EXPERTS ON EXPERT: Bill Nye

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to experts on expert.

[1] I am your fake expert, Dak Shepard, joined with a real -life expert Emmy -nominated Monica Padman.

[2] That's right.

[3] Everyone's favorite resident mouse was honored with an Emmy nomination last week.

[4] It's very exciting.

[5] I feel that I must be clear about it.

[6] Don't you dare undersell your Emmy nomination.

[7] I'm not underselling.

[8] I'm telling the specifics.

[9] Okay.

[10] Daytime, creative arts, Emmy.

[11] And we didn't win.

[12] Well, listen, I will forever now refer to you as Emmy -nominated Monica Padman.

[13] Well, thank you.

[14] I'll take it.

[15] I'll introduce you as an Emmy -nominated.

[16] You will, until the day you die, you have a moniker now that'll last until the day you're on your deathbed in four years from now.

[17] When you kill me?

[18] Emmy -nominated.

[19] In fact, have you thought about your headstone?

[20] Maybe saying Emmy nominated Monica Padman.

[21] I'm probably going to get cremated.

[22] Could you get like a headstone just dumped it down ashes in the dirt?

[23] Sure, if you'd like that.

[24] Do you have to have a casket in front of that headstone?

[25] I don't know.

[26] Listen, I don't want to be buried either.

[27] I want to be burnt.

[28] Yeah.

[29] I'm going to char broiled.

[30] Yes, like a Burger King hamburger.

[31] But I do want a big piece of marble that says something scratched into it.

[32] Oh, why?

[33] Permanently.

[34] Okay.

[35] But you could just get that and someone could put it in their backyard.

[36] It doesn't have to be at a cemetery or something.

[37] I agree.

[38] I guess that's what I'm saying.

[39] So, yeah, I think anyone can probably get a big slab of marble and have it engraved.

[40] Mine might say, here lies Dax Shepherd, friend of Emmy -nominated Monica Padman.

[41] Oh, my God.

[42] How are we dying in this scenario?

[43] You said four years from now.

[44] That's young.

[45] Like, that's a little gone too soon for me. My hunch is it'll be while exploring Mars on a rover.

[46] Okay.

[47] We'll have convinced ourselves that we wanted to be the first podcast abroad.

[48] podcast from Mars, and it would be a regrettable decision.

[49] All right.

[50] Okay.

[51] Now to the business at hand.

[52] Today's expert is a blast from the past.

[53] Bill Nye, the science guy.

[54] I say that because in your childhood, you consume Bill Nye, the science guy.

[55] I was a little old for it, but I certainly know Bill.

[56] Of course.

[57] I love what he did.

[58] Yeah.

[59] He brought science into the classroom and to the living room.

[60] He got a whole generation of kids on fire for science.

[61] It's so darn cool.

[62] It is.

[63] You're going to love them.

[64] Also, reminder, tomorrow morning, 10 a .m. local time.

[65] Tickets go on sale for Detroit, for Cleveland, for Chicago, for Minneapolis.

[66] Guys, the Chrysler Pacific Armchair Expert Live in the Midwest Tour is coming to your back door.

[67] So go online.

[68] You can go to our website, www .armchairexpertpod .com to click through to buy tickets tomorrow 10 a .m. local time, enjoy Bill Nye, the science guy.

[69] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to armchair expert early and ad free right now.

[70] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[71] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[72] So Bill Nye.

[73] Yes.

[74] Formerly known as the science guy.

[75] No. I still am.

[76] Yes, of course.

[77] I own copyright.

[78] Oh, he's trademark.

[79] Always known as the science guy.

[80] Well, it is a wow.

[81] They'll sell you a trademark.

[82] The man, who may be a woman, will sell you a trademark.

[83] That's a pretty good trademark to have, though.

[84] I bet a lot of people probably wanted it, the science guy.

[85] Sure.

[86] Well, I think you could still do Dax, the science guy.

[87] I could trademark that, right?

[88] No one would buy it, but.

[89] Yeah, sure.

[90] So there's stories associated with that, and the guy in the Seattle Times tried to have Richard so -and -so, the science guy, and my attorney contacted him, and what are you doing, you know?

[91] And besides, it doesn't run.

[92] Okay, so I want to talk about you grew up in D .C., our nation's capital.

[93] Yes.

[94] Yeah, and your mom and dad are incredibly interesting.

[95] Well, I'm glad you think so.

[96] I did, but that was where I grew up.

[97] Yeah, but highly unique stories.

[98] Dad is working on an air strip.

[99] Well, so before the U .S. Navy had construction battalions.

[100] The two letters C and B created a word, like radar or OK or something.

[101] A CB is a construction battalion.

[102] The Navy has those now.

[103] Construction workers in naval uniform.

[104] But before that, they would hire contractors.

[105] And there were contractors that had relationships with the U .S. Navy.

[106] And they'd take government contract and hire people.

[107] And my dad was a construction worker.

[108] So he was in Wake Island, and he was installing an airstrip.

[109] and he was captured by the Japanese, and he lived for four years in a prisoner of war camp.

[110] Yes.

[111] So dad was four years in Japan?

[112] 44 months, yeah.

[113] 44 months.

[114] And was it in Japan or was it off -site?

[115] At the end of the war is in Japan, but the first three years, they were in northern China.

[116] You know, Japan, Japanese military controlled that part of China for quite a while.

[117] Anyway, then this...

[118] Well, the rape of Nan King, that book famously...

[119] Yeah, yeah, it's great, very relaxing.

[120] So they...

[121] I'm kidding, that's a joke.

[122] So as Japanese power shrank, as the Axis lost their shaft, that's a hilarious mechanical gag.

[123] It's really funny.

[124] And so then he ended up in the South Island of Japan at the end of the war.

[125] And that he lived through it is extraordinary to me. I mean, my goodness.

[126] Yeah, and I was curious because just by virtue of that he was an adult during World War II, we know what error he lived in.

[127] And so I was immediately curious, how readily was he talking to you about that experience?

[128] Oh, never.

[129] He probably wanted to shield you from that?

[130] He just didn't talk about it.

[131] Those guys just did not talk about it.

[132] And were you ever able to, as you got older and you realized what that entailed, did you start asking him questions?

[133] Yeah, so you get a couple things.

[134] Very little food.

[135] For several years after he got back to the States, he just didn't want rice.

[136] Oh, huh, sure.

[137] Didn't want to eat rice.

[138] Yeah.

[139] And then I met a couple of his buddies.

[140] There were guys that he became very close with.

[141] They slept on a plywood slab with a plank.

[142] Here's an interesting thing.

[143] You know this tradition of Sapuku or Harry Carey, Japanese culture.

[144] Uh -huh.

[145] The suicide.

[146] Yeah, so the commandant of the camp cut his stomach open and died.

[147] Really?

[148] He killed himself when the war was over, yeah, when the Japanese surrendered, rather.

[149] And the guards at this point were all 15 years old, and they drew, according to my father, I was not there, drew a circle in the sand no listen it was a big bomb man it was a huge bomb because they could hear the b 29s they were far enough they were close enough to Tokyo they could hear uh the u .s planes flying in on bombing runs and then the whole thing was over like one afternoon and so did actual uh american GIs walk into this camp at some point or did just the guards disappear and they wandered out it it was some of each.

[150] But I've been to a few of the reunions of the Defenders of Wake, is their official title.

[151] And a couple guys love to tell war stories.

[152] Right.

[153] But most of them didn't.

[154] They were just, hey, you're alive.

[155] Man, great to see you.

[156] Give me a hug.

[157] It was like that.

[158] If you were to survive an ordeal like that, I don't know what his disposition was as a person in general, but I feel like after year two, I'd be pretty surrendered to the notion that I'm not going to ever be stateside again.

[159] and then if in fact I did become free again, I feel like it would permanently augment my worldview.

[160] And in its best case scenario, I would like to think I'd be kind of really cherishing being alive and free again.

[161] Well, there was a lot of that.

[162] But the other thing, you guys, they were not thinking that they weren't going to live through it.

[163] They weren't.

[164] No, no. They were confident that the U .S. was going to win this thing.

[165] Well, I could imagine that, but I guess I'm just a pessimist.

[166] I'm like, oh, they'll off us as they approach.

[167] Well, so, the story goes, no, this is from memory, August 25th was the day the Japanese were going to machine gun everybody.

[168] It ended right before that.

[169] Yeah, or they gave up right before.

[170] That's the myth, and it's, I've read it, and I'm pretty sure it's August 25th.

[171] It's about, it's the end of August, 1945.

[172] So they didn't machine gun everybody, and my dad lived through it.

[173] They lived on to have you.

[174] Plus, I think, I claim the reason my father lived, through it is because he had a sense of humor so to me having been to reunions of the defenders of wake there are two kinds of guys that live through it this is a little spiel guys who uh were like my father who were funny and rye and just went well there were guys that that just looked at it like man you know this is the whole thing is pretty wild we're going to get through this and other guys were just onry just mean guys you know the people like that who live forever yeah just mean And so there seems like there were two extremes at these reunions, guys who bothered to show up.

[175] But the guys who were kept against the Geneva Convention, guys who were kept on Wake Island to provide services to the Japanese military to cook, sweep, pick a task.

[176] Yeah.

[177] They were all killed when the Japanese Navy felt that the U .S. Navy was approaching.

[178] And they wanted to just scorchurch.

[179] 98 guys, they just machine gunned them.

[180] Oh, wow.

[181] And they find the mass grave on Wake Island.

[182] I mean, so I have no problems.

[183] Whenever I reflect on these stories, like, what are you ever whining about anything?

[184] It's just fascinating.

[185] And was that at all, like, when you would have what you may label as like a trivial concern as a child, did your parents go get your head right?

[186] You don't really know?

[187] No, I would say, that's a good question.

[188] I would say they led by example.

[189] Okay.

[190] Okay, now, Monica, buckle your fucking seatbelt.

[191] Okay.

[192] His mother was a code breaker during World War II.

[193] She was one of the code girls.

[194] Yeah.

[195] That's what they came to be called.

[196] Well, so she went to Goucher College.

[197] It was the sister school to Johns Hopkins.

[198] So that's where they met.

[199] My dad went to Johns Hopkins.

[200] Oh, they met prior to the war.

[201] Oh, yeah.

[202] Oh, wow.

[203] My dad went to Johns Hopkins.

[204] My mom went to Goucher.

[205] My mother said my father was a very good dancer.

[206] goes a long way with the ladies.

[207] Yeah, sure does.

[208] So then the story goes, the head of the dean of students at Goucher was a woman named Dorothy Stimson, who was the first cousin of Henry Stimson, who was the Secretary of War, back when it was called the Department of War, or the War Department, rather than defense.

[209] And so he apparently went to Dorothy and Stimson and said, do you have any women that come work in this thing?

[210] I can't tell you what it is.

[211] So my mom, there's some rooftop attic in one of the dorms where they would do these crossword puzzles and stuff.

[212] I will say objectively, my mother was very good at puzzles.

[213] Well, I would imagine.

[214] Like trying not to take my word for it because she was my mom, but she was good at puzzles, good at riddles.

[215] She was in MENSA.

[216] Do you remember that?

[217] MENSA.

[218] Oh, yeah.

[219] Yeah, she was good at this.

[220] People like to print that on their license plate, which is always a vomitist thing.

[221] I don't think people are as into it as they once were.

[222] They weren't.

[223] In the 80s, it was a really popular thing.

[224] I think it's impressive, yeah.

[225] But anyway, she got a master's degree and she got a doctorate.

[226] I'm sorry, I've got to pause you.

[227] So, yes, it's impressive.

[228] It's a very weird thing to brag about because it's largely your genetics and your family that read to you.

[229] So it's really nothing for you to take credit for.

[230] Well, people take credit for their intelligence all the time.

[231] It's not like someone started at a 110 and worked their way up to a 150 IQ.

[232] In that event, yes, they should brag, but we've not seen anyone decide.

[233] to change their IQ with any success.

[234] So I think what happened, my mother was a woman executive in a man's world.

[235] And this was a credential.

[236] Yeah.

[237] Hey, bitches, I got, I got a, I'm in MNSA.

[238] You got a problem with that because I'll give you a problem.

[239] Right, right.

[240] Yeah, it was a stamp of, uh, yeah, that's why I think motivated it.

[241] Yeah.

[242] I remember very well, I'm going to say this is 1972 when I was a junior in high school.

[243] There were people alive back then.

[244] You might not believe it, but.

[245] Shock.

[246] Yeah.

[247] So my mother slammed the phone down.

[248] She used the D word, which in those days was, you know, damn.

[249] Whoa.

[250] Oh, oh, oh.

[251] I thought she called someone a dick.

[252] She would never did that.

[253] That I ever heard ever, even though I'm sure she dealt with a great many.

[254] I'm sure someone backed out of a parking spot at some grocery store at some moment in time.

[255] And she said it maybe no one listened.

[256] No one heard her.

[257] I hope so.

[258] Yeah, yeah.

[259] We like the things.

[260] I hope so.

[261] But she couldn't get a credit card, American Express card, because she was, Mrs. Nye.

[262] In other words, her employment, she was a, you know, a bureaucrat.

[263] She worked in Washington, D .C. She worked in a government, and she couldn't get a credit card because her credit didn't count.

[264] Her income didn't count.

[265] Her accomplishments didn't count.

[266] In 1972?

[267] And I'm saying it wasn't that long ago.

[268] Yeah.

[269] I'm not saying things don't suck in many ways for women in other respects in employment, but we have come away.

[270] Yeah.

[271] Yes, I think the, um, The reason that's helpful to point out is in the way that Stephen Pinker does, which is if you look at this relatively short experiment we've been doing for 10 ,000 years, we've made some incredible ground on every single metric.

[272] So it's only to say, let's remain optimistic because it's all moving forward.

[273] So there's less extreme poverty.

[274] There's actually less violence.

[275] Yes.

[276] There's less starvation and all that stuff.

[277] As screwed up as it might seem.

[278] It's good.

[279] We can do better, though.

[280] Yes.

[281] We should never stop, and yes, we can also have gratitude for the progress that's been made.

[282] And so speaking of my parents and the whining and complaining that we're getting right now about the Green New Deal.

[283] Okay.

[284] You guys, they resolved a worldwide crisis in five years.

[285] We can do this for crying out loud.

[286] We can make energy renewable.

[287] We can get clean water, access to the Internet.

[288] Let's go.

[289] Let's get her done.

[290] Well, and let's look at specifically what happened in that five years, because you have a couple of astounding things.

[291] You have, during World War II, there's a shortage of rubber because rubber at that time is all grown from, or derived from rubber trees.

[292] And we don't have great access to that anymore.

[293] So we invent vulcanization when we need to, right?

[294] Well, synthetic rubber, be able.

[295] Yeah, yeah, yeah, petroleum -based rubber, which that was unimaginable in 1930.

[296] That's it.

[297] We had to do it.

[298] So by God, we did it, right?

[299] Yeah.

[300] Like when your life depends on it, miracles can happen.

[301] So, or focusing the subject on climate change from World War II, just think you guys what it would be like if we had floods in Houston, floods in farmland in the Midwest, if we had extreme weather events in North Carolina, if we had a blizzard in the Midwest in middle of April, just think of all that was fires in California and floods.

[302] If we had no idea what was going on, just think how troubling that would be.

[303] But no, we know.

[304] It's humans with the carbon oxide and the thing and the stuff and the problems.

[305] And do you have siblings?

[306] Yes.

[307] How many?

[308] Two.

[309] Okay.

[310] Can I guess something?

[311] Because I did not see that you had siblings.

[312] Are you the middle of those siblings?

[313] No. Are you the youngest?

[314] Yeah.

[315] I knew it.

[316] But do you see where you have it?

[317] Yeah.

[318] When there's three and you've eliminated two.

[319] That's right.

[320] Well, I knew you weren't the oldest.

[321] Her guess went to 50%.

[322] Yeah, yeah.

[323] Well, you just beat me to it.

[324] I had nothing to do with that.

[325] It wasn't consulted.

[326] I showed up.

[327] And your older siblings, were they boys or girls?

[328] My sister is oldest, and my brother is the troubled middle child.

[329] Sure.

[330] Okay.

[331] He's not troubled.

[332] That's just something.

[333] That's a family irony.

[334] If he were troubled, you probably wouldn't say he was.

[335] That's right.

[336] Good point.

[337] That's kind of how we know he's not troubled.

[338] Okay.

[339] So let me take you.

[340] to Cornell.

[341] Cornell, that was a mistake on their part.

[342] That was a clerical error in the admissions department, and they're still living with it.

[343] Now, you studied mechanical engineering at Cornell.

[344] Bicycles, airplanes, is my thing.

[345] So do you love the Wright brothers?

[346] Have you read the McCullough book?

[347] Yeah, now, okay, now the Wright brothers.

[348] May I speak truth to power?

[349] Please.

[350] They got the patent and everything, but their airplane was kind of primitive.

[351] You've seen an arrow.

[352] where do you put the tail feathers in the front you put them in the back sure so people in France especially we're going way ahead we still have the words fuselage aileron empernage linger on these are all French words because they were hey let's put the tail feathers in the back the right brothers well we got it working we got it working we're flying around we're showing off and there but their planes really were hard to fly well what is so you read that book the yeah it's good those guys were Dent of hard work.

[353] Well, what's so amazing about it is that they survived.

[354] That's the most thing when you're reading.

[355] Who's the guy they killed from the war department?

[356] They were giving him a ride and he crashed.

[357] Oh, I don't feel like I remember that.

[358] Wilbur lived through it and so on and so on.

[359] But they crashed, Monica, dozens of times.

[360] They didn't know what they were doing.

[361] They were taking out from sand dunes.

[362] They were getting maybe a quarter mile.

[363] They crashed and they get a half mile.

[364] Then a mile.

[365] Then they flew for 17 minutes and that was a thing.

[366] But, you know, and they're gaining altitude the whole time.

[367] I mean, they're just crashing all the time, and they just lived.

[368] I mean, that's the most astounding thing of that whole story.

[369] It really is.

[370] But more power to them, and I'm very happy that North Carolina says first in flight.

[371] And Ohio says birthplace of flight.

[372] It's hard to what I interchange those.

[373] No, no, you got that right.

[374] North Carolina's first in flight.

[375] We just went through the state slogans yesterday by weird coincidence.

[376] Of course you did.

[377] Normal thing to do.

[378] We were curious about any of them, just ask.

[379] So, but while you were there, you actually, had a very unique opportunity to take astronomy with Carl Sagan.

[380] Yes.

[381] That's like...

[382] Change my life.

[383] Bill Gates living next to the library with a mainframe.

[384] Yes.

[385] Yes.

[386] This is a very auspicious...

[387] Well, just stuff happens.

[388] But, you know, understand, there were hundreds, thousands of people who took Carl Sagan's classes.

[389] Uh -huh.

[390] But he had a huge effect on me. Wow.

[391] Yes.

[392] So I finished my mechanical engineering requirements.

[393] And then I took a freshman.

[394] astronomy course as a senior.

[395] Well, so one of my very favorite classes in college was astronomy.

[396] And I'm curious if we have a similar reason of why it was so fascinating.

[397] I don't think there's a area in sciences that you can look at where more has been discovered with such little information.

[398] When you actually realize how they're learning what stars are burning by spectral analysis and they're learning about Doppler shift and what they put together by looking at a white dot i think is the greatest example of what science can do well they have learned by staring forever at some white light it's just amazing isn't it incredible oh guys so you guys just think about copernicus everybody presume that the sun went around the earth that's what it looks like you look at the sky it just looks like the sun is going right over just like the moon, all the stars every night, they move.

[399] But then Copernica's like, you know, I've been thinking about this.

[400] And if I'm trying to predict the position of Jupiter, the bright planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, I think it's really, we should look at it the other way.

[401] That is so, that is profound.

[402] No, it's such an insight by just sitting and thinking about it.

[403] It can't really even be comprehended how profound that is.

[404] Then Galileo's got a military instrument, this telescope for looking at the bad guys on the other hill, whatever.

[405] And he took it out at night.

[406] You can't see the guys on the other hill at night.

[407] And he points it up, hey, man, the moon is a guy full of pockmarks.

[408] Well, we have to imprison you.

[409] I'm sorry, man. We can't have you spouting.

[410] What do you look?

[411] No, we're not going to look.

[412] You can't leave your house for the rest of your life.

[413] What the hell?

[414] So Edwin Hubble and, how do I say it, Le Maire, these two guys were looking at the Doppler shift and they decided that the universe is expanding yes and then they reasoned later on that it must have started it from one place which we humans right now call the big bang is it really something else that we haven't inferred yet i don't know man yeah but there's two questions they get everybody where did we come from where did we come what and then are we alone are we the only entities thinking about this right people there are 200 billion stars in our galaxy and there are at least that many galaxies that's right that's the other thing you think you got problems when you start trying to comprehend the full it's nearly impossible no matter how many analogies of a grain of sand on a beach it just doesn't really do it justice you had to be one of 200 billion and that's just here and mega clusters and all that stuff it's really mind -blowing but here's the other thing about it though that's so troubling right now as you may know I've run up against people who claim they believe whether or not they really believe it is not clear that the earth is 6 ,000 years old.

[415] That's wrong.

[416] It's just objectively wrong.

[417] Yes.

[418] And the thing right now is alternative facts.

[419] What are you talking about?

[420] No, that's it.

[421] So we were, we were traveling this weekend for the podcast, and we were in a state in the middle of nowhere, and there was a sign.

[422] It was for a church.

[423] It had on it the age -old chimpanzee to a human.

[424] It's not right.

[425] But, and then a big, big circle around it with it, with exing it out, saying, you know, evolution is a hoax.

[426] And we drove by that sign and I just started kind of my mind, my mind started wandering.

[427] And I was like, I've heard them say, well, yeah, God -buried dinosaur bones.

[428] Yeah, to fool you.

[429] To test your faith.

[430] What a jerk.

[431] Well, this is exactly what I would.

[432] Would any parent who subscribes to that thought, that God who is all knowing, all -loving, created us, his children, is regularly testing us with really convincing stuff.

[433] So my analogy is, would you ever put a birth certificate in your child's dresser that said on it they had two different legal parents to test their faith of whether or not you were their parents?

[434] Would you do that?

[435] Would that not be psychotic and masochistic?

[436] Who would try their hardest to fool their child into thinking that they had actually been adopted?

[437] It just begs the question, you know, what kind of gentleman was it that created us to fool us?

[438] It's very confusing to me. Yeah, it's very troubling to me. But I don't want to alienate too many people because I also recognize that people get a lot out of things.

[439] Well, could they get community?

[440] That's what you get from a religion that's priceless.

[441] Sure.

[442] Well, one of my things is I feel like people who don't believe the Earth is more than 6 ,000 years old should not be able to reap the fruits of that.

[443] So you're not allowed to have a cell phone.

[444] Or how about Facebook?

[445] Anything.

[446] Fine.

[447] If the Earth's 6 ,000 years old, cool.

[448] That's your worldview.

[449] Unfortunately, in your worldview, science isn't real and your fucking iPhone doesn't work.

[450] So you can't use it.

[451] You can't get in a car.

[452] Internal combustion engine is not going to work.

[453] But no, you don't get it all.

[454] You don't get to deny it while actually using it.

[455] But keep in mind.

[456] Or at least wear a shirt that says, I'm a hypocrite.

[457] Keep in mind that there are things that I believe, and I'm pretty sure all of us believe that are wrong.

[458] Oh, absolutely.

[459] Yeah.

[460] And so we just don't know what those things are right now.

[461] I think about dark energy and dark matter.

[462] So we don't know what those are right now.

[463] Right.

[464] And then I think about my grandparents who grew up really with no knowledge or understanding of relativity until nuclear weapons were set off and nuclear fission and whatever.

[465] So I'll bet you in the next century, people will figure out what dark matter and dark energy is and there'll be some crazy, amazing technological advancement as a result of it.

[466] Everybody said, well, I went and got a PET scan, positron emission tomography.

[467] People didn't know that there were positrons until pretty recently.

[468] Just think what else we don't know.

[469] And as former government employee and President Barack Obama remarked, if you couldn't control where you would be born on the earth, but you could control when, this is the time you'd want to be born as much as you might think things suck they suck less than they ever have in history as we started talking about early on although as a car not I do kind of maybe think in the 50s so I could have owned those muscle cars right as they were in the showroom floor well now you can get a Tesla you just don't need that in fact one of the three great inefficiencies of internal combustion engines is accelerating to get on the freeway so we have to have engines big enough in our cars to enable us to go from zero to highway speed in a few seconds.

[470] The other two inefficiencies are when you go downhill, you don't get any of that energy back.

[471] And then at a stop sign, stoplight, you're sitting there, the giant engines running just to run your CD player or listen to your podcast.

[472] CD may be an older reference to run your digital medium.

[473] These are inherent inefficiencies in internal combustion engines.

[474] The stop sign, downhill, accelerating onto the freeway.

[475] For those of you, what are we talking about?

[476] That's right, people second law of thermodynamics.

[477] The best you're going to do under perfect conditions is like 70%.

[478] You're going to lose 30%.

[479] You can't beat it.

[480] It sucks.

[481] And then all the mechanical friction in conventional cars, you get down to about 30 % efficiency.

[482] 70 % of the energy just goes out to the universe as heat.

[483] We can do better, people.

[484] We can do this.

[485] It's not magic, it's Monica, it's science.

[486] It's science.

[487] Okay, so you leave Cornell and you go to work for Boeing in 1977.

[488] I was recruited.

[489] Were you apprehensive about moving all the way from one Washington to the other Washington?

[490] I was excited.

[491] Okay.

[492] What kind of guy were you in high school?

[493] That's the same thing.

[494] No, tell me. I don't know.

[495] No, I mean, I was a clown.

[496] I was a nerd.

[497] You did well, though, in school.

[498] I did well enough.

[499] I had a very good fit.

[500] physics teacher.

[501] Okay.

[502] Mr. Lang, I still am an emailical touch with him.

[503] I took, you know, this was in the early, early days.

[504] I took the physics AP exam.

[505] I think I took it the second year it existed.

[506] And it was this new thing.

[507] And I guess I did okay on it.

[508] Did you get a five?

[509] We were just talking about AP exams the other day.

[510] I don't think I got a five.

[511] I think I got a four.

[512] Well, you only need to get a three as it turns out.

[513] I told him that and he was appalled.

[514] I was 60%.

[515] That seems a little below.

[516] Well, so whatever, as I have argued, I believe it was a clerical error in the admissions department.

[517] And then I showed up, and now what are we going to do with him?

[518] Well, you go to Boeing, right?

[519] It was recruited.

[520] You were recruited.

[521] You made that abundance.

[522] No, but here's what I'm saying.

[523] Here's what I'm saying.

[524] Yes, tell me. When you get an engineering degree, this is a choice I made.

[525] I went to college with a purpose.

[526] And so I got a job, and yes, I had student loan.

[527] And, but one thing led to another and I paid them off and you know it's just we have to reckon our relationship with college in what fashion we want I don't know what side of the argument you're well I'm on both sides okay just who's the most employable by my understanding and I don't have the data with me bust my chops but the most employable liberal arts major is philosophy Apparently philosophy majors are flexible and can take any role.

[528] But that's because they go to law school for the most part.

[529] Oh, really?

[530] A lot of them do, yeah.

[531] That's a pretty heavy transfer.

[532] That polysci and history.

[533] But you're saying if you want to get a job out of college, do something that will allow you to get a job out of college.

[534] Just don't eliminate it.

[535] Right.

[536] Right.

[537] Don't think that's a bad thing.

[538] Like he got recruited because he came out as an engineer.

[539] He got a skill that was actually valued.

[540] You're speaking my dad.

[541] language.

[542] I did homework problems for a living.

[543] Yeah.

[544] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[545] We've all been there.

[546] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[547] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing.

[548] But for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking.

[549] on a terrifying medical mystery, like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[550] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[551] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[552] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[553] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[554] Prime members can listen early and ad -free on Amazon music.

[555] What's up, guys?

[556] This is your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

[557] And let me tell you, it's too good.

[558] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[559] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[560] And I don't mean just friends.

[561] I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox.

[562] The list goes on.

[563] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[564] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[565] Well, that's what's weird, is that you and I have this in common.

[566] We both invented a hydraulic resonance suppressor.

[567] For a horizontal stabilizer?

[568] Isn't that weird, Monica?

[569] How often when two people get together who both have invented a hydrolary?

[570] You guys, I got to invent is a sort of overstatement.

[571] Okay.

[572] I lobbied for one.

[573] Okay.

[574] So it's an old trick.

[575] The hydraulic line had a vibration in it, which was a, a pressure wave, just exactly like the wave that a clarinet makes in the air when you, or you whistle, but it's in hydraulic fluid.

[576] And the speed of sound in hydraulic fluid is quite high.

[577] But there were a couple, big airliners have test pilots.

[578] And there was one pilot that just didn't like it, didn't like this vibration in the yoke, it's called, the steering wheel.

[579] And so they kind of let it go for a long time.

[580] And the vibration didn't show up on.

[581] every plane, but what you do is you rig a bayou, an oxbow, as we'd say in river systems, how to say, like the shape of the capital letter D. Okay.

[582] So that one wave shows up exactly out of phase with the other wave, and they cancel out.

[583] Not completely, not at all frequencies, but enough.

[584] And the pilot thought, oh, this is great.

[585] The test pilot liked it now.

[586] Right.

[587] And so I...

[588] And this is the same technology that's in like noise -canceling...

[589] Exactly.

[590] Except this is hydraulic fluid.

[591] And so I just convinced my boss after three years that this would be worth doing.

[592] And I brag about it now, 40 years later, it was a thing.

[593] Yeah, I should.

[594] So when I look at the 737 and the problems they've had the last year, I mean, freaking tragedy, 350 people killed.

[595] That is the horizontal stabilizer being controlled by an automated, automated system that it sounds to me like they didn't have enough redundancy at Boeing, not enough redundancy in a flight critical system?

[596] What's going on?

[597] Meaning one thing can fail.

[598] There's a secondary.

[599] Yeah, all the time.

[600] Right.

[601] Two backups all the time.

[602] So in a plane crash, it is never one thing.

[603] It's this thing and that thing and that thing.

[604] Those guys flew around for nine minutes, unable to figure it out.

[605] It's really surprising.

[606] I got to say, as an old Boeing engineer.

[607] When I was over in Afghanistan, and I got into a Chinook, and a guy pulled me aside.

[608] Those things fly.

[609] Like, whoa, this is the helicopter with two rotors, you guys.

[610] You've all seen them.

[611] They're class.

[612] They're humongous.

[613] And a guy pulled me aside.

[614] He goes, listen, if you go in there and it's not leaking hydraulic fluid, exit, because that means it's out of fluid.

[615] Yeah.

[616] That was the funniest thing you could tell me. Along this line, a trick in keeping a seal lasting a long time, a gasket, a rubber thing, is to let it leak a little.

[617] Well, because then it's got oil around it, right?

[618] That's sort of a trick.

[619] Yeah, and you would already know this, but what's interesting about those, it's the biggest, it's the biggest, heaviest helicopter out there in the military, but it's the fastest.

[620] Oh, really?

[621] Yes, because often they'll be flying with Chinooks, and they'll have a Black Hawk or, and they have to radio to slow down, and in fact, that happened to us on our thing, because the reason being, which you would already know, which is super interesting about a helicopter, that because the helicopter rotor is wings, it's two or four wings that are spinning, the prop on the starboard side of the aircraft has forward air coming at it.

[622] And on the port side, it's got trailing.

[623] It's got trailing.

[624] So one side of the helicopter is creating much more lift than the other side.

[625] So at a certain point, they can't go over 150 or 160 or it starts to list really, really bad.

[626] Then they steer into it.

[627] There's only so much they can do about it.

[628] But the Chinook, they're spinning, counter rotating, so they don't have that issue.

[629] So they can fly, you know, much faster.

[630] I encourage everyone to go down a YouTube wormhole of watching Chinook's land on the side of mountains and stuff with troops.

[631] I mean, the places they can put those things is just so incredible.

[632] So I took, you know, training in the Navy for the Science Guy show.

[633] And one of the tricks is you've got to get out of the helicopter, the dumper.

[634] You've got to be able to swim out of it if it gets in the water.

[635] Oh, really?

[636] It's a thing they make you do.

[637] Oh, I'd hope to never be in that situation.

[638] You just got to trust the numbers.

[639] You know, this whole thing.

[640] Yes, yes.

[641] If you know how to swim, you can hold your breath long enough to get out.

[642] To get out.

[643] It's if you freak out.

[644] It's the panic that'll kill you, not the situation.

[645] Or at least that's what we tell ourselves.

[646] Yeah.

[647] Now, while you were at Boeing and you were there for nine years.

[648] No, no, I was only at Boeing three years, but.

[649] I worked at another company that was very, very similar at Sunstrand Data Control, which is now Honeywell, which is across the highway from the giant campus that is now Microsoft.

[650] When I worked there, Microsoft was an office, and it had a sign Microsoft.

[651] That's what a silly name.

[652] Uh -huh.

[653] That's crazy.

[654] No, Microsoft's kind of a big deal.

[655] I've never heard of it.

[656] Now, whether you were in that window of, be it nine years or 12 or 13 years, you applied four times to join the astronaut training program at NASA.

[657] Well, that was really after I started doing the science guy show.

[658] Well, it was after.

[659] Yeah, yeah.

[660] Oh.

[661] But to be an astronaut now.

[662] But then my point doesn't remain.

[663] Because what I, when I thought it was while you were under the employee of Boeing, I said to myself, oh, this guy's had wanderlust just across the board, probably.

[664] It wasn't because one element of your story Which is very rare and interesting Is that you had this very stable job as an engineer You were doing well I assume you owned a home And you decided to quit that And go into stand up comedy That in itself is a really rare Scenario But then you add in that you were also trying to be an astronaut Then I now it's making more sense Like you probably just are romantic at heart You probably are dreaming regularly About all kinds of fantastic things Yes Is that does that describe you?

[665] I'm romantic, yes.

[666] So while you're engineering, Steve Martin was very popular at the time.

[667] I think he changed the face of comedy.

[668] Yep, there's camps, there's camps, and there's a lot of people in the Steve Martin camp.

[669] I've had a lot of guests on a lot of comedians.

[670] What's the other camp?

[671] Jerry Seinfeldon.

[672] Well, for me, Bill Murray is a North Star for me, but taking nothing away from Steve Martin.

[673] But a lot of people were either, they were like, that's their guy or Bill Murray was their guy.

[674] Well, here's my claim for you to evaluate the listener.

[675] Okay.

[676] When Steve Martin produced those first two albums, that's when everybody was doing Steve Martin jokes.

[677] And I claim it was that weekend, in a sense, that every city in the U .S. and Canada got a comedy club.

[678] Like it was just after...

[679] Yeah, there's a market for this.

[680] All of a sudden, everybody had a comedy club.

[681] I just claimed Steve Martin just gave the whole thing a big nudge.

[682] And you looked like him, and you would impersonate him a bit.

[683] Enough that it gave you the confidence, you know.

[684] Well, so a group of friends whom I hardly knew, Seattleites, I got a job at Boeing.

[685] I would go to the Rain Tree Grill, which was a restaurant bar that I could walk home from.

[686] And they said, Bill, you got to enter the Steve Martin look -like contests.

[687] And I won.

[688] I did not advance.

[689] But after that, people wanted me to do Steve Martin impressions at events.

[690] And so I would do that a little bit, but then you want to have your own voice.

[691] Yes, of course.

[692] Yes.

[693] Yeah.

[694] And so I met these guys.

[695] This is the famous paradigm shift for Jim Carrey as most of his stand -up career was based on impersonations.

[696] And then he realized, I want to be someone, people impersonated at some point.

[697] Wait a minute.

[698] I'm going to turn the tables on those people.

[699] That's right.

[700] Blah!

[701] Ha!

[702] Ha!

[703] Ha!

[704] Ha!

[705] Ha!

[706] So, God, it's cool to know that he had such a clear vision.

[707] I was around doing comedy clubs when the head of the NBC station, I wanted to have a comedy show.

[708] I want to have a comedy show.

[709] I want to get in on this comedy thing.

[710] So he started a show called Almost Live, which is a better title than three hours old.

[711] So I would meet the guys who wrote for that show.

[712] It's open mics.

[713] And they eventually, Ross Schaefer said, why don't you submit some jokes?

[714] So I started doing that, 1984.

[715] And then eventually I quit my job, October 3rd, 1926.

[716] Now that decision, how rife with fear was that?

[717] Oh, man. So I had what I called the end of the world money.

[718] at $5 ,000, and I figured if I didn't change anything about my life, if I kept making car payments, mortgage payments, I would make it for six months, and then I would decide.

[719] So speaking of...

[720] Not a huge window to become successful in entertainment.

[721] So if I was making no money for six months, then I'd have to go back to engineering.

[722] Okay.

[723] Now, this show, almost live, turns into...

[724] You end up having to fill like a seven -minute...

[725] segment at some point.

[726] Maybe it was six minutes, but six minutes is a long flipping time onto TV.

[727] And so the story is lost in antiquity.

[728] There's three versions.

[729] It was either Eddie Vetter, Geraldo Rivera, or a woman named Rita Jen Rhett, who the young people may not know, but she was infamous.

[730] She claimed to have had sex on the steps of the U .S. Capitol.

[731] As I like to joke, the almost incredible aspect of that story is the guy she said she was having sex with was her husband.

[732] I mean, that's just...

[733] That is highly impossible.

[734] It's just can't happen.

[735] No, that kind of sex only happens during the courtship.

[736] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[737] You will not soon find my wife and I anywhere public.

[738] Those days are probably...

[739] Can't hear you.

[740] And so, anyway, somebody didn't show up.

[741] Ross Schaefer, who's still a dear friend of mine, was sitting there musing, and he said, you know, Bill, you could be like Bill and I, the science guy or something.

[742] And then he closed his briefcase and left the meeting because he was also the host of the most popular evening drive radio show on KJR.

[743] I did the household uses of liquid nitrogen because we all have liquid.

[744] How did you get your hands on liquid nitrogen?

[745] Well, so I was a young guy.

[746] I was a United Way Big Brother.

[747] Do you know what I mean?

[748] Yeah.

[749] And I was also a science explainer at the Pacific Science Center, which is still...

[750] Oh, that helps.

[751] Well, so on weekends, I would go, screw around, talking about levers and...

[752] You know, with school kids, you have simple machines and some photosynthesis and the liquid nitrogen show is still a very popular show.

[753] It's still fantastic no matter how many times.

[754] So what's between you and your phone or your car, whatever you're listening to, is 70 % nitrogen.

[755] You can breathe it.

[756] It's fine.

[757] But when you liquefy it, it's fantastic.

[758] It is so cold, the roses smash, the racquetball balls thud.

[759] and if you chew marshmallows frozen minus 320 Fahrenheit minus 196 Celsius and chew it in just the right way steam comes out of your nose you can't beat it did you run any risk of getting that dry ice burn on your tongue yeah I'm not saying no comment I can't imagine you taste very well at this point well a lot of callous you burned your tongue it heals there's a lot of cells there So you just get good at it If you're doing liquid nitrogen show four times a morning You just get where you don't burn your tongue You know, it's a...

[760] I really wish you had brought some frozen marshmallows to eat Because I would like that I'd love to describe what I'm seeing So a frozen marshmallow in the freezer doesn't get no nearly cold enough No, it's not going to do it Yeah, you got to get way colder So liquid nitrogen is as we like to say cheaper than gasoline It's a very common industrial solvent or liquid.

[761] And so I just went to the Science Center and they let me borrow a doer, as it's called, which is a thermos.

[762] The doer is a British guy who apparently was the first guy to propose a vacuum flask having it's what a thermos bottle is, where you have a layer of glass and another layer of glass with vacuum in between it so that it stays cold a long time.

[763] And then that led to Bill Nye, the science guy.

[764] That's right.

[765] But although Carl Sagan makes a little appearance in between those two things where you actually sought his counsel about the show, right?

[766] With the success of that bit, they started having me do a science guy bit every few weeks on the comedy show.

[767] Some of them were lame.

[768] Some of them were good.

[769] Many of them were funny because you make fun of the guy having trouble with the oil drum or whatever.

[770] But I also was doing a show in the mornings on Sunday called Bill's Beals.

[771] basement where I would have a kid like Mr. Wizard, if those of you old enough to remember, and I would do a demonstration with the kid.

[772] I wrote to Carl Sagan at my 10th college reunion, and I wanted his counsel.

[773] And he was very nice.

[774] He took five minutes with me. He was a busy guy, New York Times bestseller, producing the Cosmos series, follow -on books and this and that.

[775] Billions and billions.

[776] So the claim is, a footnote, the claim is he never said billions and billions.

[777] Johnny Carson is supposed to have said that in parodying Carl Sagan.

[778] So it is said, I can't get in the fistfight of this.

[779] It's not a hill we should die on.

[780] Yes, right.

[781] There's bigger things.

[782] So he said, kids resonate to pure science.

[783] That was the verb he used.

[784] Well, because you were initially imagining teaching what your specialty was, which is mechanical engineering, bicycles and stuff.

[785] Airplanes.

[786] And so he kind of talked to you out of that.

[787] Well, he just one sentence, you know.

[788] They're more interested in that than technology.

[789] And I realized he was absolutely completely, totally right.

[790] And so, you know, hearing him say that, or reading that he said that, it made me wonder what your opinion is.

[791] Are kids interested in pure science because they're dying to make sense of the world?

[792] And by the time you're an adult, you just kind of take it for granted.

[793] Is it that the place is...

[794] You've hit the nail on the head.

[795] Everybody starts out a scientist.

[796] Like, why the fuck is all this working?

[797] Why is, how does the car work?

[798] How does the lights work?

[799] How do I think?

[800] How do I know I'm thinking?

[801] Yeah.

[802] Wow, what are flowers blooming?

[803] So the thing for me as a kid was bees.

[804] Okay.

[805] How the hell do these things fly?

[806] Uh -huh.

[807] You look at a bumble bee, its body is enormous compared to its little wings.

[808] It is.

[809] How in the world does this pull this off?

[810] Uh -huh.

[811] It fascinated me. It still does, I guess.

[812] All this said, that one sentence gave me. a nudge.

[813] Yes.

[814] So you did Bill Nye the science guy from 1993 to 1998, which is why primarily I missed it, because I was 18 in 1993.

[815] Yeah, you just missed it.

[816] I was not trying to watch TV and learn anything.

[817] Plus, this was children's television.

[818] I mean, seriously.

[819] Yeah.

[820] And this, I remind everybody, there's a lot on the internet nowadays.

[821] There are excellent science videos.

[822] Vertasium with Derek Miller, physics girl, Diana Cowern.

[823] There's a lot of excellent science, but that stuff's high school and older.

[824] Like, we still have a need everybody for elementary science.

[825] Everybody gets excited about science before they're 10.

[826] Yeah.

[827] Space and dinosaurs, people.

[828] Space and dinosaurs.

[829] In that five years, you were nominated for 23 Emmys.

[830] Wow.

[831] And you won 19.

[832] Well, the show.

[833] The show.

[834] Well, you're the fucking show.

[835] It's called Bill and I, the science guy.

[836] What do you?

[837] seven, but I didn't do the sound editing.

[838] Oh, okay.

[839] I didn't do sound mixing.

[840] Okay.

[841] Or at least you didn't take credit for it.

[842] But did you feel like you, once you knew you were going to do pure science, were you like, well, I guess I got to go back and learn pure science?

[843] Well, not much.

[844] By the time you get out of engineering school, you have taken a lot of fundamental science.

[845] Sure.

[846] I hope the hell you can balance a chemical equation.

[847] I hope you can do simple machines.

[848] I hope you have some understanding of biology and plants.

[849] I hope you have some knowledge that chickens start out at eggs because the rooster interacted with the chicken.

[850] Can I say interacted on this show?

[851] We prefer fucking, but yeah.

[852] Yeah, okay, yes.

[853] Yes, we'll take interactive.

[854] So during this period, the show is syndicated across the country.

[855] It becomes wildly popular.

[856] I have a nosy question.

[857] You owned a piece of that show, I would imagine, right?

[858] So financially it was well, right?

[859] It was a paid.

[860] able to, well, for me, I was able to buy a car with cash.

[861] That's liberating, isn't it?

[862] I bought a Honda Accord station wagon with cash.

[863] I love that car.

[864] Yeah, it was a great car.

[865] I love wagons.

[866] And it had a stick shift.

[867] I grew up with.

[868] It was big fun.

[869] What is it like to be up in Seattle and doing local comedy clubs and doing a public access show and all this and then becoming kind of a national...

[870] It's weird, right?

[871] Is it...

[872] It's cool.

[873] Because, by the way, it's, it's, um, it's, um, it's, um, it's, um, it's, um, it's, it's, um, it's unconventional in that you were supposed to move to Hollywood or New York City to do that.

[874] So the fact that you did that in Washington adds a layer, I think, to the bizarreness of it.

[875] Well, but it also, this was the blurs, the blessing and the curse.

[876] So because we were in a backwater of Seattle's the 13th market or so, maybe it's 12th now, but that enabled us, it just gave us freedom.

[877] Right.

[878] There's an ad going on right now with Dennis Quaid where he's driving and a guy goes by and He's the other guy's driving, and it turns out they're on trailers.

[879] Yes, yes.

[880] One guy's backwards at one point.

[881] So on the Science Guy show, we were not on trailers.

[882] It's me talking, driving a car on Route 99.

[883] Hollywood would never permit such a thing.

[884] Yes.

[885] Then me driving the grass car, which is a very popular sequence on the plant show.

[886] These very creative guys stapled carpeting to a Cadillac they bought at a junkyard.

[887] And one guy was, this is a Northwest thing, was getting his lawn sprayed.

[888] So a crew shows up and they spray a mixture of seed and fertilizer onto the lawn.

[889] So they sprayed it onto this carpeting with fluorescent lights in the guy's garage for a week.

[890] And grass grew.

[891] But it's me driving along talking about the grass car.

[892] I'm not on a trailer.

[893] That's me driving your car.

[894] And there's other cars and you just got a deal.

[895] and so I mentioned it as an example and the notorious example that I've mentioned several times these Disney executives came to Seattle to see what the problem was what's the problem why was your last tape delivery three days late they send these executives and they walk into the set and they see the problem immediately why did you guys run brick why did you run brick up that high two stories and it took me a couple beats they didn't realize that the wall that looks like styrofoam brick was a brick wall they thought we had glued artificial brick to the some warehouse but it just hadn't occurred to it and they were embarrassed and they went up and touched it and it was cold to the touch so in other words it had limited oversight but then there's other things you were constrained you know we did it on a budget and I think you can see when you watch the show, part of its charm, was you have any thing, you just put yellow and black safety tape on it, and it becomes a thing of science.

[896] Like, if you had an iPhone and you put yellow and black tape on the back, it would be an iPhone of science.

[897] So there was just plywood and raw wood that was of science, because that was, we didn't have, you know, big prop.

[898] We had a fantastic props department.

[899] In fact, the guy, Bill Sleeth, went on to be the, I guess he's head designer of Starbucks.

[900] You know, when you go into a Starbucks, all the arrangement of, yeah.

[901] But there was a limited budget, and so that's part of the charm of the show, was just, let's just do this.

[902] Now, what is it doing to your love life?

[903] Oh, well.

[904] It's improving it, yeah?

[905] Did two things.

[906] I broke up with one woman because I was just felt I was so busy.

[907] Then I broke up with another woman because I felt I was so busy.

[908] And, you know, so I never had kids.

[909] I never got married at that time, the logical time to do that.

[910] And I, of course, it could be because of everything else that happens to in your life before that.

[911] But part of it was you really are working seven days a week.

[912] That's all you're doing and you think it's important and so on and so on.

[913] But I think it's really for you psychologists out there.

[914] It was my parents stopped getting along when I was, whatever, 12, 13.

[915] And that's probably why I never got married.

[916] You hadn't had an example of a relationship that you were striving to replicate.

[917] Anyway, but this I used as an excuse not to get married.

[918] So the love life was, it just put on hold.

[919] It was put on hold.

[920] But clearly people, you had fans now.

[921] There were people that were probably very interested in you that in the past had not been interested in you.

[922] Well.

[923] That's an exciting revelation for a human to experience, right?

[924] You're pretty locked into whatever your appeal is.

[925] But it was, at first, I was not comfortable being famous.

[926] Uh -huh.

[927] Whereas now, of course.

[928] Sure, sure, sure.

[929] You can't imagine not being.

[930] Oh, of course.

[931] So here's what I found.

[932] Speaking of Starbucks, see, like, if you're not well -known, latte is like $4 .50.

[933] Okay.

[934] But if you're famous, it's $4 .50.

[935] It's fantastic.

[936] In other words, no, it is of no value.

[937] So.

[938] Oh, right.

[939] I was really looking for the riddle.

[940] There's no riddle.

[941] It's just it doesn't help you.

[942] It's the same.

[943] So, and then.

[944] I'll tell you the difference.

[945] They are, they immediately smile when they see you ordering your latte because it's exciting.

[946] I often, I'm aware, I check the, the privilege I have is that I'm seeing generally in life, I move through life seeing people excited, which is a very rare.

[947] Yeah, that's right.

[948] It's a total gift.

[949] Someone's actually excited to help me do the thing that they probably hate.

[950] doing all day long and I think what a gift this is like what you would dream everyone would experience is like people are happy to see you that's rare yeah yeah yeah but I'm also I think there's a lot of I sense there are people waiting for me to screw up oh sure sure sure well it certainly makes one self -conscious so whatever your own natural predilections are once you become self -conscious they start kind of yeah yeah so why why did the show end I mean oh we did 100 shows everybody was tired and then part of the reason the show came into existence really was called a children's television act and Tipper Gore Al Gore's wife at the time was a big supporter of this there was a time when you were not allowed to have your television station which was a license to print money unless you had three hours of educational programming every week so our show was created at this moment in television history where it had automatic support.

[951] Anyway, so after they had success, they weren't there pushing to make more shows.

[952] Okay.

[953] How to say, 100 shows was enough.

[954] And everybody was pretty...

[955] Were you ready to move on?

[956] Oh, yeah, I was tired.

[957] And Jim and Aaron were tired.

[958] Everybody was tired.

[959] And what did you think at that moment?

[960] Because this is another moment like leaving Boeing, basically.

[961] Well, I remember leaning against one of the pillars, if you've ever seen, the show.

[962] There are these wooden pillars that hold up the roof of the building.

[963] Like, it's over now.

[964] What am I going to do now?

[965] What's next, man?

[966] And there were years tied to that where people presumed I was a kid show host.

[967] It reminds me, at least when I was in college, when your finals are over.

[968] And, okay, now what?

[969] What do I do now?

[970] But then I immediately got involved in 300 other things so you never had a moment where you were like uh oh no what now or did you have many of those moments i have i still have those moments every day sure it's the nature of of freelancivity and the other thing was what are you going to do that's as good as the science guy show right yes it's very yeah high bar yeah what are you going to do next i did 100 greatest discoveries 100 greatest inventions, stuff happens, the eyes of Nye, all these other shows that were okay, but the icon is, or the thing everybody thinks of is the science guy show.

[971] So here's what's going on now.

[972] There's generation of people who watched the show who were not alive when the show was finished.

[973] That's crazy.

[974] It's the third generation of people watching the science guy show.

[975] It's very cool.

[976] And I say all the time, I try to get it.

[977] I try to understand.

[978] what a big deal this is for people.

[979] I mean, I put my heart and saw into the thing, man. And that was the goal.

[980] There's a document I talk about all the time.

[981] We call the Rules of the Road, a single page thing I created, and we gave to everybody who came to work on the show.

[982] You know, it's a PBS station.

[983] We had a lot of interns.

[984] We had 100 people over the course of five years.

[985] We gave them this document.

[986] And the first line, it says, objective, change the world.

[987] That's at the top of the document.

[988] that's still the objective yeah you know why is it so important that we get kids interested in science now i i have my opinion but i'd like to hear it from well everything wherever you are right now look around everything you can see came out of somebody's head if you're in a room if you're in a car if you're on a road even if you're hiking in the forest listening to this podcast on your mobile device all that came from science all that came out of some people's heads and the people who did it understood science, respected science, new algebra.

[989] We're good at problem solving.

[990] They also accepted failure and revised their approach and made it work.

[991] Well, by the way, could take criticism.

[992] That's the nature of peer review and the scientific method, right, is to be able to take on criticism without collapse or invoking some...

[993] Defend your point of view successfully.

[994] And by the way, when it's wrong, that's fine.

[995] Let me now go back to the drawing board.

[996] This is how things evolve and become better.

[997] Science is how we are able to feed 7 .7 billion people.

[998] In my great -grandparents' time, they barely fed a billion people.

[999] Right.

[1000] It's through the technology of agriculture and transportation, refrigeration.

[1001] This is all a result of science, and I remind you, U .S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8, Congress shall, among other things, promote the progress of science and the useful arts.

[1002] so the useful arts I believe is an 18th century expression meaning engineering like build architecture sewers bridges bridges was all the useful arts metallurgy was the useful arts article one section 8 goes on about what we nowadays call intellectual property copyrights and so on but just that they put it in there it's freaking amazing to me that's why we need the next gen or any generation of young people to if not become Well, they're going to save our ass is what they've got to do, right?

[1003] We need scientists and engineers and people, taxpayers and voters who respect it so that we'll have these people to solve these, to take care of the future.

[1004] A myriad of problems we have on our plate.

[1005] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[1006] On educating kids now, as I understand it, I have two little kids, things are evolving very quickly.

[1007] Memorizing dates and stuff is gone off.

[1008] to do that.

[1009] Yeah, you don't need to do that.

[1010] And it's just taking up area of your brain that could be dedicated to something creative.

[1011] Now, my question to you is, what are you fearful will get lost in this transition?

[1012] Well, the big problem we have now is what the phrase that's thrown around science education is critical thinking.

[1013] It used to be called reasoning or logic or something.

[1014] Critical thing is a fine phrase.

[1015] It means evaluating evidence.

[1016] So if somebody says to you, the atomic number of strontium is 43 2 That's good That's technetium But 38 Okay Really close So 80 % right Oh Well but anyway You can look it up And it's probably gonna be right You would trust it If you looked up The atomic number of technetium I think it's 43 If it's wrong Man No you said 43 Then you said 38 You're all fucked up Well look it up Strontium is 38 And rubidium is 37 Obviously Well duh Oh, he said it different one when he said 43.

[1017] He's right.

[1018] I think it's technetium.

[1019] Zirconium's 40.

[1020] But anyway, we could look it up and it would be right.

[1021] But if somebody says a woman running for U .S. president has a child trafficking ring in the basement of a pizza parlor or a few blocks from the White House, I hope we can get kids of the future to question that.

[1022] Well, I think we need a bipartisan source.

[1023] Well, we have the Congressional Budget Office, which is supposed to evaluate things in a bipartisan fashion.

[1024] Yeah.

[1025] Do they?

[1026] So the thing we want to teach young people now is how to evaluate evidence.

[1027] And it's hard.

[1028] And the thing I love, the one I love, even now, I love, is the tree octopus.

[1029] So you can look up the tree octopus.

[1030] It's layer after web page layer about the lumberjacks who did not love.

[1031] the tree octopus because it interfered with their logging and the tree octopus lives in the tree and jumps down on the fish and eats them and climbs back up the tree.

[1032] There's no such thing as a tree octopus.

[1033] But if you go to the internet, it sure looks like it.

[1034] And so this is still an excellent exercise for people of all ages.

[1035] Just when somebody, when you find something on the internet, it may not be true.

[1036] Keep that in mind.

[1037] So you've got to figure a way to sort it out.

[1038] odds are it's not.

[1039] When you look at the vast volume of it, it's probably a higher percentage chance that it's not.

[1040] Well, it depends what it is.

[1041] That's what I'm saying.

[1042] If you say, who was the 41st president of the United States?

[1043] It's probably not wrong.

[1044] Right.

[1045] Who was the president of Mexico 10 years ago?

[1046] That's probably not wrong.

[1047] President Fox?

[1048] Yes, that's right.

[1049] But if you ask me Fox's first name, I'd really have to think hard.

[1050] Vicente?

[1051] It sounds right.

[1052] I don't know.

[1053] But we could look it up and it would probably be right.

[1054] But this other information, and especially when you have people deliberately trying to mislead people, this is what the fossil fuel is doing, what the fossil fuel industry is doing with climate change, that's hard, man, you've got to be good at it.

[1055] Okay.

[1056] So with our last two, well, no, I got to ask this.

[1057] I read it and I just, I know you won't enjoy this, but it has such a comedic angle.

[1058] You got married in 2006.

[1059] Not quite.

[1060] Well, you got it annulled, right?

[1061] it wasn't even a marriage because the certificate was not the paperwork was not properly filled out.

[1062] I won't call it a sore spot, but technically I was never married and I tell everybody there were six weeks I was really happy.

[1063] Okay, okay, I just, Monica needs to know this.

[1064] Have you ever seen the Blue Angels?

[1065] Oh sure.

[1066] So what's everybody's favorite?

[1067] The knife edge pass where the two planes are closed.

[1068] Captain Monica and Captain Dax are going to meet air show center at a closing speed of 868 miles an hour and at the last minute they turn on their sides and just miss each other that's what my marriage was like oh yeah now you're you have a show uh bill nye saves the world that's on netflix yes turn it up loud everyone yes bill nye saves the world on netflix that came out in 2017 yeah we did 25 shows uh -huh and they're still on the service you also have two books uh undeniable evolution and the science of creation which is we just talked about a bit ago.

[1069] I'm very proud of it.

[1070] Good.

[1071] In this book, I take the controversial step of asserting that viruses should be their own domain of life.

[1072] Blah!

[1073] Oh.

[1074] Then, Unstoppable is how the next generation is going to use science to provide clean water, renewable electricity, access to the internet for everybody in the whole world.

[1075] And don't forget the third book, everything all at once, which is how we have to solve these problems.

[1076] Everything all at once.

[1077] Okay, put my objection to global warming to bed, okay?

[1078] I'm going to be a foil for you.

[1079] Yes, thank goodness.

[1080] Yes, Trey's excite them all.

[1081] Here are a couple of my issues with it.

[1082] I do not on any level deny that global warming is happening.

[1083] Good.

[1084] Thank you.

[1085] Okay.

[1086] Thank goodness.

[1087] Two things I wrestle with are, A, as I learned it in my astronomy class, the Earth is well known to be on an axis.

[1088] It's spinning.

[1089] It's also wobbling.

[1090] It's wobbling, I believe, every 49 ,000 years it makes a full.

[1091] 25 ,000.

[1092] Is that all it is?

[1093] Yeah, that's all.

[1094] Okay, so every 25 ,000 years, it completes a wobble.

[1095] And that is the explanation for our many ice ages and ice age regression.

[1096] It's part of it, for sure.

[1097] This is the Malankovic cycle.

[1098] How could it be part of it?

[1099] Well, it's a very complex system.

[1100] But yes, the Malankovic cycles are the real deal.

[1101] Right.

[1102] So knowing that the earth warms and cools and we have ice age regression and whatnot, we are at the very nadir of that wobble, are we not?

[1103] Where it would be getting warmest anyways.

[1104] No, no. The problem is not that the world wasn't once warmer, not that it wasn't much colder at one time.

[1105] Not that an ancient dinosaur times, if they kept clocks the way we do, the day was only 18 hours, and there were over 1 ,000 parts per million of carbon dioxide.

[1106] That's not that.

[1107] the issue.

[1108] Okay.

[1109] The issue is the rate at which things are changing.

[1110] Because it can't be processed in a conventional way.

[1111] We can't change seaports.

[1112] We can't move our agriculture north.

[1113] We can't deal with populations being displaced by droughts and floods.

[1114] That's the problem is the rate, the speed at which it is changed.

[1115] To put it in rate terms, the earth used to have rates of 0 .000 degrees Celsius per millennium.

[1116] Well, now we're at 0 .1 per decade.

[1117] We are 10 ,000 times faster if I got my digits we're 10 ,000 times faster than ever in history, with the one exception, perhaps, of an asteroid impact.

[1118] That would make a very fast climate change.

[1119] Yes.

[1120] Get cool in a hurry.

[1121] And change things radically.

[1122] So it's the rate, it's the rate, Okay, good.

[1123] So that's a herd accepted.

[1124] My next thing.

[1125] Methane warms the atmosphere at 23 times the rate of carbon does.

[1126] The main culprits for methane production are the Everglades, swamp land, trees are emitting methane.

[1127] Oh, tiny amounts.

[1128] But methane's important.

[1129] Well, I just want to say, though, that we are hyper -focused on carbon.

[1130] Yeah.

[1131] But my own issue is methane is far more the culprit.

[1132] No. No, the reason everybody's focused on carbon dioxide, Daxx, is because there's so much more of it.

[1133] Methane's a very serious problem.

[1134] But grant you, yes, for sure.

[1135] But there's so much more carbon dioxide.

[1136] It is, after water vapor, it is the big driver for keeping the earth warm and making it get warmer.

[1137] But methane's a concern, no question.

[1138] And speaking of everything all at once, we don't want to do.

[1139] one or the other methane or carbon dioxide we want to do everything all at once well here's my here's i want to say an even a broader point that i like to make which is uh even if you don't believe in global warming let's say you don't okay i can accept that you don't believe in it okay you should still not want to be relying on a source of fuel that is finite why in earth would we be on a finite source of fuel that we know we're going to be out of and we're going to war over and fight over and give money to people we don't want to.

[1140] That in of itself.

[1141] Also, we all breathe air.

[1142] We acknowledge we want to breathe the cleanest air possible.

[1143] Why would we not be striving for the technology that keeps our air as clean as possible and the water as clean as possible?

[1144] These de -politicize it just for one second.

[1145] Shouldn't we want the best system possible for creating energy and clean water, renewable electricity, access to the internet.

[1146] These are my rants.

[1147] So, you know, So we wouldn't have to have a standing army or military on the far side of the world defending oil if we were producing our electricity domestically for crying out loud.

[1148] Who would not love that?

[1149] So what's happened is the fossil fuel industry has been very successful in introducing the idea that scientific uncertainty, plus or minus 2%, whatever the heck, is the same as plus or minus 100%.

[1150] Right.

[1151] And it's just, that's absolutely wrong.

[1152] With that said, all of us have benefited almost inestimably from fossil fuel.

[1153] Yeah.

[1154] And many parts of it will still need.

[1155] Yeah, I mean, our agriculture.

[1156] That's another issue I have.

[1157] We're going to want plastics.

[1158] We might be able to come up with a corn base, whatever.

[1159] But the point is, there are things, I still don't know what is going to be, as a armchair mechanical engineer myself, I don't know how we're going to fly planes without fossil fuels for quite a while.

[1160] So let's save the fucking.

[1161] fuel for the one thing that's, we're probably many decades out from solving.

[1162] So for you engineers out there, for those young scientists, if you want to do something cool, address air transportation.

[1163] So it may be possible to make fuels renewably from genetically modified algae or something like that.

[1164] It's quite possible.

[1165] There's a claim that you can have jet flights only two hours long with battery -powered aircraft.

[1166] This is an extraordinary claim.

[1167] Especially given how heavy batteries are.

[1168] Yeah, right now.

[1169] For example, when I was in school, aeronautics professor said winglets, the things on the wingtips of modern airplanes, they're a waste of time because they're too heavy and they just, you don't get enough benefit from those.

[1170] You don't want those.

[1171] But the materials of wings have changed so much that now they are of benefit.

[1172] So this is an exciting opportunity for somebody, air transportation.

[1173] But we're not going to just stop fossil fuel.

[1174] this weekend, but the opportunities with wind and solar are huge.

[1175] Pun intended, more power to you.

[1176] Electricities enables us to podcast and make toast.

[1177] The same thing.

[1178] It's amazingly versatile.

[1179] So let's go, people.

[1180] Renewable electricity for everyone in the world.

[1181] Let's go.

[1182] Let's get her done.

[1183] That's a great message.

[1184] Your podcast, science rules.

[1185] And what kind of people will you be talking to on science rules?

[1186] So we've had some fabulous guests already.

[1187] Okay.

[1188] They've had Peg Riley, who's going to make the next generation of antibiotics.

[1189] And so she's been on there.

[1190] Heather Berlin, who studies the nature of consciousness.

[1191] How do you think what you're thinking?

[1192] How do you know you're thinking that you're thinking?

[1193] What is thinking?

[1194] And so we have specialists on nuclear weapons and how dangerous they still are.

[1195] And it's just I'm very proud of it.

[1196] We are doing it with Corey Powell, who is the editor on my books, yeah.

[1197] A very dry, he's very funny guy.

[1198] You know, he was the editor of Discover Magazine.

[1199] He writes for, you know, he's been around science journalism for a long time.

[1200] That's a good guy to have in your corner.

[1201] May 16th.

[1202] And the Planetary Society, I'm the CEO because they took one class from Carl Sagan.

[1203] I joined.

[1204] He started the Planetary Society.

[1205] I join.

[1206] I'm a charter member.

[1207] Then I left the room at a board meeting and they took a vote.

[1208] and now I'm the CEO.

[1209] Oh, wow.

[1210] Stuff happened.

[1211] Well, Bill.

[1212] So if nothing don't happen, we're going to launch our second solar sale spacecraft.

[1213] No sooner than June 22nd.

[1214] That's how they talk at NASA.

[1215] No sooner than NST June 22nd.

[1216] So we are a secondary payload on the next Falcon Heavy rocket.

[1217] Is that one of the...

[1218] Three Falcon 9...

[1219] to get strapped together if you've never seen a rocket launch everybody it is astonishing and this this is the rocket next biggest to the Saturn fives that went to the moon how exciting it'll be in orbit for about a year and this is going to deploy a sail made of shiny shiny mylar and we will boost its orbital energy we'll go to a higher orbit at a different inclination using nothing but photons from the sun.

[1220] Wow.

[1221] It's almost incredible.

[1222] And this is where Sagan talked about it.

[1223] When I was in class, he was on the Tonight Show in 1976, talking about solar sailing.

[1224] And now we're fulfilling his dream.

[1225] Wow.

[1226] So check us out at planetary .org.

[1227] It's 60 ,000 members like you, around the world, who think space exploration is cool.

[1228] And we are doing this to, as the modern verb, is democratized space.

[1229] more people can participate in spaceflight and make discoveries which changed the course of human history.

[1230] Well, you know, I know you did a great Steve Martin impersonation when you were younger.

[1231] But you know, it's been taking me two hours to figure it out, but I got it at the last second whose voice you are identical to.

[1232] Do you know who's the poor guy?

[1233] John McEnroe.

[1234] It's unfucking candy.

[1235] Any car.

[1236] I can pick any car.

[1237] Yes.

[1238] I was going to say take us out with.

[1239] saying, are you blind?

[1240] That ball was in!

[1241] The guy, he was a good player.

[1242] Oh, he was.

[1243] He was.

[1244] Bill Nye, the science guy.

[1245] Thank you so much.

[1246] Thanks for dedicating your life to helping young kids get on fire for science.

[1247] I sure hope my girls end up with an appetite for it.

[1248] Oh, they will.

[1249] Yeah.

[1250] All kids, how old are they?

[1251] Four and six.

[1252] Oh, these are my people.

[1253] Yeah.

[1254] No, everybody, when four or six, love science.

[1255] Dinosaurs in space.

[1256] Dad, where did we come from?

[1257] Are we alone in the universe?

[1258] I've been answering that question a lot.

[1259] And if I can leave you with this, we are made of the stuff, of the dust of exploded stars.

[1260] This has been proven through scientific discovery the last few centuries.

[1261] So you and I, everybody, we are one way that the universe is knowing itself.

[1262] Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, cue the spooky music law.

[1263] And so that insight fills me with reverence every day.

[1264] Yeah.

[1265] Yeah, it's mind -blowing.

[1266] We know a cabillionth of what there is tonight.

[1267] Oh, God, yeah.

[1268] A cabillionth.

[1269] All right, well, thank you so much, Philna.

[1270] Thank you, Monica.

[1271] All right, everybody, get out there and change the world.

[1272] Get her done.

[1273] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1274] Sweet home, Mrs. Padman.

[1275] where the facts are so true, fuck you.

[1276] Did you make that up?

[1277] Right on the spot.

[1278] See, it sounded like it.

[1279] It was good.

[1280] No, it was good.

[1281] It's the fuck you part's not so nice, but that's okay.

[1282] But you know what that comes from?

[1283] Back when I was an alcoholic and I used to do karaoke a lot, that was one of my songs, and I added, fuck you.

[1284] And it always, when I would do it, we would all agree.

[1285] sound that song should have had that in there it would have really just punctuated it perfectly fuck you but like in a good like a in a positive way not in an actual fuck you as in a like a fuck yeah oh well you could say fuck yeah oh let's see where the skies are so blue fuck yeah you nah it doesn't work doesn't work it doesn't rhyme I guess no longer works too bad too bad well that was a good song.

[1286] Welcome.

[1287] Welcome.

[1288] How you doing?

[1289] Good.

[1290] How are you?

[1291] Well, you were a little drowsy this morning.

[1292] I was drowsy.

[1293] We all partied pretty effing hard yesterday.

[1294] Yeah.

[1295] Not to blow the illusion of what day it is, but we'll just own it.

[1296] It's Monday.

[1297] It's Monday.

[1298] Yeah.

[1299] Part one of my party was a workout party with Eric.

[1300] Party two was Cinco de Mayo.

[1301] Yep.

[1302] At the Hansons.

[1303] Yeah.

[1304] Another great party.

[1305] Great fun party.

[1306] And then, of course, rounding it out with the third party, Game of Thrones.

[1307] Yeah, Sunday night party.

[1308] We didn't have any food, which could be a strike against it.

[1309] I regret not ordering pizza when I considered it.

[1310] No, we had just ate.

[1311] We didn't eat it.

[1312] We had just Charlie, perfect, and Charlie had made a bunch of carnisada, tacos.

[1313] Yeah.

[1314] So everyone was pretty full.

[1315] Everyone got their fill.

[1316] It was good.

[1317] No one was really in the mood for pizza other than Jess and I. I'm not really supposed to have pizza on Cinco de Mayo.

[1318] But what if you've already had some tortillas?

[1319] I guess it's fine.

[1320] People have problems with Cinco de Mayo and cultural appropriation.

[1321] I don't know that much about it.

[1322] Do they really?

[1323] Yeah, they do.

[1324] Come on.

[1325] No, they do.

[1326] It's a thing.

[1327] Yeah.

[1328] Oh, boy.

[1329] Yeah.

[1330] Do they have it with St. Patrick's Day?

[1331] No, but I think that's because on St. Patrick's Day, you're like a leprechaun.

[1332] That's not a real person.

[1333] Everyone's wearing green.

[1334] They're saying, look at the Irish.

[1335] They're embracing being Irish, even if you're not.

[1336] Yes, but you're, I mean, you're just wearing, the only thing you're doing is wearing green, but you're not, like, drawing mustaches on your face and then, um, putting.

[1337] Are people doing that for Cinco de Mayo?

[1338] Yeah.

[1339] I think people don't like that.

[1340] Okay.

[1341] But it was still a really fun party.

[1342] Despite all the appropriating.

[1343] We didn't.

[1344] We didn't.

[1345] Oh, okay, good.

[1346] Oh, not that I know of.

[1347] I did see a child wearing a sombrero.

[1348] I know with fruit in it.

[1349] That part probably was weird.

[1350] Well, it had chips.

[1351] The one I saw had chips and dip.

[1352] Then he added fruit.

[1353] Oh, he added some fruit.

[1354] I bet charred.

[1355] Choro would be mad.

[1356] Charo.

[1357] Charo.

[1358] I can't believe I remember it.

[1359] Finally.

[1360] She had a headdress full of fruit, as I recall, when she was the Chiquita the banana gal.

[1361] No, no, she's not the chiquita the banana gal.

[1362] Isn't she?

[1363] No, that's a separate person.

[1364] That's a whole different thing.

[1365] Okay.

[1366] I'll never quite understand what Charo is.

[1367] Yeah, none of us know.

[1368] Just the coochie -coochie.

[1369] Yeah.

[1370] About her dog, her beloved dog.

[1371] Oh.

[1372] Bill Ney, the science geese.

[1373] Yeah, we had William Nye on.

[1374] A childhood hero of yours?

[1375] You missed the gap too.

[1376] No, I didn't.

[1377] He was definitely, we watched videos in school and stuff, but I just don't remember that well.

[1378] Was it a nice reprieve from the daunting classroom studies to get to watch something entertaining about science?

[1379] Anytime you get to watch a video in school, it's a good day.

[1380] Generally a win.

[1381] Yeah.

[1382] I'm trying to think if there was any video I ever saw.

[1383] where I was like, I'd have preferred to have not watched the video and just got an instruction.

[1384] No, because then you can talk with your friends, pass notes, footsees.

[1385] Sometimes, yeah, sometimes massages.

[1386] Ooh, hairplay?

[1387] And hairplay, yeah, depending on our...

[1388] Who you're with.

[1389] Yeah, configuration of our desksimity.

[1390] Yeah, that was a good video.

[1391] I think there's a ride, maybe a Disney World or something that was connected to Bill Nye.

[1392] There was.

[1393] That was in my research.

[1394] Oh, there was.

[1395] Yeah, and I resisted the urge to ask.

[1396] Ask him about it because my only interest was really how much money did he make for having an installation at Universal or Disney or wherever it was.

[1397] Yeah.

[1398] I just really wanted to know about the money.

[1399] And then I thought better of asking it.

[1400] I made the right decision, right?

[1401] I guess so we might have learned something cool about having your own ride.

[1402] I remember being in line at that ride, but I don't remember the ride specifically.

[1403] But you know, when you're in line, there's like activation.

[1404] There's like, you know, little videos playing.

[1405] videos or posters or things from the show.

[1406] Right.

[1407] Yeah, I have some memory of that.

[1408] Okay.

[1409] I used to spend a lot of time at Disney World, as you know.

[1410] Yeah.

[1411] It's a great place to spend some time.

[1412] Yeah.

[1413] And you didn't like Epcot Center?

[1414] No, I did.

[1415] Oh, you did?

[1416] We used to go for the week and we'd go to different parks every day.

[1417] Yeah.

[1418] And then you can eat at all the cuisines of the world.

[1419] I mean, clearly not all of them, but quite a few of them.

[1420] Italian, American, Chinese.

[1421] Yeah.

[1422] Really all the cuisines that we all.

[1423] already have here in America.

[1424] Right.

[1425] At every food court in a mall.

[1426] Exactly.

[1427] Yeah.

[1428] Yeah, Panda Express.

[1429] Sure.

[1430] Stuff like that.

[1431] Is Panda Express explicitly Chinese or Japanese?

[1432] Do you know?

[1433] I guess a panda is so associated with China.

[1434] I think it's Chinese.

[1435] It must be.

[1436] No, it's like orange chicken.

[1437] Okay, this isn't like real Chinese food, I don't think.

[1438] But you can't get orange chicken at any like good Chinese restaurant.

[1439] You can't?

[1440] Like a high end.

[1441] A high -end Chinese restaurant?

[1442] Or like an authentic Chinese restaurant.

[1443] I don't find that you can normally find orange chicken there.

[1444] I've never been to China.

[1445] I've been to Hong Kong, but it wasn't then, it wasn't China at that moment.

[1446] We've talked about that on here.

[1447] I know.

[1448] I'm just trying to think of what quasi -in I had.

[1449] Oh, yeah.

[1450] What did you eat there?

[1451] Well, we were staying at a French hotel.

[1452] Oh, there's probably a lot of fusion there.

[1453] It was called the something Mandarin.

[1454] The French Mandarin?

[1455] No. I don't, I can't remember.

[1456] The Iful Mandarin?

[1457] The Ifo Mandarin.

[1458] You know, the Charles de Mandarin.

[1459] Okay.

[1460] And, you know, it was a beautiful buffet every morning.

[1461] It was right overlooking the river where you'd see.

[1462] You know what?

[1463] I just crossed up experiences.

[1464] Never mind.

[1465] Oh.

[1466] That was in Thailand.

[1467] Oh.

[1468] There's no river watching.

[1469] There's harbor watching in Hong Kong.

[1470] And I now recall I stayed in Kowloon Bay.

[1471] Right.

[1472] And so there was some boat watching, but not quite the same.

[1473] The particular joy was Bangkok at this French hotel, eating the, This yummy smorgasbork and then floor -to -ceiling windows overlooking the river where those guys in the really long boats with the engine hanging way off the back and they just have a rob they're driving it with all loaded at the gills with mopeds, you name it.

[1474] It was very pleasurable to just start your day.

[1475] But you have no remembrance of the food.

[1476] Nope.

[1477] Yeah.

[1478] Long, long walk for nothing.

[1479] Great, great.

[1480] To nowhere.

[1481] Okay.

[1482] Hey, so Bill, he said that on August 25th, he thought the Japanese in World War II during this Wake Island thing, we're going to machine gun everyone.

[1483] Like, they were planning on it being August 25th.

[1484] Yeah.

[1485] That ended before that.

[1486] But I could not find that.

[1487] Yeah.

[1488] It seems like that's...

[1489] It seems a little convenient.

[1490] Well, I'm sure it's...

[1491] I don't know.

[1492] I don't know.

[1493] I'm sure it just requires, like, a really deep dive to find that, like reading a lot of books on it.

[1494] I didn't have time.

[1495] When did they drop the big one?

[1496] That's what we're wondering.

[1497] Was it August 20th?

[1498] 24th or something?

[1499] No, it was before that.

[1500] It was, I think it was in August in the 20s, but maybe not.

[1501] Let's see.

[1502] I don't think so.

[1503] August 6th and 9th in 1945.

[1504] August 6th and 9th.

[1505] Okay.

[1506] Yeah.

[1507] It just seems a little coincidental that they were going to plan the machine gunning like that close.

[1508] And it just seems convenient.

[1509] That's all.

[1510] Yeah.

[1511] Like if you're a, you know, a copy editor or something or you're working on a newspaper, you go, hmm, that's a little convenient.

[1512] Sure.

[1513] We better really make sure that this is true.

[1514] Yeah, that's true.

[1515] So I don't know, guys, I don't know.

[1516] I don't know if that's true or not.

[1517] We may never know.

[1518] The Wright brothers, they crashed dozens of times, you said.

[1519] Yes, they crashed.

[1520] Over and over.

[1521] Many times to try to get their thing working.

[1522] And then he said that they killed someone.

[1523] I didn't remember that from the book.

[1524] Yes, that happened.

[1525] After their success in 1903, the Wright brothers continued their aircraft development.

[1526] They marketed their two -passenger, Wright military flyer to the U .S. Army, which required a demonstration.

[1527] On September 17, 1908, Orville took to the air for a demonstration flight at Fort Myer, Virginia, with Army Signal Corps Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge as a passenger.

[1528] Just a few minutes into the flight, the propeller suddenly disintegrated.

[1529] The aircraft spiraled out of control and it smashed into the ground at full speed.

[1530] Oops.

[1531] Rescuers pulled an unconscious selfridge from the wreckage and the lieutenant died hours later.

[1532] Orville was hospitalized for six weeks after suffering a broken leg, four broken ribs, and a back injury that impaired him for the rest of like, yeah.

[1533] So that did happen.

[1534] What if he was just standing next to the wreckage, completely unscathed?

[1535] Because he had learned how to crash over those hundreds of...

[1536] Yeah, his body was used to it.

[1537] It probably did help him.

[1538] It most certainly did.

[1539] He certainly didn't tense up.

[1540] Yeah, you're not supposed to do that in a car.

[1541] No. That's why if you think you're going to crash and airplane, quickly drink three cocktails so that you'll be nice and loose when you go down.

[1542] That's a good idea.

[1543] Every passenger should have on their person.

[1544] at all times, three miniature bottles of booze.

[1545] It's a safety precaution.

[1546] It's a safety precaution to hit the ground loose.

[1547] It's a good idea.

[1548] He said the most employable liberal arts degree is philosophy.

[1549] Now, in my research, I found economics to be the most employable liberal arts is also the highest paying liberal arts.

[1550] Economics is the highest paying liberal arts degree and most employable, according to two websites.

[1551] economics .com and USeconomics .org and join economics .com.

[1552] Yeah.

[1553] It did feel a little bit propaganda in both of those.

[1554] But two is good.

[1555] We have to believe it though.

[1556] It was written on the internet.

[1557] Written with a computer presumably.

[1558] Probably.

[1559] What does it say?

[1560] It says it's the only one with the distinction of offering both technical skills and abroad liberal arts education.

[1561] That combination can prove to be very powerful arming econ grads with an in demand knowledge in business law and math that looks great on a resume as well as soft skills that employers really want including critical thinking interpersonal abilities and complex problem solving i love those soft skills that's all i'm really in the market for is soft skills from being honest not me no you want that technical i like some hard skills okay hard mix of hard and soft i like both i need both yeah yeah i enjoy both I like soft skills that eventually become hard skills, you know?

[1562] Mm -hmm.

[1563] I know.

[1564] I hear what you're saying.

[1565] Sure.

[1566] Thank you.

[1567] Yeah.

[1568] But this does go along with that I was saying because he said philosophy was.

[1569] And I said that's because a lot of people who get philosophy degrees go into law.

[1570] But I think that is the truth with the econ.

[1571] Oh, that makes sense.

[1572] We just have a lot of lawyers.

[1573] Yeah.

[1574] A lot of people going to law school.

[1575] With a lot of soft skills.

[1576] that turn into hard skills.

[1577] If in the right condition.

[1578] Yeah.

[1579] Oh my gosh.

[1580] So he was a Boeing engineer.

[1581] Yeah.

[1582] When we had Ira on, he told us about the podcast The Daily.

[1583] Right.

[1584] And I started listening to that.

[1585] And it's great.

[1586] So good.

[1587] I really like it.

[1588] But they had an episode recently about these new airplanes that are like crashing.

[1589] Oh, yeah.

[1590] Well, he was bringing it up.

[1591] Yeah, that's what he brought it up to William Nye was saying he did I would encourage our listeners to go listen to that episode because it's really interesting and talks to some engineers at Boeing because there's this pressure to get them out right that there's just skipping a lot of steps and not doing the due diligence and there's like you know parts left in that aren't supposed to be and and at the end of the interview the journalist asks the engineer who end up leaving because.

[1592] he it was like morally he couldn't yes um and she said would you ever fly on these and he said no not if my life depended on it oh wow so well although bad if my life depended on it you're in a zero loss proposition you might as well take your chances on the 737 if you're life depended on it maybe i made that part oh goodness but i think he did say that okay Or maybe he said, you couldn't pay me. Oh, okay, yeah.

[1593] Maybe he said that.

[1594] I don't know what he said, but he does not want to fly on those airplanes, okay?

[1595] No, no, he doesn't.

[1596] And so I'm never flying on one of those airplanes either.

[1597] And I also thought, like, I never check what kind of airplane it is.

[1598] Of course not.

[1599] But I'm going to start.

[1600] The full extent of my research is to figure out if the seats recline a lot or not.

[1601] Oh, and, well, it had to do with also where it was manufactured.

[1602] shirt what facility so it's hard to get that information right yeah yeah anyway um people should listen to that show and that episode because it's really good they also did a really good one on the measles outbreak oh what did what did you uh glean from that well oh man it's just it's so interesting we're in the middle of the measles outbreak which is which is crazy it was so embarrassing for us it was eradicated it was completely eradicated it was completely eradicated in the United States, like 10 years ago or something they declared it.

[1603] Because of vaccines.

[1604] Yes.

[1605] Exactly.

[1606] Yes.

[1607] Some Hasidic Jewish people went to, I think there was some measles in like the Ukraine or somewhere.

[1608] Okay.

[1609] That some people from Israel went to the Ukraine and they came back to Israel and then people from New York, this area in New York, Rockdale, maybe?

[1610] I don't know.

[1611] So they brought it back to New York and now there's a lot of people who aren't vaccinated because of this this sort of new trend that's that happened in the last however many years and now they declared a state of emergency in new york oh my god and it's in l .A and it's bad here too and that's the whole problem with these whole things that this is how it gets spread is you can only vaccinate at certain times so it's like when they're born and then six months later and then three months after that you know he's like three part vaccination yeah i got one for hepatitis B or C, and it was a three -parter.

[1612] Yeah, it's a 90 % chance.

[1613] If you are contracted with the measles, that you'll get it.

[1614] Oh, boy.

[1615] If you come into contact with it, 90%.

[1616] Oh, boy.

[1617] So guys, vaccinating.

[1618] And you know, people's favorite thing is like, there's formaldehyde in them.

[1619] Do you know your body makes formaldehyde?

[1620] That's just the fact.

[1621] Yeah.

[1622] People like, they cling on to these things.

[1623] They don't really know what they're talking about.

[1624] They hear like a trigger word, and then they're out.

[1625] Yeah, they hear autism and then they're out.

[1626] Yeah.

[1627] What's really lethal is measles and polio.

[1628] They debunked all of those papers too.

[1629] There was like two or three and they were totally debunked, but it's still like in the air and in the ether.

[1630] There isn't any debate about it.

[1631] But there was for a second.

[1632] Yeah, yeah, until the Danish did the epidemiological study and that there is no debate.

[1633] And they're also just have like, I don't know, 5 % respect for a pediatrician who spent their whole fucking.

[1634] life learning about what's good for your baby and not what you read on the internet yesterday for an hour i know let's maybe go ahead and give some respect where it's where it belongs yeah so that whole thing is a mess and i just want people to be responsible do you think that at any point in that hasidic population anyone said measletoff oh boy oh boy that was a good joke part of the episode, the beginning, was about the Hasidic Jewish population and how a bunch of them are mad because now there's not all of them feel this way.

[1635] Most don't, but a bunch of them do.

[1636] And there's a lot of history about, like, Jewish people and medical testing and all of this stuff.

[1637] Yeah, eugenics.

[1638] Exactly.

[1639] So there's a healthy skepticism for invent, but not all.

[1640] And so now it's becoming like a stereotype about them.

[1641] So it's anyway.

[1642] People are making measletoff jokes.

[1643] Yeah, they are.

[1644] They are.

[1645] They are.

[1646] So anyway, but that's a really good episode.

[1647] So people should listen to that too.

[1648] Or we'll just talk about what happens on the show every day and then they don't have to.

[1649] It seems unfair.

[1650] Okay, the Chinook is the fastest helicopter in the military.

[1651] That's what you said.

[1652] And yes, the CH47F Chinook, the fastest military helicopter in the world has a maximum speed of 315 kilometers per hour.

[1653] Dang, gee!

[1654] That's over 180 miles an hour.

[1655] That's crazy.

[1656] That's cooking.

[1657] That is cooking with jet fuel.

[1658] It is.

[1659] Measel Tov, I'm never going to be able to stop saying it.

[1660] It's so good.

[1661] You have to.

[1662] You already said it.

[1663] You don't have to keep saying it.

[1664] I'll keep one in.

[1665] Okay, please.

[1666] If I have to keep cutting them out, I'm going to cut them all out.

[1667] That's the threat.

[1668] Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

[1669] You said.

[1670] You want to try saying it once?

[1671] Oh, yeah, yay.

[1672] Okay, you said that you both invented a hydraulic resonance suppressor.

[1673] Yes.

[1674] You did not.

[1675] I did not.

[1676] Okay.

[1677] Just say that you didn't.

[1678] I do appreciate that you stared at me long enough.

[1679] Like, maybe, like, there was a 1 % chance I had.

[1680] I knew I would have heard about it 700 ,000 times if it was true.

[1681] You're absolutely right.

[1682] That's how you would know I didn't because I would have bragged about it a bunch of times.

[1683] Yep.

[1684] He said CB stood for a word like radar or.

[1685] or okay stands for something, which I didn't know about those things.

[1686] Okay.

[1687] So okay stands for old correct.

[1688] Ooh.

[1689] Old correct.

[1690] Yes.

[1691] And comes from an abbreviation trend, which was popular in Boston in the 1830s.

[1692] Other popular abbreviations at the time were NG, no go.

[1693] Go fuck yourself.

[1694] No. G .T. gone to Texas.

[1695] Oh, G. Is that that cool?

[1696] Very.

[1697] I'm going to start using it.

[1698] And SP small potatoes, obviously.

[1699] Oh, that's SP.

[1700] This guy's got something way bigger cooking than that.

[1701] That's SP.

[1702] And then I wonder I've gone to Texas.

[1703] Is that like out to lunch?

[1704] People must have been moving to Texas and droves in the late 1800s, you know?

[1705] Oh, Mary, she's GT.

[1706] Ooh.

[1707] Well, because we just won the Mexican -American War in the 1850s or whatever it was just prior to the Civil War.

[1708] So maybe people were going down there to get to Homestead.

[1709] I bet that's what they were.

[1710] doing to go claim some free land.

[1711] Many of the abbreviations were deliberately spelled incorrectly for humorous effect.

[1712] They were so funny.

[1713] For example, a predecessor of OK was supposedly OW, all right, spelled W -R -I -G -H -T.

[1714] OK gained widespread use when supporters of the American Democratic political party stated that it stood for the nickname of the presidential candidate Martin Van Buren, a .k .a. Old Kinderhook.

[1715] Vote for okay became a snappy campaign slogan that popularized the use of okay across the USA.

[1716] What about a okay?

[1717] I haven't looked that up.

[1718] Okay, sorry, sorry, forget I asked.

[1719] Radar, radio assisted detection and ranging.

[1720] There was a few options for that, so it didn't feel like so clear cut, but it's a military term.

[1721] Everything in the military is an acronym.

[1722] You know that when I went on those U .S .O tours, they go to the D -FAC.

[1723] That's the dining facility.

[1724] Oh, right.

[1725] Everything.

[1726] Because they don't have time.

[1727] I don't get it.

[1728] They don't have the time.

[1729] And they're communicating like on radios a lot, so they want to keep it as short as possible.

[1730] That's true.

[1731] It's kind of like the entertainment industry.

[1732] There's a lot of abbreviations when they're on the walkies.

[1733] Well, a lot of times on a set, they'll say MOS.

[1734] This take is MOS, which means they're not going to record any sound.

[1735] I know.

[1736] And then, you know what the birth of that was?

[1737] Most of the sound guys were German at the beginning of this industry.

[1738] and it was actually mitt -out sound.

[1739] Oh, interesting.

[1740] That's cool.

[1741] So really it should be W -O -S without sound.

[1742] That's right.

[1743] Or just MS, no sound.

[1744] Yeah, but that's not as good.

[1745] Right, but mid -out sound is M -O -S.

[1746] I did not know that.

[1747] Okay, did Carl Sagan say billions and billions, or was it Johnny Carson parodying it?

[1748] It was Johnny Carson.

[1749] And then he took it on.

[1750] Oh, okay.

[1751] So it went full circle.

[1752] So now he does say it, yeah.

[1753] Yeah.

[1754] Well, he's passed, right?

[1755] Well, during 13 episodes of Cosmos, a personal voyage.

[1756] That's where I became exposed to him saying billions and billions.

[1757] When was that?

[1758] Oh, in the 80s or something.

[1759] Seth MacFarlane brought back Cosmos because he's obsessed with astronomy in Carl Sagan.

[1760] Oh, cool.

[1761] He said Seattle was the 13th market, maybe the 12th.

[1762] now.

[1763] As of fall 2009, it had the 20th largest newspaper and the 13th largest radio and television market in the U .S. So that was 10 years ago, though.

[1764] But even this other website I saw had it at 13th.

[1765] I can only imagine it going up.

[1766] Right.

[1767] He said well, I think he said maybe 12, but I think it's still 13.

[1768] Okay.

[1769] Okay.

[1770] Well, this is great news.

[1771] Oh, you just used it.

[1772] I use it all the time.

[1773] I use it ATT.

[1774] All the time.

[1775] What was it?

[1776] Okay.

[1777] All correct.

[1778] Oh, correct.

[1779] Yeah.

[1780] Okay.

[1781] I'm going to start using them proper.

[1782] Okay.

[1783] Oh, correct.

[1784] So a few episodes ago, you said something that I was unable to fact check because I emailed this question out to an expert and I did not receive the answer in time, but you said it again.

[1785] Uh -oh.

[1786] And I got the response by now, so it's good.

[1787] Okay.

[1788] One of your sources?

[1789] Yeah.

[1790] Uh -huh.

[1791] You said in schools now, because of the internet, there's no more memorizing dates.

[1792] Mm -hmm.

[1793] So I asked an education expert.

[1794] Okay.

[1795] In Los Angeles.

[1796] Okay.

[1797] He said, generally, I would, he or she.

[1798] Oh.

[1799] Protecting the gender of your - Generally, I would say that this is not always true today, but it is certainly a greater focus of schools to emphasize critical thinking.

[1800] This is one of the big shifts that happened with the common core, the national set of standards that have been emphasized over the past 10 years or so.

[1801] There is still memorization required, for example, math facts, but this has become less of a focus.

[1802] So not fully eradicated.

[1803] Right, right.

[1804] I'm a little bit right and a little bit wrong.

[1805] Aren't we all?

[1806] That's our sweet spot.

[1807] Yep.

[1808] Speaking of, I was nominated as a producer on Kristen's digital series, Momsplaining.

[1809] Congratulations.

[1810] Thank you for a daytime creative arts Emmy.

[1811] and the awards were Friday, as we established this as Monday.

[1812] And, you know, we lost to a story about opioids.

[1813] Okay.

[1814] And it was just like, yeah, we're all losing to opioids.

[1815] Aren't we all, you know?

[1816] Oh, you're saying yes, literally and then metaphorically.

[1817] Yeah, yeah, we're all losing the battle to opioids.

[1818] That's right.

[1819] What an experience that was.

[1820] Tell me. You got a beautiful outfit.

[1821] I saw a picture.

[1822] Thank you.

[1823] I did.

[1824] Yeah, you looked beautiful.

[1825] Thank you.

[1826] So I was kind of dreading it.

[1827] I'll be honest about that.

[1828] I was really dreading it because I didn't know what it was going to be.

[1829] Kristen couldn't go.

[1830] So I was going not by myself, but I was meeting people from the team at Ellen.

[1831] Ellen DeGeneres and her team produce mom's planning.

[1832] So I was going with them.

[1833] And I don't know them very well.

[1834] I know them when we work on this show, but not very well.

[1835] So I was kind of, I don't know anybody.

[1836] You're anticipating feeling awkward.

[1837] Feeling awkward and lonely and not really knowing how to handle it.

[1838] And I also, you know, a part of me felt like I don't deserve this.

[1839] Like I'm not on that team.

[1840] We're just stepping in.

[1841] You're on that team.

[1842] You're there when you shoot.

[1843] I know.

[1844] You do punch up.

[1845] I know.

[1846] No, I'm doing a lot for the show.

[1847] But I don't know.

[1848] I'm not in their group.

[1849] We're just coming in for this one thing and leaving.

[1850] So I just feel like people must think that I'm just hopping on to Kristen, but I'm not doing anything.

[1851] It's all my own head.

[1852] Sure, sure, sure.

[1853] But I just want to be specific about it.

[1854] Who was thinking that?

[1855] General people at the Emmys or the actual three people you were meeting from Ellen's team?

[1856] I mean, really just like the Ellen team, I guess.

[1857] Okay, great.

[1858] Yeah.

[1859] But I did vocalize that to a couple of people.

[1860] And so that was squashed and it was really nice.

[1861] Nice.

[1862] But anyway, I meet them early and it's so fun.

[1863] Everyone's the best.

[1864] Oh, her whole gang is the best.

[1865] I mean, I knew that, but still when you don't know people and everyone else knows each other super well, you feel like the outsider.

[1866] Yeah, but they're so nice and inclusive that it was really fun.

[1867] But what I really felt, because I didn't even think about the fact that there was an award involved until the morning of.

[1868] And I was like, oh, yeah, we could have Emmys at the end of this evening.

[1869] Yes, I was excited from the get for you.

[1870] Then I wanted it.

[1871] Your competitive spirit took over.

[1872] Yes.

[1873] I hadn't.

[1874] The elite muscle mass kicked in.

[1875] I hadn't thought about it once.

[1876] All he was folks out was a silly outfit and figuring out that day.

[1877] But then once it clicked, I was really wanting it to win.

[1878] And so, when we were all sitting there and waiting, there was a lot of anticipation kind of building, and we all sort of really was like, oh, we really hope we win, really hope we win.

[1879] And then we didn't.

[1880] Right, right.

[1881] And which was a letdown.

[1882] It is a bummer.

[1883] But what I really noted was every time there was an award for Ellen's team, there was a lot of awards for them.

[1884] Oh, there were.

[1885] I was nominated for one for mom's planning, but they had like Ellen's writing.

[1886] team for her general writing exactly so there was like 50 people from Ellen and so every time an Ellen award would come up you know the whole group would cheer and get super excited and it was such a fun feeling to be part of a group that's excited about something yeah and on the same team with a singular goal and like excited for people on their team yeah and I was like oh my God This is just what it's about, this community.

[1887] I don't know.

[1888] That was my takeaway.

[1889] That's great.

[1890] You know, I think, I don't think I could have ever been truly too successful at any endeavor.

[1891] I don't have that spirit.

[1892] Like, you have a winners, competitors spirit, and that's why you got your state championship trophy.

[1893] Yeah.

[1894] I, well, it was a ring, but.

[1895] I just don't feel like I have that gear so much.

[1896] And I wonder if it's because I was just, I competed with someone five years older than me most of my life.

[1897] That just first place was not an option.

[1898] I can't even like let myself even fantasize about winning.

[1899] That's interesting.

[1900] And we're just to be clear because you are winning.

[1901] You're winning.

[1902] The game of life.

[1903] Yeah, for sure.

[1904] Just like specific awards and stuff like that.

[1905] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1906] Yeah.

[1907] So have you ever won something like that?

[1908] Ever?

[1909] No. I've come in second many times racing.

[1910] But while I'm racing, I'm not trying to win the race.

[1911] Right.

[1912] I'm trying to drive all 23 turns perfectly.

[1913] Yeah, you have your own goals.

[1914] I'm on my own journey, and then sometimes it's resulted in me being on the podium.

[1915] But I imagine the people that win are trying to win, clearly.

[1916] Yeah, they're training for that, yes.

[1917] Yeah, yeah.

[1918] But I feel like once you have one thing, you get addicted.

[1919] It's a real feeling.

[1920] Uh -huh.

[1921] It's a real high.

[1922] Visceral.

[1923] Yeah, so that's what it is.

[1924] But, you know, my winning at high school was on a team.

[1925] Yeah.

[1926] And then this thing was this team.

[1927] And it just reminded me of that, of this feeling of every person has this.

[1928] the same goal and wants the best for everyone on the team.

[1929] It's so specific and special.

[1930] Yes.

[1931] Yeah.

[1932] I don't know if I was like doing a loan sport.

[1933] So like something by myself, I might not have that either.

[1934] Well, like I played basketball in junior high on a team and I sincerely don't remember ever caring if we want.

[1935] Oh, you still didn't care.

[1936] I know.

[1937] I didn't.

[1938] Like everyone was like that we, you'd be in the huddle.

[1939] I'm going to be making a speech and there's a down one.

[1940] And I just, like, I enjoyed playing.

[1941] I wanted to play the best I could, but I just couldn't buy into the excitement over winning or not.

[1942] This is very, this is very strange because you are very competitive.

[1943] You're incredibly competitive.

[1944] Okay.

[1945] At games.

[1946] Yeah.

[1947] You are.

[1948] Yeah, I want to do the best.

[1949] Yeah, which means winning.

[1950] Yeah.

[1951] It's another way of saying winning.

[1952] Mm -hmm.

[1953] Because the best is the person that.

[1954] wins.

[1955] Yeah, I guess back to the basketball thing, it just, it always felt very unobtainable that we'd win.

[1956] It just felt like we're not going to win.

[1957] And then occasionally we won.

[1958] Maybe that was a self -defense mechanism because you.

[1959] Sure.

[1960] I have no idea of the psychology behind it.

[1961] Yeah.

[1962] But I definitely know I wasn't ever like, we got to win.

[1963] Even, and I would play basketball with Nate Tuck.

[1964] He and I played a ton of one -on -one basketball when we were younger in or 20s.

[1965] And I was better than him.

[1966] Okay.

[1967] Like just objectively, I was heavier and stronger.

[1968] And I, and on a game of one -on -one where you're not running plays and you're not playing a role and it's mostly muscle, I was better.

[1969] But this motherfucker, he has no quit in him.

[1970] And I would be shocked all the time.

[1971] I'd be up by like 9 to 2.

[1972] I get lazy.

[1973] And I'm like, oh, he's like, even if he starts scoring 2 to 1 on me, I'm still going to win.

[1974] Uh -huh.

[1975] multiple times he won.

[1976] Uh -huh.

[1977] Because I just didn't, I don't have what he had.

[1978] He has this incredible tenacity.

[1979] I admire.

[1980] Well, this is maybe not something you're going to want to hear, but that's part of it.

[1981] Like, you're not better than him if he's winning.

[1982] Like maybe by technical standards, you're more technically proficient, but you're not better than him if he's winning.

[1983] Well, the person who's winning is better.

[1984] It's better.

[1985] Yeah.

[1986] Totally agreed.

[1987] The ingredients that make that person better is one of them is their physical, right?

[1988] One of them is their physical ability.

[1989] And another thing is mental.

[1990] Totally.

[1991] That's a huge part.

[1992] Yes.

[1993] And that's what I'm saying.

[1994] Yeah.

[1995] My physical game was better than his and he never stopped caring.

[1996] And so, yes, he had a much, he had a superior mental game than I did.

[1997] And it resulted in victory quite often.

[1998] Yeah.

[1999] That spirit in somebody?

[2000] Yeah.

[2001] I don't have it.

[2002] Yeah.

[2003] No, I just, you're just, I just know you.

[2004] You're a competitive person.

[2005] You are.

[2006] I know that.

[2007] So, you know.

[2008] Yeah.

[2009] It's weird.

[2010] Yes, I agree with you.

[2011] It's kind of a paradox.

[2012] I'm competitive and yet I don't ever think I can win nor.

[2013] But you do at certain things.

[2014] That's why.

[2015] Yeah.

[2016] And other games.

[2017] Like you do.

[2018] You're right.

[2019] It's not fair to say I'm not competitive.

[2020] It would be more accurate to just say some things I'm not competitive at and some I am.

[2021] You know, I have a weird.

[2022] I think you're competitive at things where you're fully in control.

[2023] You're not fully in control.

[2024] control on a team.

[2025] So maybe you feel like, well, there's only so much I can do here, so who cares?

[2026] That's a great theory.

[2027] Yeah.

[2028] Yeah, maybe I don't have faith in anyone.

[2029] It might be that.

[2030] Wow.

[2031] Which is a bummer.

[2032] It's arrogance.

[2033] Yeah.

[2034] I don't trust them or I don't believe in them.

[2035] Like, if it requires all of us to be doing, having 100 % is just impossible.

[2036] Although in the one -on -one basketball, I got lazy.

[2037] yeah you said you got tired or whatever yeah that's true i just think there's something really wonderful about being on a team where you do expect everyone to to rise to the occasion you're you're assuming they will you have trust in those people also because they've proved themselves to do that you know and even on teams like this ellen team like everyone's doing their own thing but at the highest proficiency so that you hope that this all comes together and like it's exciting.

[2038] I think I just figured it out.

[2039] Okay.

[2040] I never got optimistic in those basketball games because it's the same thing about me having the attribution error syndrome.

[2041] So when someone cuts me off, I just assume they're a fucking entitled asshole because I'm an entitled asshole.

[2042] Right.

[2043] And I think I knew I wasn't going to give 110 % in the basketball game.

[2044] So I didn't assume anyone else was going to.

[2045] You know what I'm saying?

[2046] I think I knew I was lazy.

[2047] Maybe.

[2048] And I just assumed, well, probably everyone else's too.

[2049] I guess.

[2050] Maybe.

[2051] I mean, yeah.

[2052] Because I have the opposite thing in life.

[2053] Like I expect, and I do think maybe it's from this being on teams where I expect everyone to be 100 % and no one to be slacking.

[2054] If they are, I get really pissed.

[2055] Yeah.

[2056] I like really have high expectations of everyone around me at all times.

[2057] Maybe that's why.

[2058] That's interesting.

[2059] It is, yeah.

[2060] Anywho.

[2061] So is the atomic number of Technician 43?

[2062] Yes, he was really good at that.

[2063] Yeah.

[2064] Okay, you said the president of Mexico 10 years ago was President Fox, and you said his first name was Vicente.

[2065] And I don't know if you were just made up all of that, but his name was Felipe Calderon.

[2066] Calderon.

[2067] Oh, and that's a different one.

[2068] There was a president Fox, but clearly not 10 years ago.

[2069] Right.

[2070] And his first name may or may not have been Vincent.

[2071] I don't know about that.

[2072] I definitely know there was a president Fox from Mexico.

[2073] Okay.

[2074] Well, he wasn't the president 10 years ago.

[2075] No. You know, time's moving so much quicker than I ever give it credit for.

[2076] It was probably like 20 years ago, but I think it was 10 years ago.

[2077] Yeah, maybe.

[2078] Vicente Fox is right.

[2079] For when?

[2080] 2000 to 2006.

[2081] Oh, okay.

[2082] So 13 years ago.

[2083] Okay, yeah.

[2084] All right.

[2085] Okay, that's all.

[2086] Great job.

[2087] A lot of facts to go over.

[2088] We had a very fact -based guest.

[2089] Yeah.

[2090] So good job on dotting all those eyes.

[2091] Thank you.

[2092] Crossing all those.

[2093] T's.

[2094] T's.

[2095] O -Ks.

[2096] All -K.

[2097] All -correct.

[2098] Old -correct.

[2099] Yeah.

[2100] All right.

[2101] Good night.

[2102] I love you.

[2103] Bye.

[2104] I love you.

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