list is long
Speaker 1: and it's impressive, right on back to the original urge
Speaker 1: to miniaturized electronics in the first place. That was not
Speaker 1: an interest of industry or the public. It was an
Speaker 1: interest of NASA to reduce the weight of anything you'd
Speaker 1: be launching from Earth surface to orbit or anywhere else.
Speaker 1: And if you've ask your grandparents, you know what the
Speaker 1: radio look like, they'll say it was a piece of
Speaker 1: nature in their living room. And at that time, no
Speaker 1: one is thinking, Gee, I want to carry that on
Speaker 1: my hip pocket. It's just not a fault that they
Speaker 1: don't want. It. Don't occur to anybody that that's what
Speaker 1: you might do with a radio one day. So, yes,
Speaker 1: there's all these spinoffs, there's no doubt about it. But
Speaker 1: if you look at the value of those spinoffs, compared
Speaker 1: with that. In other words, the net sales let's say
Speaker 1: all those spinoffs and compared to NASA's annual budget, it
Speaker 1: doesn't compare. It's smaller than NASA's annual budget. So you
Speaker 1: can't justify NASA's budget based on the economic value of spinoffs.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't work. So I only tell I ever
Speaker 1: talked about it is when someone else brings it up.
Speaker 1: And it's only in the book because I have some
Speaker 1: obligations just to show all the force that NASA represents.
Speaker 1: The real impact of NASA has to do with its
Speaker 1: influence on a culture and the urge to embrace innovations
Speaker 1: science and technology, because the benefits the discoveries or science
Speaker 1: and technology are large daily in the papers. When that's
Speaker 1: the activity you're engaged in, and you ask anyone who
Speaker 1: has wanted to become a scientist or an engineer, just
Speaker 1: ask them. Occasionally it's the great science or engineering teacher
Speaker 1: in school. It's the case who twelve would because you
Speaker 1: had a great science teacher. That's not the majority. The
Speaker 1: majority of the cases is a kids saw something in life,
Speaker 1: they were exposed to some grand vision statement that that
Speaker 1: something bigger than themselves was undertaking right. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: some science class, wasn't just some science kit that whose
Speaker 1: experiments they performed at home or in school. It was
Speaker 1: bigger than that. Essentially of my generation who entered science
Speaker 1: entered science because they saw that we were going to
Speaker 1: the moon. That's how old I am, right, So they
Speaker 1: would not sign a science teacher. Those science teachers for
Speaker 1: hel up in them get along or making them appreciate
Speaker 1: it all the more. But you can't undervalue how much
Speaker 1: of a force of nature NASA is on on the
Speaker 1: hearts and minds and the dreams of it culture. And
Speaker 1: to excel at NASA, you have to innovate. And when
Speaker 1: you do that in a big way, the country becomes
Speaker 1: an innovation nation. And that's that's the real return. So
Speaker 1: the return is you want to assure your economic survival
Speaker 1: in the future because you are stimulating people to innovate
Speaker 1: and innovations and science and technology century the engines of
Speaker 1: tomorrow's economy. Well, there you have it. There it is,
Speaker 1: And you don't have to beat people over the head
Speaker 1: to try to make them interested in this stuff. You
Speaker 1: get that for free. You don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: keeping your factories here because we'll be making things that
Speaker 1: no one knows how to make yet. Because we'll be innovating.
Speaker 1: You don't have to worry about keeping kids interested in
Speaker 1: science because the headlines will do that. And everybody looks
Speaker 1: at these challenges of America of falling behind is a
Speaker 1: series of band aids that they need to apply, and
Speaker 1: then everything is somehow fixed without looking at the root
Speaker 1: cause of all the lost vision statements that the citizen
Speaker 1: m um is uh has been has been that that
Speaker 1: has evaporated from our culture over the past ten and
Speaker 1: twenty years. Um. In your book, you speak about the
Speaker 1: three factors capable of stirring human cultures to engage in megaprojects.
Speaker 1: UH talk about war, economics, and less common these days,
Speaker 1: obedience to a god or some some royal figure. So
Speaker 1: does it really boil down to two negative motivations for
Speaker 1: culture as a whole? Is it is? It doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be fear or agreed? Do you think to really
Speaker 1: get the megaprojects such as space exploration out there? Depends
Speaker 1: of how you use the word negative, how you judge it.
Speaker 1: And I try not to value judge the thing that
Speaker 1: I just put it put it out there, and I
Speaker 1: lead the value judging to others. I would say that
Speaker 1: the greatest driver of human expenditure of capital, be it
Speaker 1: financial capital or human capital, is war. Now you can
Speaker 1: interpret that as defense, all right, And that's the Great
Speaker 1: Wall of China for example. That clearly was not a
Speaker 1: military project for offense. It was a defensive military project,
Speaker 1: and that was constructed in the interests of the safety
Speaker 1: and security of its citizens. So I wouldn't You can
Speaker 1: think of it as negative because it's in response to
Speaker 1: a threat, all right. And then you have economic return
Speaker 1: definitely negative if it's sort of badly exploiting people. But
Speaker 1: in its purest form, economic growth is a good thing
Speaker 1: for the world. Uh. Those nice nations that are wealthier,
Speaker 1: they live longer and happier lives and with less disease.
Speaker 1: So economic wealth, though while not as powerful a driver
Speaker 1: as war is, comes in a very close second. And
Speaker 1: you just look at you know, there's Queen as Abella.
Speaker 1: He didn't stay to Columbus, go to the New World
Speaker 1: and come back and tell us about the botanical uh
Speaker 1: explorations you did, and and and show us the maps
Speaker 1: and we can put it up in our library. No,
Speaker 1: it was here's some flags wherever you go, put the
Speaker 1: flag put to the Spanish flag down, and you know,
Speaker 1: to clear these lands for the Spanish Empire. And by
Speaker 1: the way, try to explore as much as you can
Speaker 1: the natural resources so that we can have trade partners
Speaker 1: or we can become wealthier. And so yes, there's a
Speaker 1: sort of a hit geministic motive there at the end
Speaker 1: of the day. So you know Spain, Spain got wealthy
Speaker 1: because they valued exploration as an economic activity. Columbus, I've
Speaker 1: never met the guy, but surely he did this because
Speaker 1: he and his heart was an explorer. And so the
Speaker 1: explorer explores, but somebody's got to write to check. And
Speaker 1: the history of this activity has demonstrated that the check
Speaker 1: writers or governments when you're exploring where no one has
Speaker 1: gone before, and private enterprise comes in later and exploit
Speaker 1: those activities in the financial interest of the nations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so in America's financial incentive to go into space, not
Speaker 1: because you're going to read the benefits of spinoffs, but
Speaker 1: because an innovation nation competes economically. In the twenty one century,
Speaker 1: if exploration is not a good note of reason for
Speaker 1: you to do it, then do it because you don't
Speaker 1: want to die poor. Well, you don't want to see
Speaker 1: a future of America where we are economically weak or
Speaker 1: powerless on the world's stage. I am reminded that in Economists,
Speaker 1: Paul Krugman speculated that the discovery of an impending alien
Speaker 1: attack would fix all of America's economic woes in about
Speaker 1: eighteen months. So if if Paul Krugman were to approach
Speaker 1: you about faking such a threat, what would you say. No,
Speaker 1: I would say that there's no doubt of America's resolve
Speaker 1: when we feel threatened. I think that's there's just no
Speaker 1: question about it. And because a threat transcends politics, if
Speaker 1: everyone feels threatened, then you're not gonna have one person
Speaker 1: say well, we're not threatened. If everybody feels threatened, and
Speaker 1: you have all pistons running aligned in Congress and moneys
Speaker 1: get the budgets get past, and military investments on flow
Speaker 1: legged rivers. This is a major thesis of the book,
Speaker 1: based on my read of the history of human conduct.
Speaker 1: What all I would say is the value of these
Speaker 1: investments not only would return in your security because you
Speaker 1: want to deflect the asteroid rather than go extinct, but
Speaker 1: also you become the kind of economy that thrives on
Speaker 1: innovation and those If that's my only point, it becomes
Speaker 1: an investment at that point, and the very question, oh
Speaker 1: can we really afford of course you can afford it
Speaker 1: because you invest it. You're investing, and you're expecting a
Speaker 1: return on that investment in the form of a wealthier
Speaker 1: nation in the decades to come. And by the way,
Speaker 1: that transcends time scales of quarterly reports and annual reports
Speaker 1: and congressional re election times. So somebody needs the foresight
Speaker 1: necessary to put this into motion to assure a future
Speaker 1: stability of our nation's economy. You know, you're talking about
Speaker 1: taking the long view, and um, I can't help but
Speaker 1: think about the long U and asteroids near Earth objects.
Speaker 1: Um oh you can, huh, you can't. Decades this has
Speaker 1: been you know, we have any astrophysicists in arms reach.
Speaker 1: You could have told you all about the asteroid threat.
Speaker 1: And apparently we are as a culture, as a world,
Speaker 1: we are feeble minded such that we don't believe it
Speaker 1: until it happens, and then it's kind of too late.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a little you know, excuse me, somehow,
Speaker 1: as threat asn't real unless it's staring you in the face.
Speaker 1: The good thing about science is that you can dicked
Speaker 1: the coming of a threat. Yet that's apparently not enough
Speaker 1: to trigger people's actions. The good thing, the silver lining
Speaker 1: of the euros meteor in Russia, is that nobody died.
Speaker 1: Many people injured, but nobody died. And so therefore, if
Speaker 1: we had to be slammed by something and learn a
Speaker 1: lesson from it, it was an ideal sort of lesson
Speaker 1: because everybody just needed to get a little patched up
Speaker 1: and going about their way to fix a few walls
Speaker 1: and windows. What a lesson that is. What a shot
Speaker 1: across the bow that was. But again, if we were
Speaker 1: already into space, this would be a trivial extension of
Speaker 1: activities we were already engaged in. If all you're gonna
Speaker 1: say now was listening to space so that we can
Speaker 1: stop an asteroid, are you're missing the point? You're missing
Speaker 1: the point. That's like saying I tried to analogize to
Speaker 1: the building of the interstate system in the country. If
Speaker 1: someone said, let's build an interstate to connect New York
Speaker 1: and Los Angeles, well, that's useful, for sure, but I
Speaker 1: will how about all the rest of the country. How
Speaker 1: about that? How about the other cities? What are you
Speaker 1: only going to do it to bring people one place
Speaker 1: to another, because that's all you can think of doing
Speaker 1: when there's all the rest of the country that's that
Speaker 1: is waiting to be explored. So I viewed the entire
Speaker 1: solar system as our backyard. And when you do, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe there's asteroid miners. One day and we show them
Speaker 1: our latest telescope data and they say that an asteroid
Speaker 1: headed our way. Could you guys snare it be where
Speaker 1: it puts us at risk? And they'll go ahead and
Speaker 1: stare it because there they know how to manipulate a
Speaker 1: maneuver and mine asteroids. The government wouldn't even people ever
Speaker 1: would pay for that, but they wouldn't have to like
Speaker 1: launch it themselves. All right, we're just gonna take one
Speaker 1: quick break and when we come back, more questions with
Speaker 1: neutograph types and including your question. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: Let's jump right back into the interview with the ductor
Speaker 1: and new of the draft type. Yeah. I just a
Speaker 1: very elegant explanation of asteroids and long period comments in
Speaker 1: your book and space chronicles, and I thought it just
Speaker 1: really laid out the reasons why we can detect some
Speaker 1: and the reasons why I can why we can't detect others.
Speaker 1: In particular, you talk about apopis, which I know you've
Speaker 1: talked about before in the media, and how this is
Speaker 1: actually something that's very serious that we need to focus
Speaker 1: on UM and I thought that maybe you could talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about that, um in practical terms, how
Speaker 1: we confront a problem like this and asteroid that's in
Speaker 1: our view. And then a second part to that, I
Speaker 1: thought maybe we could talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: role of privatization of asteroid mining and how that may
Speaker 1: or may not affect asteroids. Yeah, you know, if your mato,
Speaker 1: you might say that, lets blow the sucker out of
Speaker 1: the sky. You know, you got nukes in the silos
Speaker 1: left over from the Cold War put into good use.
Speaker 1: And you know what I say often and as all
Speaker 1: that I know of the American Armed Forces tells me
Speaker 1: this is true, that we're really good at blowing stuff
Speaker 1: up and less good at knowing where the pieces will fall.
Speaker 1: And that seems to have applied literally and metaphorically to
Speaker 1: our military policy, where if you're objective to be to
Speaker 1: blow up an asteroid, i'd be concerned that the one
Speaker 1: spot that was originally targeted by this asteroid is now
Speaker 1: headed to two places instead of one. So what have
Speaker 1: you done? Um, now you have to evacuate both coasts,
Speaker 1: and you know, so there's some emerging consensus among those
Speaker 1: who have studied the problem. Myself included that the soundest
Speaker 1: way to approach this problem is through an asteroid deflection scenario.
Speaker 1: The asteroid will continue to live another day and possibly
Speaker 1: harm you in another day, but the advantage of it
Speaker 1: is you get to nudge it slowly, and you get
Speaker 1: to watch how effective you've been, and you keep doing
Speaker 1: it until you are as effective as you needed to be.
Speaker 1: And so with a paphos, the idea of this is
Speaker 1: that when it comes very close to the Earth, that
Speaker 1: you alter its course with it so that in its
Speaker 1: return orbit it doesn't slam into the Earth precisely because
Speaker 1: the later you hit you get to the problem, and
Speaker 1: the more the all your capacity to solve that problem dropped. Gotcha,
Speaker 1: and a lot of us is looking into the crystal ball.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's been to talk about asteroid mining
Speaker 1: and private companies taking that on because you know, at
Speaker 1: at some point it might yield some some profits, certainly
Speaker 1: not right away. Uh. The question I think for us is,
Speaker 1: if you have so much space junk, if you have
Speaker 1: near Earth objects in orbit, and you have private companies
Speaker 1: up there now with their equipment, do they then have
Speaker 1: an obligation to help clean up space junk to help
Speaker 1: deflect near Earth objects. Yeah. I wouldn't call it an obligation.
Speaker 1: I would just call it no. How you know, who
Speaker 1: do you get? I mean, forgive me for referencing the
Speaker 1: movie Farm again, But they had a task set out
Speaker 1: in front of them in the film to bury a
Speaker 1: nuke in an asteroid, because otherwise it won't blow it apart.
Speaker 1: So in the ranks of NASA there was no one
Speaker 1: who had any experience drilling into solid rock or something
Speaker 1: hard to penetrate, and so they got Bruce Willis and
Speaker 1: his craft team of guess their oil rig drillers or something,
Speaker 1: and so they had a very specific talent set unique
Speaker 1: to the task. So, if we are busy turning the
Speaker 1: Solar System into our backyard, then there will be a
Speaker 1: mining company of exploiting asteroid. So we would presume that
Speaker 1: if if asteroid mining was an activity and economic activity,
Speaker 1: then they would know how to get to asteroids, how
Speaker 1: to mind them, how to turn them around, how to
Speaker 1: tow them from one location to another to be better
Speaker 1: suited for their access. And if you have that capability,
Speaker 1: then why wouldn't they be the ones you would task
Speaker 1: to uh deflect an asteroid and it becomes an asteroid? Right?
Speaker 1: Is one coming out way? I want you to take
Speaker 1: it and mind it for all it's worth, and and
Speaker 1: and we're done with it. Would that'd be kind of
Speaker 1: cool if every asteroid that would end life on Earth
Speaker 1: simply became a source of natural resources to help life
Speaker 1: on Earth. That's the kind of thinking that goes on
Speaker 1: when you're in an innovation nation. A storm is ready
Speaker 1: to hit the coast, you know, do you run away
Speaker 1: from it and buy up all the water from the
Speaker 1: shelves or what do you say? How can I mitigate
Speaker 1: that storm? How can I deflect that storm? How can
Speaker 1: I tap the psychlonic energy contained within it and drive
Speaker 1: the energy needs of the city that it's about to destroy?
Speaker 1: So I wouldn't call it an obligation. I'll just call it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Of course they'll do it, and of course and they'll
Speaker 1: know how to. Other people will have money, but not
Speaker 1: to know now, so you pay them. I mean it's
Speaker 1: a company and they use their resources. You're paying to
Speaker 1: use their resources. You know, the Post Office doesn't fly
Speaker 1: their own airplanes. They pay commercial carriers to fly mail
Speaker 1: US mail in their belly. The government has had this
Speaker 1: kind of relationship with a business forever. You know, how
Speaker 1: do we make the cheap? In World War Two government
Speaker 1: gave money the Christler said the Christler had a good design,
Speaker 1: They built the cheap and they still make cheaps and
Speaker 1: they make money off of it. That's how we're in
Speaker 1: a capitalist society. That's how you know, that's how that's
Speaker 1: supposed to work. Obviously, the wave of public and political
Speaker 1: support for a space explanation has that been flowed over
Speaker 1: the years. Um, but what if we had somehow maintained
Speaker 1: it at its level? How far would we be today? Oh?
Speaker 1: So at it? So at the level you're talking about
Speaker 1: would be the Mateen sixties six level. That's where NASA's
Speaker 1: funding had peaked as a percentage of the federal budget.
Speaker 1: It peaked at about four. In fact, there's a huge
Speaker 1: set of appendices in Space Chronicles where I plot the
Speaker 1: NASA's budget over fifty years, and in there is the
Speaker 1: original founding document of NASA. NASA has sounded like the
Speaker 1: same week I was born, So I feel NASA pains
Speaker 1: and joys and challenges. So in there you can see
Speaker 1: the plot of it's of the budget and it's it's
Speaker 1: a stunning difference between the commitment that we made as
Speaker 1: a nation over that period and the commitment we're making now. Now.
Speaker 1: You don't have to always keep the commitment at high
Speaker 1: if the nation gets wealthier. If the nation gets wealthier,
Speaker 1: which it has done over the decades, then your percentage
Speaker 1: could go down, yet your net money could go up.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's how that works if you're always referencing
Speaker 1: your budget as a percent of the federal budget. But
Speaker 1: to give to put some numbers on this, it was
Speaker 1: four in ninety six going into nineteen. That was so
Speaker 1: the peep build up of the Apollo program. And if
Speaker 1: we have that money now, NASA's budget would be eight
Speaker 1: times a factor of eight larger than its current value.
Speaker 1: If NASA we're we're appreciated at the same percent of
Speaker 1: the federal budget that it was back then, and I
Speaker 1: would claim that at a much lower price tag than that,
Speaker 1: you can turn the entire solar system into your backyard.
Speaker 1: You can reach a space rentier. And these are stories
Speaker 1: that the press would write about. I want to desk
Speaker 1: if you thought that an earthlike plant might be discovered,
Speaker 1: I don't know in fifty years, a hundred years. And
Speaker 1: do you think that it's something like citizen science that
Speaker 1: will be a part of it in the absence of
Speaker 1: a sput Nick moment or an alien attack. The sput
Speaker 1: Nick moments and the alien attacks are the kind of
Speaker 1: forces that galvanize an entire society. But in any society,
Speaker 1: there are always people. In any wealthy society, there are
Speaker 1: always people who will spend their mental and emotional energies
Speaker 1: thinking about discovery. It's been going on. The people are
Speaker 1: doing that ever since at the beginning. You know who's
Speaker 1: the first one to leave the cave. That's somebody who
Speaker 1: wants to discover. It's an urge within us that I
Speaker 1: don't think we should stand and denial of. Although many
Speaker 1: people have forgotten what it is or what it felt
Speaker 1: like to explore, every child knows what it's like to explore.
Speaker 1: They turn over rocks and climb trees, and pluck your suburban,
Speaker 1: Your climb trees, They plucked petals off roses jump two
Speaker 1: feet in puddles. They you know, this is what kids do.
Speaker 1: They catch snowflakes in their mouths, and adults somehow lose
Speaker 1: this playful curiosity about the world around them. And all
Speaker 1: you need to do is keep it. You don't have
Speaker 1: to create it from scratch. It was already there. Just
Speaker 1: find find ways to foster it and nurture it, and
Speaker 1: then you're you're coming along nicely. So now that the
Speaker 1: thrust of your question was, I just wondered if you
Speaker 1: thought that an earth like planet might be discovered in
Speaker 1: the next fifty years, and do you think that citizen
Speaker 1: science will be a part of that, since we're somewhat
Speaker 1: handstrong in terms of budgets to to to really look
Speaker 1: very hard for an earth like planet. Sure, well, we
Speaker 1: already have earth like planets in the catalog. So the
Speaker 1: challenge is an earthlike planet in the habitable zone, the
Speaker 1: Goldilocks zone of its host star, not too close otherwise
Speaker 1: if it had liquid water, it would evaporate, and not
Speaker 1: too far because if it had liquid water would freeze
Speaker 1: and that's not useful to life as we know it,
Speaker 1: which requires liquid water. So we have planets that have
Speaker 1: been discovered that just not many of them. This might
Speaker 1: handful fewer than five out of the we're rising through
Speaker 1: a thousand exoplanets that are in the catalogs today. Citizen
Speaker 1: science is a is a wonderful exploitation of the Internet,
Speaker 1: and we should have more of it, especially since in
Speaker 1: the astrophysics community we are overrun with data, the scales
Speaker 1: of data that we simply can't analyze ourselves, and I
Speaker 1: think that's a good thing. I think there should be
Speaker 1: more of it, especially for the data heavy fields such
Speaker 1: as my own. But that's itself is not going to
Speaker 1: transform a culture. That's gonna that's a side activity for
Speaker 1: people who already know they like science. Okay, how are
Speaker 1: you doing on time? Do you have time for a
Speaker 1: few of the listeners submitted questions or do you know
Speaker 1: at fifteen more minutes? Okay, well, I'm gonna go through these.
Speaker 1: If you don't like the question, are you I'll take
Speaker 1: any question to give me. Okay, all right, Well, this
Speaker 1: is the first question comes from a listener named Mike.
Speaker 1: Mike asked, can you expound in a simple way on
Speaker 1: how dark matter and energy seem to bind and expand
Speaker 1: the matter we see as the visible universe. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: So if you think of mass, all right, mass can
Speaker 1: be manifested in two ways. In one form it is energy.
Speaker 1: In another form it's matter. Okay, they think of that,
Speaker 1: think of it that way, and each of those contain
Speaker 1: mass were mass equivalent. And our understanding of the universe
Speaker 1: is beginning, it's evolution. Its end sort of flows through
Speaker 1: that understanding, and you can look at how much mass
Speaker 1: there is in the universe and what it's doing to
Speaker 1: the universe. Over the years, beginning in ninety six, we
Speaker 1: learned that there's more going on in the universe than
Speaker 1: just what our mass is doing. So in seven we
Speaker 1: discovered us there's gravity out there that has no known
Speaker 1: point of origin. And then in to two decades ago,
Speaker 1: in late nineties, that is, we found that there's a
Speaker 1: pressure in the vacuum of space that's forcing the universe
Speaker 1: to expand. So and those are huge fractions of all
Speaker 1: that is driving the universe. If you add up the
Speaker 1: extra gravity, which we call dark matter, with the extra
Speaker 1: pressure on the in the vacuum of space, which we
Speaker 1: call dark energy, it's of everything we know. So you know,
Speaker 1: you can say we're just completely stupid about how the
Speaker 1: universe works, although the part we do know works really
Speaker 1: really well, so that's a good thing. But the rest,
Speaker 1: if you can if you combine them. So there's our
Speaker 1: sort of mass, which is matter and energy, and then
Speaker 1: the the the the the dark matter, and the dark energy.
Speaker 1: All of this is what's driving the universe. And the
Speaker 1: total sort of energy content in the universe is contained
Speaker 1: in the sum of those three. And we don't know
Speaker 1: what's causing the dark matter, and we don't know what's
Speaker 1: causing the dark energy. Okay um. Our next question comes
Speaker 1: to us from listener Jerry. Jerry asked, how do we
Speaker 1: communicate science effectively? And what other science communicators do you
Speaker 1: admire other than the great Sagans or at for us?
Speaker 1: Uh So, in America we do we do a few
Speaker 1: things very well, or at least we do a few
Speaker 1: things famously. One of them is that we make jets,
Speaker 1: all right. Another one is it's our entertainment industry. You know,
Speaker 1: America entertains the world with our movies, our TV shows,
Speaker 1: our podcasts, our our broadcast content. Is an extraordinary gift
Speaker 1: to the world. Any of us remember when you visit
Speaker 1: other countries when you were a kid, you put on
Speaker 1: the TV and there's your favorite TV show dubbed in
Speaker 1: the local language, whereas we don't have any of their
Speaker 1: TV shows dubbed in English. Right, So there's clearly a
Speaker 1: one way street going on here where we're entertaining the world.
Speaker 1: It would be irresponsible of anyone who is trying to
Speaker 1: teach an electorate if it could be irresponsible if they
Speaker 1: didn't exploit the power of media, entertainment, media and delivering
Speaker 1: the messages. So that's just an important fact. Okay, we
Speaker 1: have another question that comes to us from listener Cody.
Speaker 1: Cody asked, what's your view on the connection between science
Speaker 1: and philosophy. There's a very long tradition of a marriage
Speaker 1: between science and philosophy that goes back forever. And if
Speaker 1: you look at what the philosopher does, the philosopher assesses
Speaker 1: the landscape and then sits in a chair and thinks
Speaker 1: about it, deep thoughts, and then comes up with some
Speaker 1: new understanding, with some new outlook on that landscape. Philosophers
Speaker 1: at their best, that's what they do. The scientists, as
Speaker 1: scientists at their best, will assess the landscape, propose an
Speaker 1: idea for how or why that landscape should be something else.
Speaker 1: Or something different or something more nuanced, and then they'll
Speaker 1: divide an experiment to test the idea. If the idea
Speaker 1: is not supported by experiment, they discard the idea and
Speaker 1: then move on to the next one. So the difference
Speaker 1: between the philosopher and the scientist is that the philosopher
Speaker 1: has no laboratory, pilosopher has no telescope. Plosopher has no
Speaker 1: particle accelerator. And when physics, which I'm using sort of
Speaker 1: as elite science in my answer to your question, when
Speaker 1: physics left the tabletop, which is basically the hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, it left the tabletop and entered the
Speaker 1: realm of the quantum, which which lives wholly outside of
Speaker 1: human experience and human common sense, and it looked at
Speaker 1: the large scale structure of the universe. These two extremes
Speaker 1: fall so far away from your life experience that you
Speaker 1: can't sit on a couch and deduce the nature of
Speaker 1: the world from your own life experience, because your life
Speaker 1: experience doesn't contain that which the experiments are demonstrating that
Speaker 1: the how the actual world behaves. Now, of course Einstein
Speaker 1: conjured up relativity, you know, not quite out of the blue,
Speaker 1: but there were some puzzling things that could not be understood,
Speaker 1: and he wrote a mathematical formalism for his theory, and
Speaker 1: then that came up with predictions, so that we tested
Speaker 1: the predictions and if theories turned out to be true.
Speaker 1: So that's a good thing. Philosophers don't tend to bring
Speaker 1: math to the problem in the way actual scientists do.
Speaker 1: The more sort of idea driven than calculation driven. Historically,
Speaker 1: that's how that's been the case. So I could a
Speaker 1: philosopher have come up with relativity, I suppose, but they didn't.
Speaker 1: A philosopher surely could have come up with evolution because
Speaker 1: the data were available, although Gdarin had some extra data
Speaker 1: to really drive it home, but that one didn't require
Speaker 1: from financy equipment to have resolved biology. Philosopher in principle
Speaker 1: could have come up with evolution by natural selection, but
Speaker 1: they didn't. It was a scientist. And so you look
Speaker 1: at progress in our understanding of the natural world in
Speaker 1: the last hundred years, the last hundred and fifty years,
Speaker 1: that progress has primarily been by the thinking of scientists,
Speaker 1: not of philosophers. Now you can say some scientists are
Speaker 1: thinking philosophically. I don't have a problem with that, But
Speaker 1: to say, let us train people in philosophy so that
Speaker 1: they can become better scientists, I don't. I don't improve
Speaker 1: of that at all. That my read of how that
Speaker 1: has gone in the past century tells me that you
Speaker 1: are removing yourself from the frontier cosmic discovery. Now there's
Speaker 1: some branches of science that are brand new, like spanking
Speaker 1: brand new, like neuroscience. All right, that's only been on
Speaker 1: the map, you know, ten years tops before then. There
Speaker 1: are people, you know, poking around the brain, but it
Speaker 1: hadn't really taken off as its own, as its own
Speaker 1: field where you can get degrees in it. And that's
Speaker 1: early enough that and plus, the mind is so fascinating
Speaker 1: and so complex, and there's so many ways that can
Speaker 1: think about how it works and how it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: It might benefit from the efforts of philosophers. And I
Speaker 1: know there are a bunch of sort of neuro philosophers
Speaker 1: who are orbiting the field in an effort to contribute.
Speaker 1: And my hope is that they can and set things
Speaker 1: in directions that they need to be in the way
Speaker 1: early philosophers with regard to physics did for physicists. There
Speaker 1: are other branches of You know, this philosophy of ethics
Speaker 1: is religious philosophy. There are other kinds of philosophy out there.
Speaker 1: You were, specifically, I presume, referring to philosophers in ways
Speaker 1: that they might contribute to the advancing frontier of science
Speaker 1: and your questions the philosophers asked that are just simply
Speaker 1: not useful to a scientist, like how do you really
Speaker 1: know the moon is there? To say, well, I have
Speaker 1: light and the well, that's just the light of the moon.
Speaker 1: You know, how about the moon itself, Well, I can measure, well,
Speaker 1: that's just a measurement of the light of them. And
Speaker 1: and you could down many kinds of beer discussing the
Speaker 1: there's another there's a whole there's a chunk of philosophers
Speaker 1: who are asking the question, is it the molecule H
Speaker 1: two oh water? If you isolate a single H to
Speaker 1: a molecule, is that water? Whereas Warter the macroscopic properties
Speaker 1: we give when you have countless numbers of these, and
Speaker 1: then you then it flows and its liquid e And
Speaker 1: you know it's not a liquid, it's not a solid,
Speaker 1: it's it's not anything. So it's a molecule. The philosophers
Speaker 1: arguing this publishing papers on this, and the scientist just
Speaker 1: doesn't have time. The luxury of time. I call them
Speaker 1: beer conversations, conversations where you just sort of question the
Speaker 1: existential conversations about knowledge and life and mind matter. You know, okay,
Speaker 1: but it's not useful in the laboratory. UM let me
Speaker 1: just follow up on that too. I was thinking about
Speaker 1: ethics in terms of philosophy, and many times it comes up.
Speaker 1: So you're talking about out, for instance, bringing back the
Speaker 1: woolly mammoth, or if you're talking about artificial intelligence, you're
Speaker 1: talking about ethics. They're um making certain that some sort
Speaker 1: of piece of technology isn't gonna show up on the
Speaker 1: black market. How much of that should science be concerned
Speaker 1: with before after the creation the possibility. So I'm curious
Speaker 1: whether there is a negative argument to cloning a mammoth
Speaker 1: other than no, it's extinct, will leave it extinct? You know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't someone's going to clone a mammoth.
Speaker 1: You know, you get the tissue out of the glacier
Speaker 1: as the glacier melt, because all our glaciers are melting,
Speaker 1: so all kinds of fun I say, creatures are going
Speaker 1: to be spilling out of that glacier glacier probably a
Speaker 1: few caveman while we're at it, and so, yeah, we
Speaker 1: have the power to clone it. Somebody's going to clone it.
Speaker 1: Now to ask what the ethics of that is, I
Speaker 1: think there's there are more interesting ethical questions that are
Speaker 1: in front of us. And whether we clone in mammoth like,
Speaker 1: you know, cloning people who are cloning or creating deadly viruses.
Speaker 1: You know, that could be used genocidally. I mean, so
Speaker 1: if you had to rank the topics top to bottom,
Speaker 1: you know what we do with the mammoths. I don't
Speaker 1: think people are going to protest. I agree. I think
Speaker 1: that what I'm thinking about is how much of the
Speaker 1: scientists concern him or herself when they are going through
Speaker 1: the motions of what is possible, what can be created?
Speaker 1: Is this out of the realm of scientists? Should they
Speaker 1: concentrate on what is possible? And you know, does the
Speaker 1: just society create the ethics? Does should there be any
Speaker 1: sort of overlapping there is that? Is that a job
Speaker 1: that the scientists would think about ethics? Yeah, that's an
Speaker 1: excellent point. I think it's the job of the scientists
Speaker 1: as a citizen to think about it. You know, all
Speaker 1: citizens should be thinking about the ethical conduct of the species.
Speaker 1: And fortunately, at leave there's been some good investment in this,
Speaker 1: in this along these lines over the decades and over
Speaker 1: the centuries, so that there's half actually been ethical shifts
Speaker 1: in our conduct over the years. Right. You know, their
Speaker 1: books written on how to treat your slave ethically, and
Speaker 1: they don't address the question of why you would have
Speaker 1: a slave in the first place. Right, So, so fortunately
Speaker 1: there's a collective sense of what is good and what
Speaker 1: is right that is not anchored in some time past
Speaker 1: where the needs and the conduct of what was considered
Speaker 1: reprehensible behavior, reprehensible behavior of the past defended by whatever
Speaker 1: documents people had or whatever their upbringing was. That the
Speaker 1: stuffing that does not carry into the future. I'm glad
Speaker 1: for that, right, I am free because of that. So
Speaker 1: so that's fine. So I think the ethics can be
Speaker 1: an evolving conversation. I'm old enough to remember all this
Speaker 1: conversation about um in vitro fertilization, the first test tube baby.
Speaker 1: Should we isn't you know? Now? It's it doesn't even
Speaker 1: it doesn't even make a news story if someone is
Speaker 1: born from a test tube it's a non story and
Speaker 1: so but at the time people know it's the ethics
Speaker 1: of this, and it's like, you know, chill out, you know,
Speaker 1: just try to think it through and you know, look
Speaker 1: at the benefits and is there a downside that isn't religion?
Speaker 1: You know, religion is always telling you what you shouldn't do.
Speaker 1: And so if your only revival is religion and you
Speaker 1: haven't really thought it through rationally, then you're missing some
Speaker 1: further conversations that should be had about what goes on.
Speaker 1: There's something else that's true that that needs to be
Speaker 1: on the table. That science fiction writers are awesome at
Speaker 1: depicting futures where science goes bad, and they create terrifying
Speaker 1: images of nuclear energy gone bad. You know, uh, just
Speaker 1: cloning gone bad. Um uh, virus has gone bad. And
Speaker 1: and I'm happy to report that there has never been
Speaker 1: science gone bad by the efforts of mad scientists who
Speaker 1: wants to take over the world. But we really have
Speaker 1: to watch out for our mad politicians, right even the
Speaker 1: Adam bomb as ass Yes, that was the whole set
Speaker 1: of complicit physicist who made that bomb, there's no doubt
Speaker 1: about it. But somebody paid their way. Somebody wrote their paycheck.
Speaker 1: Somebody funded that entire enterprise, and those are governments. Those
Speaker 1: the congress, that is the electorate, that is a president,
Speaker 1: that is a president's cabinet, somebody else by geopolitical forces
Speaker 1: are deciding what they want to do with the science,
Speaker 1: and you will you will never find scientists leading armies
Speaker 1: to invade other countries. It's just not what we do.
Speaker 1: So the the the ethical conduct is not so much
Speaker 1: of what a science just does, but how does the
Speaker 1: society react to the discoveries of science, And that needs
Speaker 1: to be a in the Some over lap there, of course,
Speaker 1: between the two. But ethics is a cultural problem, not
Speaker 1: simply that of what a scientist does. Almost every scientific
Speaker 1: discovery that we've ever found has extraordinary benefit to humankind.
Speaker 1: Extraordinary the early days of of of nuclear physics, where
Speaker 1: we found radioactive materials, and Marie carry died of some
Speaker 1: kind of cancer. I think it was leukemia, surely as
Speaker 1: a result of her playing around with radium named because
Speaker 1: of his radioactive properties. There's an entire branch of medicine
Speaker 1: called radiology, which is the benefits of the investments of
Speaker 1: physicists who are trying to understand nature at its most
Speaker 1: most basic level, so extraordinary benefits to society await us
Speaker 1: by every scientific discovery. Uh that is to come, history
Speaker 1: tells us. Okay, well, that concludes the interview. I hope
Speaker 1: that you guys have enjoyed that. Again, thank you guys
Speaker 1: for giving us some great questions for him to answer.
Speaker 1: And uh, I think we have time for a bit
Speaker 1: of mail here. Let's see. Let's call the robot over.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, we heard from listener Adam, and Adam writes
Speaker 1: then with an email title discovering Nutmeg in India, of course,
Speaker 1: responding to our episode that we did on the science
Speaker 1: and history of nutmeg. He says, Hey, guys, I went
Speaker 1: on a tour of Kerala's backwaters basically huge waterways that
Speaker 1: people live alongside, and we went to a spice farm.
Speaker 1: Guess what was there? Meg? My first thought was your
Speaker 1: podcast about nutmeg last year. As the guide explained it,
Speaker 1: he went part by part. The red part inside is
Speaker 1: called mace in the local language and is extremely expensive.
Speaker 1: It's used in Indian dishes like very Yanni. The best part, however,
Speaker 1: it was when he described how you could get a
Speaker 1: quote unquote kick from eating too much nutmeg. I don't
Speaker 1: think the others understood, but thanks to your podcast, I
Speaker 1: knew exactly what he meant. Thanks again and keep up
Speaker 1: the great work. Some pictures from the two were attached
Speaker 1: with the nutmeg at the bottom. And Adam, of course
Speaker 1: is the chief Happiness Officer who has been traveling around
Speaker 1: the world and and regularly writes into our podcast and
Speaker 1: a few other house tofforks podcasts as well, and you
Speaker 1: can find out more about what he's up to at
Speaker 1: happiness plunge dot com. But yeah, he sent us a
Speaker 1: number of these pictures and as always, just fascinating glimpse
Speaker 1: into his travels. Yeah, I love that to the the
Speaker 1: tour guide had a little wink wink nudge nutge because
Speaker 1: they're referring to the hallucinogenic properties of nutmeg, which we've
Speaker 1: probably said us a million times by now not worth it. Uh.
Speaker 1: If anybody is like, wow, that has hallucinatory properties, that
Speaker 1: is not the stuff that anybody really wants to play with,
Speaker 1: I should say. We also heard from a couple of
Speaker 1: listeners out there who were really taken by our our
Speaker 1: episodes that dealt with the shadow self as it relates
Speaker 1: to well. In one episode of Pro Wrestling in the
Speaker 1: other episode, we talked about undercover cops who have a
Speaker 1: false identity that they're using, and also actors and method
Speaker 1: or otherwise that are that have to put cloak themselves
Speaker 1: in some level of fiction in order to do their thing.
Speaker 1: So we heard from Josephine Josephine Wrightson and says, Hi,
Speaker 1: Robert and Julie, I really enjoyed your last episode on
Speaker 1: the self and the roles we play. I really enjoy
Speaker 1: your podcast your other podcast as well, of course, and
Speaker 1: had a couple of things to contribute to the discussion. First,
Speaker 1: I went and listened to Bandy Newton's Ted Talk, and
Speaker 1: at one point she mentions feeling that she didn't have
Speaker 1: a self since she was able to play other people
Speaker 1: so well. That reminded me of another actor who supposedly
Speaker 1: felt the same way, Peter Sellers on the subject of
Speaker 1: playing characters as an actor, myself, I find it best
Speaker 1: to take some method step to get to the right
Speaker 1: place emotionally. But I find the strangest thing in my
Speaker 1: case is that though I always have my home self,
Speaker 1: whatever character I'm playing at the time usually rubs off
Speaker 1: on me a bit. It's sort of like who I
Speaker 1: normally am is being shown through the lens of another personality.
Speaker 1: I remember one character I played, Charles, the second of
Speaker 1: England's Minister nel Gwen, who was very happy and positive,
Speaker 1: had a particular effect on me. And my mom's always
Speaker 1: said that she can come back anytime she likes. Can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear your next podcast, Sincerely, Josephine in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Speaker 1: Very interesting, UM, And I can't help but think of personality.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like a prism and it kind of
Speaker 1: depends on which direction the light is hitting it and
Speaker 1: which you exhibit whatever feelings or personality at that time. Um.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about this before, about how it's related
Speaker 1: to consciousness and the unconscious, so again it's it's very
Speaker 1: interesting to me to know that personality isn't something that
Speaker 1: is always a stable thing. You really have to work
Speaker 1: out it because it's part of that instruction of our reality.
Speaker 1: We also heard from a listener by the name of Stephanie.
Speaker 1: Stephanie writes in and says hello, Robert and Julie, greetings
Speaker 1: from Toronto. Another one and she's responding to the same episode,
Speaker 1: So there you go. I wonder if they know each other. Um,
Speaker 1: she says, I recently enjoyed listening to your episode on
Speaker 1: undercover Actors in the Shadow sell. You invited undercover agents
Speaker 1: and actors to write in and share their experiences of
Speaker 1: identity and role playing. While I don't fit either of
Speaker 1: those descriptions, I thought you'd be interested in my perspective
Speaker 1: on the issue, since I suffer from what they might
Speaker 1: be diagnosed as a particularly acute form of imposter syndrome
Speaker 1: as a result of the way people respond to my
Speaker 1: outer self. Yes, it's much different from my inner self.
Speaker 1: I'm thirty with a PhD and a tenure track appointment
Speaker 1: at a major Canadian research university, but I look like
Speaker 1: I'm about seventeen, with wide blue eyes and a small
Speaker 1: stature at five two and about a hundred pounds. While
Speaker 1: the situation is well situated for winning the biggest stuffed
Speaker 1: animal prize of the AID, guesting carnival booth, and convincing
Speaker 1: a class of undergraduates that you're a child genius, a
Speaker 1: real life dugie howser, it often just makes me feel
Speaker 1: clause trophobic in my own body. The way I'm treated
Speaker 1: by others never seems to match my sense of self.
Speaker 1: Since starting his faculty at the University. Of this past summer,
Speaker 1: the situation has become its most intense. Each new person
Speaker 1: I meet, students, staff, or fellow faculty member treats me
Speaker 1: like a first year student unless I correct them, which
Speaker 1: for the most part, I've given up doing. After encountering
Speaker 1: this response multiple times a day from a range of
Speaker 1: people for the past several months, I'm beginning to feel
Speaker 1: like a young actor playing a grown up role. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if this is just a serious case of
Speaker 1: imposter syndrome or whether a more fundamental shift in my
Speaker 1: sense of self is happening. Your discussion made me wonder
Speaker 1: what I'd be like, who I'd be if the way
Speaker 1: others respond to me had always aligned with my age
Speaker 1: and general intelligence level. I've attached a picture of me
Speaker 1: on my honeymoon that illustrates this issue. More evidence available here.
Speaker 1: And then she said a Flickr page, so it love
Speaker 1: the podcast, Stephanie, and I did see that picture, and yes,
Speaker 1: she she does come across as very young, and I
Speaker 1: have to say that I understand what she's saying because
Speaker 1: to a certain age I had the same problem. And
Speaker 1: it is a little bit odd because people don't expect
Speaker 1: you to sort of come out as is the person
Speaker 1: that you are. They think that, and not that I'm
Speaker 1: petite and I look like I'm eighteen, because certainly there's
Speaker 1: neither one of these. It's true. Uh, but people don't
Speaker 1: always expect, you know, a certain personality to come out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It was a really fascinating email to read,
Speaker 1: you know, to think about. You know, you know what
Speaker 1: what happens when who we feel we are inside is
Speaker 1: out of step with her outer self, be it because
Speaker 1: of our physical appearance, or because the way we end
Speaker 1: up carrying ourselves in the world, or even just how
Speaker 1: we are in first impressions versus how how we really are,
Speaker 1: and you do get into this complex question of who
Speaker 1: are we really you know, well, and especially if you
Speaker 1: look at the studies that say that an infticular, are
Speaker 1: men who are taller tend to have more responsibilities put
Speaker 1: upon them and tend to get promoted more, and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth, and that that's a huge generalization.
Speaker 1: But actually I should dig up that study so I
Speaker 1: can talk about it a little bit more in detail.
Speaker 1: But things like that that, you know, color people's perception,
Speaker 1: and then the way that you get to operate in
Speaker 1: the world. Uh so if you are that person, or
Speaker 1: if you're not that person, or if you're blonde or
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. You know, how, how does
Speaker 1: that affect the way that you accept certain responsibility in
Speaker 1: the world or don't accept them. Yeah, I mean, I, um,
Speaker 1: I'm six two or six three, depending on you know,
Speaker 1: how I want to measure myself. I guess I guess
Speaker 1: I'm sixth three, but sometimes I hold it at six
Speaker 1: two because it feels like a good cutting off point.
Speaker 1: But you were just promoted to like president of the universe, No,
Speaker 1: I think now I grow my sideburns long and so that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, people might see me and they're like, who's
Speaker 1: that tall guy. We should promote him to a level
Speaker 1: of incompetence, and then they do my sideburns and they're
Speaker 1: like maybe not, maybe not. You just cited the Peter principle,
Speaker 1: did I know? Yeah? Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I have been there to varying degrees in
Speaker 1: the past. Before I want up here and groom my
Speaker 1: side burns out. So yeah, you've been to the Peter principle. Well,
Speaker 1: I have found myself being when I was in newspapers.
Speaker 1: I found myself gaining more and more responsibilities that I
Speaker 1: didn't really want or enjoy and or or even was
Speaker 1: necessarily that good at them. But yeah, no, I think
Speaker 1: every buddy has stepped into Peter's suit at one time
Speaker 1: or another. So my advice is grow your cideburns out
Speaker 1: everyone ladies too. Yeah, I say, I'm with my mind
Speaker 1: all right. Well, if you have anything you would like
Speaker 1: to share with us, be it about this whole you
Speaker 1: can undrew we were just talking about related itself, about
Speaker 1: the shadow self, and if you have any feedback or
Speaker 1: anything to add regarding the neotographed Tyson interview, we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you again. It was a tremendous treat
Speaker 1: to speak with Dr Tyson, and I really enjoy getting
Speaker 1: to share your questions with him. So I really think
Speaker 1: from now on, whenever it's it's possible, I will reach
Speaker 1: out to people on Facebook and let you guys contribute
Speaker 1: at least some of the questions for our our interviews.
Speaker 1: So if you want to do that, if you want
Speaker 1: to find us on Facebook and follow us so that
Speaker 1: you can be on top of that. Um again, Facebook,
Speaker 1: we are stuff to blow your mind. We're also stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your Mind on Tumbler and on Twitter. We
Speaker 1: go by the handle below the Mind, and you can
Speaker 1: always drop us a line at blow the Mind at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Does it how stuff works out? Up? Could
Speaker 1: e