Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: This season of Smart Talks with IBM is all about
Speaker 1: new creators, the developers, data scientists, c t o s
Speaker 1: and other visionaries creatively applying technology in business to drive change.
Speaker 1: They use their knowledge and creativity to develop better ways
Speaker 1: of working, no matter the industry. Join hosts from your
Speaker 1: favorite Pushkin Industries podcasts as they use their expertise to
Speaker 1: deepen these conversations, and of course Malcolm Gladwell will guide
Speaker 1: you through the season as your host and provide his
Speaker 1: thoughts and analysis along the way. Look out for new
Speaker 1: episodes of Smart Talks with IBM on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: and learn more at IBM dot com slash smart talks. Hello, Hello,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Smart Talks with IBM podcast Bushkin Industries, Ighart
Speaker 1: Radio and IBM. I'm Malcolm Glabo. This season, we're talking
Speaker 1: to the new creators, the developers, data scientists, c t
Speaker 1: o s and other visionaries who are creatively applying technology
Speaker 1: and business to drive change. Channeling their knowledge and expertise,
Speaker 1: they are developing more creative and effective solutions, no matter
Speaker 1: the industry. On the final episode of the season. Our
Speaker 1: guest is NASA astronaut and retired Army Colonel Mark Bandahi.
Speaker 1: Mark holds the record for the longest single space flight
Speaker 1: undertaken by an American. He spent three hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: five days in orbit on the International Space Station, returning
Speaker 1: to Earth on March thirty. During his nearly year long
Speaker 1: stay in space, Mark conducted scientific experiments on behalf of NASA,
Speaker 1: including research where he himself was the test subject. By
Speaker 1: documenting the physiological changes he went through, Mark serves as
Speaker 1: an important source of data and understanding the impact of
Speaker 1: extended spaceflight on humans. I spoke with Mark about his
Speaker 1: experience as an astronaut and what he learned from living
Speaker 1: in space for a year. He told me about performing
Speaker 1: research only doable in space, times he felt true fear,
Speaker 1: and how seeing Earth from orbit challenged his personal beliefs
Speaker 1: and led him to become an advocate for mental health
Speaker 1: and sustainability. Okay, let's get to the interview, So tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit. Did you always want to be
Speaker 1: an astronaut? What? What? What drew you to space in
Speaker 1: the first place. I was always curious about space, largely
Speaker 1: because just trying to get my head wrapped around how
Speaker 1: we fit into the very grandest scheme of things has
Speaker 1: always been interesting to me. But I always thought of
Speaker 1: becoming an astronaut, like trying to become Spider Man. Like
Speaker 1: that's just not a realistic idea. It might sound cool,
Speaker 1: but that's like a superhero thing. So when I first
Speaker 1: joined the Army, my company commander, my boss, handed me
Speaker 1: a note because he knew I had a degree in
Speaker 1: in a technical field. That was a message from the
Speaker 1: Army saying that NASA wanted military people with these qualifications
Speaker 1: to apply to the ASTERNAT program. And I looked at
Speaker 1: the list and I had a bunch of them. That
Speaker 1: made me really excited. I thought, that's like, that's a possibility.
Speaker 1: And then um, when I went to grad school, had
Speaker 1: a lot of different things to possibly study, and it
Speaker 1: showed space physics, and just randomly, the Army said, Hey,
Speaker 1: we're starting a new career field called space operations. I
Speaker 1: signed up and got accepted to go into space operations,
Speaker 1: and I ended up getting loaned out to the Aston
Speaker 1: office at NASA to work in the Mischi Control Center, which, honestly,
Speaker 1: I love that job so much that I could be
Speaker 1: doing that till and never having been an astro, and
Speaker 1: felt like I was super blessed. It was amazing to
Speaker 1: live in history and just talking to the astronauts in space,
Speaker 1: helping them solve problems while I'm listening to what the
Speaker 1: flight control team is doing. That's a fantastic job. I
Speaker 1: absolutely loved it. During the three year period that I
Speaker 1: expected to do that, they're hired another class and that
Speaker 1: was That was the first time I decided to apply,
Speaker 1: and largely because my wife said, Mark, come on, you
Speaker 1: gotta try. Because I thought there's no way they would
Speaker 1: ever hire me, so I almost self selected myself out
Speaker 1: of that possibility. So really, I feel very very fortunate.
Speaker 1: I could have very easily not pursued this. I'm very
Speaker 1: happy it worked out, and I'm very happy I did
Speaker 1: pursue it. There's thousands of people that could do this
Speaker 1: job that never got the opportunity and may have done
Speaker 1: a better job than I did. I just somehow got
Speaker 1: the job. Yeah. Now, you had the record for the
Speaker 1: longest time in space, right, it's the record for an
Speaker 1: American astronut for the longest single flight. So Scott Kelly
Speaker 1: flew for three and forty days continuously, and I threw
Speaker 1: flew for three and fifty five days continuously. What is
Speaker 1: it about you that allows you to do that? Like
Speaker 1: you know, if you I'm I'm I'm gonna say, if
Speaker 1: you put me through the exact same training you went through,
Speaker 1: there's no way I'm spending three days I would have,
Speaker 1: I would lose my mind. I think what I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do is compare myself between the first flight and the
Speaker 1: second flight. After I came back from the first flight,
Speaker 1: I had no desire to go back. The big change
Speaker 1: for me between the first and second flight is I
Speaker 1: paid a lot more attention to my mental health. I
Speaker 1: got in the habit of meditating every day, and I
Speaker 1: think that helped me not only recognize the value of
Speaker 1: trying to appreciate the present moment and try to be
Speaker 1: curious about the present moment, but it also made me
Speaker 1: more aware of what internal habit patterns I have, and
Speaker 1: it gave me the ability to kind of almost be
Speaker 1: an external observer of those, so that when I I
Speaker 1: could recognize sometimes that hey, you're making up a very
Speaker 1: negative story and that's why you're grumpy right now. And
Speaker 1: that really helped me out with making a mental shift.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about what you're doing when
Speaker 1: you're up. You know, why is it important to do
Speaker 1: various kinds of experiments and things in space? Yeah, great question.
Speaker 1: That's a really important question too. So it is a
Speaker 1: national laboratory, and it's it's unique because a lot of
Speaker 1: dominant forces on the ground are not dominant forces in space.
Speaker 1: So you get pretty interesting effects. Like when you make
Speaker 1: a flame on the Earth, because of the pressure differentials
Speaker 1: and the fact that the hot combustion products are lighter,
Speaker 1: they will rise up and go away from the flame,
Speaker 1: and that will draw in the auction rich gases that
Speaker 1: keep the flame going. So in space, those combustion gases
Speaker 1: will just make a ball around the source of the fire.
Speaker 1: Turns out that flames in space burn more efficiently and
Speaker 1: at a lower temperature, So there's some potential to have
Speaker 1: a cleaner burning combustion engine. But that just gives us
Speaker 1: a more depth of understanding of how these things work.
Speaker 1: It just gives us another way to change some of
Speaker 1: the the variables. Another thing that that we can do
Speaker 1: on the space station is sedimentation. If you take a
Speaker 1: solution over time on the Earth with the heavier items
Speaker 1: and that solution are going to settle to the bottom. Well,
Speaker 1: in space, there's no preferred direction for those things to
Speaker 1: go in because everything isn't. This what I like to
Speaker 1: call a free fall that just keeps missing the Earth.
Speaker 1: So we're in a continuous state of freefall. Solutions stay
Speaker 1: very homogeneous. You can do experiments like there's even the
Speaker 1: way we try to simulate the human body with body
Speaker 1: samples and try to understand how things work. In the
Speaker 1: space station, where those things float, it's a closer simulation
Speaker 1: to something being inside the human body. So there's this
Speaker 1: I could go on and on. Clearly there's a whole
Speaker 1: lot of different things that that allows us to do.
Speaker 1: And delicate structures, even protein structures that we could never
Speaker 1: make stay together on the ground, can stay together in space.
Speaker 1: Oh that's interesting. So it just gives you a it's
Speaker 1: like another context for trying to it and scientific knowledge.
Speaker 1: It just you've you've changed all of kind of the
Speaker 1: defining variables of the experiment. Absolutely, that's it's a very
Speaker 1: significant thing. Absolutely. And then there's also that the idea
Speaker 1: of what we're doing in the space station, not just
Speaker 1: for science, but for human exploration, because we're putting people
Speaker 1: in space for such a long period of time, we're
Speaker 1: getting a better understanding of how to keep people healthy.
Speaker 1: We can do technology experiments to try to figure out
Speaker 1: how to get things to work for these long er
Speaker 1: ation space flights where we're gonna put people much further
Speaker 1: away from the Earth than I was on my flight.
Speaker 1: Some of those experiments associate were associated with me being
Speaker 1: a subject of the experiments. Give me an example of
Speaker 1: a kind of health care related line of research. Sure,
Speaker 1: I'm very open about the fact that I lost eight
Speaker 1: percent of my bone density. That's not typical for somebody
Speaker 1: at my age and my activity level, But as a
Speaker 1: function of being in space, I lost eight percent of
Speaker 1: my bone density because no more you know, you're not
Speaker 1: exercising with any resistance at all. Is that? Is that
Speaker 1: the reason almost true? You spend all of your time
Speaker 1: except for when you're exercising, without really needing a skeleton
Speaker 1: to to to support you. Because that's why we have
Speaker 1: a skeleton. When you're in a freefall all the time,
Speaker 1: there's nothing that you have to use to resist the
Speaker 1: ground or to keep you standing on the ground. So
Speaker 1: we have a resistive exercise device on the space station that. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's very interesting. It uses vacuum cylinders as the source
Speaker 1: of the force. So when you expand the vacuum cylinder,
Speaker 1: unlike a spring, the vacuum cylinder the force will be
Speaker 1: constant regardless of how far you pull it, whereas with
Speaker 1: a spring, the more you expand the spring, the higher
Speaker 1: the force gets. So that allows us to have kind
Speaker 1: of what we want. But I like to tell school kids,
Speaker 1: if you imagine those vacuum cylinders being attached to one
Speaker 1: side of a seesaw pulling upwards and you on the
Speaker 1: other side of the seesaw pulling upwards, then you can
Speaker 1: change the mechanical advantage by moving where the pivot point is,
Speaker 1: where the fulcrum is, and so we have the ability
Speaker 1: to turn a crank and it can adjust the force
Speaker 1: you feel anywhere from twenty pound to six pounds. But
Speaker 1: even so, I'm stunned though by in the space of
Speaker 1: a year, even given determined efforts on your part to
Speaker 1: counteract the effects of the physiological effects of being in
Speaker 1: a zero gravity atmosphere, even then the effect on your
Speaker 1: body was profound. A lot. It's a lot, But I
Speaker 1: lost seven percent on the first flight, and I got
Speaker 1: it all back before the second flight, so I fully
Speaker 1: expect to get it all back. It does come back,
Speaker 1: and with if somebody ever, some archaeologists someday ever examined
Speaker 1: my bones, they would be able to tell that I
Speaker 1: had flung in space because the way that matrix is
Speaker 1: built is somewhat different. But I fully expect all of
Speaker 1: all the bone density to come back. You know, the
Speaker 1: series we're doing is it's called The New Creators, and
Speaker 1: we're really focused on the role the creativity plays in
Speaker 1: kind of pushing the envelopes of knowledge. So I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm just curious about you're up there in this strange
Speaker 1: environment doing what's sound like some pretty sophisticated experiments. Can
Speaker 1: you give me an example at the time when you
Speaker 1: felt your kind of your creativity was being tapped in
Speaker 1: a meaningful way in this experience. Yeah? Interesting. I would
Speaker 1: say there is an experiment called Celestial Immunity that involved
Speaker 1: us with uh small Petrie dishes that contained body uh samples.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was a solution with some
Speaker 1: blood or or what or what, but I just know
Speaker 1: they were from various people, elderly and young people, and
Speaker 1: we would go through and use a pipette too inoculate
Speaker 1: them with various things, and then we would take these devices,
Speaker 1: put him in a black box to control the carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide and the temperature, and put them in a in
Speaker 1: a place to let them kind of incubate for a while.
Speaker 1: In the process of doing it, I think my creativity
Speaker 1: came in as I was describing the challenges that I
Speaker 1: realized that the the people who designed the experiment might
Speaker 1: not have realized we run into. And I was able
Speaker 1: to to use what I've had my hands on to
Speaker 1: to give them advice about ways we could change the
Speaker 1: experiment around. Because those peature dishes didn't have a lid,
Speaker 1: so they were just held in there by surface tension.
Speaker 1: And so the first time I did it, I I
Speaker 1: put them very slowly into the box, I closed the box,
Speaker 1: couldn't see what they were doing, and I had to
Speaker 1: very gently move them over to to the place where
Speaker 1: they can incubate. And I had no idea if I
Speaker 1: was succeeding or failing. So I think there was a
Speaker 1: lot of conversation, a lot of observing, a lot of
Speaker 1: trying to draw on the unique experiences I'm exposed to
Speaker 1: to help out them. And it turned out I was
Speaker 1: an orbit long enough that the second iteration that came up,
Speaker 1: and they had, among other things, that had put a
Speaker 1: thin sheet of flexible plastic on top. So instead of
Speaker 1: having to try to contain everything there, we just had
Speaker 1: to puncture it with a needle and add the add
Speaker 1: the inoculation that way instead, tell me a little bit
Speaker 1: more about that paramit. That's that celestial immunity investigation. But
Speaker 1: that's like the best name ever for a science experiment. Um,
Speaker 1: I agree, it sounds like Jesus is involved in some ways.
Speaker 1: I agree, no, wrong, But what was that experiment about
Speaker 1: trying to trying to trying to investigate. We're trying to
Speaker 1: understand how the human immune system reacts to different situations.
Speaker 1: So again, I think it's a great experiment to highlight
Speaker 1: because a better understanding of the human immune system will
Speaker 1: help out everybody. So on Earth, we might do an
Speaker 1: experiment where we have a variety of of different cell
Speaker 1: samples that were exposing to various pathogens and studying them.
Speaker 1: And hear, what we're doing is repeating the experiment under
Speaker 1: a radically different set of of conditions and in the
Speaker 1: hopes that changing the parameters of the experiment exposed some
Speaker 1: new bit of knowledge or yes, And I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's been successful or not, but we do know.
Speaker 1: We do know that there are of viruses that are
Speaker 1: more virulent in space for some reason. We don't understand
Speaker 1: why their biological things react differently. What was the most
Speaker 1: fun thing you did when the Uh one of my crewmates,
Speaker 1: Caleb Baron, for some reason that two of us decided
Speaker 1: we're going to try to do some stunts together. So
Speaker 1: we we literally would just have our feet hooked underneath
Speaker 1: some handrails and push off towards each other and then
Speaker 1: do something like get curl up, hit our hands down low.
Speaker 1: It causes to each spin um simultaneously Eno directions to
Speaker 1: a couple of backflips and then land. And it took
Speaker 1: a lot of attempts before we actually made it look
Speaker 1: like something was in sync. I've never once done a
Speaker 1: backflip in my life, but I've done four in a
Speaker 1: row before I hit my head on something on the
Speaker 1: space station. UH. We grew hatch chili peppers. UH. I
Speaker 1: recently got a certificate from New Mexico that said, congratulations,
Speaker 1: you're a hatstronaut. So I'm proud to have that title.
Speaker 1: The thought we tarned cooking with them. We didn't cook
Speaker 1: with them. We of course, it was science. So we
Speaker 1: had to ship most of them back to the ground
Speaker 1: frozen carefully. But they were very nice about letting us
Speaker 1: have some of the chili peppers, and they warned us
Speaker 1: that the stress response to the space environment that these
Speaker 1: peppers have, they think would be that they're more potent.
Speaker 1: And I think they were more potent. They were shockingly spicy.
Speaker 1: NASA could sell those chili peppers to some fancy restaurant
Speaker 1: and it could be, you know, celestially, you know, celestial
Speaker 1: pepper soup or something. You know, what a great name
Speaker 1: for a dish. I'm sure that celestial foods will be
Speaker 1: the culinary trend of the future. Pretty soon, we'll all
Speaker 1: be paying extra for specially vegetables grown in space. Forget
Speaker 1: farm to table, try orbit to table. Getting aside, there
Speaker 1: was one thing I made sure to ask Mark. I
Speaker 1: wanted to know more about the relationship between the astronauts
Speaker 1: and space and the NASA team on the ground. New
Speaker 1: technologies are reshaping the way astronauts communicate with their counterparts
Speaker 1: on Earth. IBM, for example, is testing edge computing solutions
Speaker 1: on board the space station to try and reduce the
Speaker 1: time it takes to analyze and send data. But what
Speaker 1: does this information flow mean for an astronaut's day to
Speaker 1: day life and what happens if there's an emergency? I
Speaker 1: asked Mark for more details. Tell me a little bit
Speaker 1: about the role that technology plays in UM in all
Speaker 1: of this, I mean, you're you're doing these experiments, You're
Speaker 1: actively learning in this new environment. UM, what's happening with
Speaker 1: the data? How are you making sense of it? Processing it?
Speaker 1: Tell me about that angle on the on your work.
Speaker 1: The astronauts live in the space station. The ground control
Speaker 1: team is controlling the space station, so that data flow,
Speaker 1: the telemetry from the space station, and the commanding to
Speaker 1: the space station is happening just to actually get the
Speaker 1: thing of work, to get the lab to work, to
Speaker 1: make it. If we want to change the temperature, we
Speaker 1: could we could go ahead and go deep into the
Speaker 1: software we got on board that we're trained to use
Speaker 1: in case we lose communications with the ground. But if
Speaker 1: we even want to change the temperature, we just call
Speaker 1: the ground control team and say, hey, one of our
Speaker 1: crew members feels a little cold. We all agreed we
Speaker 1: should raise the temperature by a degree or something. They
Speaker 1: would change it. So they're in charge. We live there
Speaker 1: and we take we take care of everything that we
Speaker 1: possibly can. So data transfer is crucial to the way
Speaker 1: we operate the space station today. In your time up there,
Speaker 1: did you have any kind of moments of crisis? Did
Speaker 1: you ever lose communication with Houston? Two times we lost
Speaker 1: as you control. I think we got to the point
Speaker 1: where they told us to start executing the procedure and
Speaker 1: then we're able to call us off, or they warned
Speaker 1: us that it's possible you could lose you know, maybe
Speaker 1: ten minutes from now, there's a risk of you losing
Speaker 1: communications for example. Is that scary? What never felt scary
Speaker 1: to me? And I don't. I think the reason it
Speaker 1: didn't feel scary is because when we do that on
Speaker 1: the ground for training, when we do it in a simulation,
Speaker 1: the simulation is much harder because in space, the ground
Speaker 1: was trying to help as much as possible. But on
Speaker 1: the ground they give you a scenario where you call
Speaker 1: the ground, you get no response. Every everything is as
Speaker 1: bad as possible. So it was to me it felt
Speaker 1: just like a simulation. But where the trainers were willing
Speaker 1: to give us more help than they were willing to
Speaker 1: give us on the ground. So and the culture that
Speaker 1: I got trained in and that's worked for me really,
Speaker 1: really well, is one that says, slow way down. If
Speaker 1: you're on an emergency on the space station, unless it's
Speaker 1: an ammonia leak. In all other cases, slow way down
Speaker 1: because the worst thing you can do is go so
Speaker 1: fast that you make a mistake and cause problems. But
Speaker 1: otherwise it's a very safe system. When I was leading
Speaker 1: newer crew members, I tried to encourage them to have
Speaker 1: a cold sure where if they had any confusion, that
Speaker 1: they would feel comfortable stopping everybody and say, hey, why
Speaker 1: are we going down this path that doesn't make sense
Speaker 1: to me? Because that could be the one question that
Speaker 1: gets us to stay on the correct path. You said
Speaker 1: you didn't get scared in that moment. Do you ever
Speaker 1: get scared? Mark? Oh? Yeah, I definitely get scared. I
Speaker 1: don't believe you. To give you an example, my experience
Speaker 1: of returning to Earth is everything's really interesting. While you're
Speaker 1: going through the atmosphere and you're in a ball of
Speaker 1: flame and the heat shields melting away, and see things
Speaker 1: that are melting away going past the window. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: But then when there's nothing to pay attention to while
Speaker 1: you're falling towards the earth, and this time you know
Speaker 1: you're in a trajectory that will result in you hitting
Speaker 1: the earth with nothing to do except wait for the
Speaker 1: parachute to open for what I think was probably a
Speaker 1: couple of very long minutes, and nobody was having a conversation.
Speaker 1: We're just all quietly waiting to find out if we're
Speaker 1: gonna live and we're gonna die. I didn't realize how
Speaker 1: afraid I was that it wasn't gonna work until the
Speaker 1: parachute actually opened, and how giddily overjoyed I felt when
Speaker 1: when it actually opened, because I was just like, we're
Speaker 1: gonna live. So yeah, I was scared, And again I
Speaker 1: didn't realize it until after the fact. Yeah. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: let's talk You mentioned at the beginning your sort of
Speaker 1: interest in mental health. Let's talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, you you went through an experience which is
Speaker 1: exceedingly difficult and unusual and surely must have taught you
Speaker 1: a great deal about the kind of the challenges of
Speaker 1: maintaining one's mental health. Yeah, it was a good experience.
Speaker 1: But certainly those life skills doesn't matter if you're in
Speaker 1: space or not. Um I tend to get distracted easily,
Speaker 1: and so practicing trying to stay focused on one thing
Speaker 1: and paying attention and trying to maintain a sense of
Speaker 1: curiosity about something as simple as breathing is I think
Speaker 1: a really good practice to try to to expand your
Speaker 1: ability to stay focused and and actually even find joy
Speaker 1: and relaxation in it. It's it's very reassuring if you
Speaker 1: can get yourself to feel really relaxed no matter what's
Speaker 1: going on, that it's it's it's like you've got this
Speaker 1: island of comfort that you know is just internal to you.
Speaker 1: So I thought that was very powerful. It's not something
Speaker 1: that I how does the skill before my fifties at all.
Speaker 1: And I think meditation has certainly helped the awareness of
Speaker 1: the negative impact that the narratives that I would use
Speaker 1: to fill in the gaps and information I had was
Speaker 1: really powerful for me. And I'll give you an example
Speaker 1: that's associated with space flight. We have a module on
Speaker 1: the space station that's called the PMM. It's like the
Speaker 1: attic of the space station. If you have a task
Speaker 1: that takes forty that you've given you forty. Miss Ado.
Speaker 1: Part of every activity is typically gathered the material you
Speaker 1: need and a lot of time. That means you go
Speaker 1: into the p MM and it's not unusual to see
Speaker 1: somebody's just ankles and feet sticking out between bags as
Speaker 1: they're digging with a flash head lamp on trying to
Speaker 1: get deep into the into the depths of these bags
Speaker 1: that are bungee corded in place. And it can be
Speaker 1: very chaotic when you have to get multiple items, and
Speaker 1: if if you just loosely put it underneath the bungee
Speaker 1: cord and then bump the bungee cord, it can disappear
Speaker 1: very easily, So it can be very frustrating. So there
Speaker 1: was an instance I remember really well where I was
Speaker 1: had already spent twenty minutes trying to find stuff, and
Speaker 1: I still hadn't found the first thing, and I was
Speaker 1: getting mad, and I realized that the reason I was
Speaker 1: getting grumpy was the narrative I had was I the
Speaker 1: ground's going to start thinking of Vanda High is one
Speaker 1: of the slow, the slow guys on the space station.
Speaker 1: He always takes longer to do other stuff. But then
Speaker 1: I realized that I didn't know that that was just
Speaker 1: some detail I was adding, And then I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. For all I know the ground was bad,
Speaker 1: that they didn't give me enough time to do this,
Speaker 1: So what do I really All I really knew as
Speaker 1: fact was that I was on the space station and
Speaker 1: my job was to find stuff space hardware in these
Speaker 1: bags that are all bungee corded and floating around, and honestly,
Speaker 1: that was kind of cool, and I had really if
Speaker 1: it took me longer than they expected, then that was
Speaker 1: just a fact. It took longer than I expected. They
Speaker 1: didn't have to be a positive or negative emotion associated
Speaker 1: that was just a fact. So instead of as many
Speaker 1: times before I've come out of there feeling angry at
Speaker 1: the world, at the situation, just beating myself about not
Speaker 1: being good enough for my job, I came out being like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, this is kind of cool. It was just
Speaker 1: such a huge shift, And I think over time you
Speaker 1: perform better too when you give yourself a break like that.
Speaker 1: So I think there's this aspect also about being more
Speaker 1: accepting of yourself, being more curious about it. There's just
Speaker 1: so many things that I think have helped make my
Speaker 1: life easier. And again, by no means am I perfect. I.
Speaker 1: This is a continuing process that I'm still working out
Speaker 1: and struggling with. But it helps you to to keep
Speaker 1: your kind of perfectionist stick and self judgmental side and
Speaker 1: check absolutely, is that the most significant change that you've undergone. No,
Speaker 1: honestly that the most significant change for me was uh, well,
Speaker 1: the first big thing was when I first got to
Speaker 1: the space station. It was after a very long day
Speaker 1: and I had the next twenty four hours off to
Speaker 1: recover from that. I spent the first ninety minutes the
Speaker 1: first one time around the planet looking out the window
Speaker 1: in awe, and the first thing that struck me was
Speaker 1: how isolated the Earth looked. When you are looking at
Speaker 1: the Earth and in the sun and your eyes are
Speaker 1: adjusted to the sun, it makes the backdrop to the
Speaker 1: Earth space look inky black, like the definition of lack
Speaker 1: of light, like it's liquid. So that was shocking to me. Well,
Speaker 1: you say shocking, It was shocking because I don't think
Speaker 1: it was like I had never seen something that black.
Speaker 1: It was just like again, I I if you can
Speaker 1: imagine taking a ball and dropping it in a in
Speaker 1: a in a pool of black ink. That's that's what
Speaker 1: it looked like. And I knew it was I knew
Speaker 1: it was emptiness, but it was it just there was
Speaker 1: an emotional impact in that, and I think, uh, I
Speaker 1: think there's been people that have been it's it can
Speaker 1: be hard to grapple with the sense of the Earth
Speaker 1: being isolated. Later on in the flight, as I was
Speaker 1: getting ready to come home again this is my first flight,
Speaker 1: I felt like I should be going back to the
Speaker 1: Earth with some unique perspective and some type of change
Speaker 1: to me. And I thought, am I blowing this? Am
Speaker 1: I like, I don't know what that is. I had
Speaker 1: this incredible sense of smallness. And I say that because
Speaker 1: another thing that struck me looking at the Earth was
Speaker 1: when you look towards the horizon, the atmosphere looks like
Speaker 1: a varnish on a rock. It's like a puddle in
Speaker 1: a parking lot. It just looks super thin. So recognizing
Speaker 1: that first of all, and then recognizing that on that
Speaker 1: same horizon, none of the mountains show up. They're too small.
Speaker 1: So these things where we perceive as huge relative to
Speaker 1: the size of the Earth are unobservable on the horizon.
Speaker 1: But then the only thing about the largest structure that
Speaker 1: humans have ever built, and how that compares to the
Speaker 1: largest mountains, and then how big we are compared to
Speaker 1: those structures. I just I felt like any sense of
Speaker 1: self importance I had was stripped away. So I was
Speaker 1: really struggling with is that what I'm gonna come home with?
Speaker 1: This this idea that that that there's this meaninglessness to
Speaker 1: it like that was really troubling to me, And also
Speaker 1: had a lot of time to think about my mortality
Speaker 1: because I, you know what, I might not survive this,
Speaker 1: So it's a for me at least. I don't tell
Speaker 1: him that everybody has had his experience, but for me,
Speaker 1: it was a very thoughtful time. Yeah, I realized that
Speaker 1: you had. I was struggling with the scale of things
Speaker 1: when really part of my role is to be attentive
Speaker 1: to the scale I choose. If I'm studying a plant
Speaker 1: for my whole career, or maybe I'm sitting around the
Speaker 1: dinner table and being attentive to the scale right there,
Speaker 1: which is just my loved ones around the table, or
Speaker 1: maybe you're studying the structure universe, just being attentive to
Speaker 1: that scale. The scale you choose, and we have the
Speaker 1: flexibility to pick it and they're all okay. But just
Speaker 1: kind of accepting that I thought was was a big
Speaker 1: leap for me. UM. So, mental health advocacy is something
Speaker 1: that you've become quite interested in. The sustainability has also
Speaker 1: been an idea that UM is that something that also
Speaker 1: grew out of your those sort of observations when when
Speaker 1: you were in space that interesting sustainability. Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: think that I did spend a lot of time on
Speaker 1: the space station thinking about, well, this is probably my
Speaker 1: last time in space, what's my what am I gonna
Speaker 1: do after I work at NASA? What is my purpose here?
Speaker 1: And I love being outside. That's why I joined the
Speaker 1: Army as opposed to the Air Force. I I just
Speaker 1: the idea of being outside and being comfortable in challenging
Speaker 1: environments is something that's always been appealing to me. And
Speaker 1: I also feel like with devices that we all carry
Speaker 1: around that are engineered to distract us, I think it's
Speaker 1: very easy for us to stop being attentive to the
Speaker 1: environment that we actually live in. I I do think
Speaker 1: we've got challenges ahead of us. The climate change is
Speaker 1: is atmospheric change. Again, I've already mentioned my perception of
Speaker 1: the atmosphere is that very thin resource, and I really
Speaker 1: want to get that message across the people, because it's
Speaker 1: easy to think of the earth as so big that
Speaker 1: how could we possibly impact it? But really it's not
Speaker 1: the whole earth we're worried about. It is just this
Speaker 1: thin layer we live in. That idea you as well
Speaker 1: as concern that we're getting so sucked into screens that
Speaker 1: I would love to get involved in helping younger people
Speaker 1: appreciate that there's other alternatives, that there's an outdoor world
Speaker 1: that's super interesting, and I don't think a lot of
Speaker 1: young people are getting the opportunity to compare one way
Speaker 1: of living to the other like we have. We grew
Speaker 1: up without those things. We know what it was like
Speaker 1: and how much fun it could be without having a
Speaker 1: cell phone in your pocket all the time, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people are growing up without that. So I'd
Speaker 1: love to get involved with getting people to experience that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well wonderful. Thank you. Some of this has been really fascinating.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time
Speaker 1: to chat with me, Malcolm. It really really was a pleasure. Um.
Speaker 1: I feel blessed I got to talk to you, it
Speaker 1: was really a wonderful opportunity for me as well. When
Speaker 1: Mark was looking at Earth from orbit and grappling with
Speaker 1: how insignificant we all seemed, he said he felt troubled
Speaker 1: by the possible meaninglessness of it all, But then he
Speaker 1: realized it's up to human beings to choose the scale
Speaker 1: we pay attention to. We decide what's worthy of our
Speaker 1: attention and what's meaningful. That might be something as expansive
Speaker 1: as studying the cosmos, or as immediate as having dinner
Speaker 1: with our loved ones, or as minute as the well
Speaker 1: being of a single hatch chilly pepper plant. This piece
Speaker 1: of wisdom from Mark is a great place for us
Speaker 1: to end this season. Pay attention to the scale you choose,
Speaker 1: because creativity begins when we give attention to something previously unnoticed,
Speaker 1: a minor detail overlooked, a bigger picture still unseen. As
Speaker 1: we strive to be new creators in our work and
Speaker 1: in our lives, let's remember that new insights can be
Speaker 1: found wherever we choose to look, as long as we're
Speaker 1: attentive enough to see it. Thanks for listening to Smart
Speaker 1: Talks with I b. M. This is our season finale,
Speaker 1: but Stay tuned for more smart Talks coming soon. Smart
Speaker 1: Talks with IBM is produced by Matt Romano, David jaw,
Speaker 1: Royston Reserve, and Edith Rousselo with Jacob Goldstein. We're edited
Speaker 1: by Sophie Crane. Our engineers are Jason Gambrel, Sarah Brigar
Speaker 1: and Ben Holliday. Theme song by Gramoscope. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Carl Migliori, Andy Kelly, Kathy Callaghan and the eight Bar
Speaker 1: and IBM teams, as well as the Pushkin marketing team.
Speaker 1: Smart Talks with IBM is a production of Pushkin Industries
Speaker 1: and i Heart Media. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen
Speaker 1: on the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts. I'm Malcolm Glama. This is a
Speaker 1: paid advertisement from my BM