Weird Facts That Impact Your Brain's Health | Bill Nye Explains

Everybody. We have to accept that humankind is in charge now. We are running this planet. We did not apply for this job. Nobody filled out a form. But we are in charge now. Everything every one of us does affects everybody in the world because we all share the air.

I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness. Really? Yeah. Please welcome Lewis how.

So welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.

It's so good to be here.

It's exciting that you're here. 30th. I think it's the 30th anniversary of.

Bill Nye Science Guy. It will be in September.

It's incredible.

It is hard to believe. You've made a massive impact on so many people.

And the crew, don't forget, we had a great crew.

Of course.

I wanted to ask you some questions that I don't think you've been asked before. About science and the mind, science and brain health, and science and relationships.

Oh, okay.

Sure, I'm an expert.

You're an expert in relationships.

Sure, oh, and all that, whatever you listed there. I'm curious about the brain and mental health and science to start because it seems like there's a lot of stress and chaos happening inside people's minds in the world as well as externally in the world. How can we understand our own minds or our brain when there's chaos around us on how to navigate the world in a more harmonious, peaceful way based on personal experiences that you've had, life experiences, and based on science of what you studied.

So let's, before everybody jumps down my throat, I'm a mechanical engineer. People say, well, you're no scientist. What is it? Everybody's a scientist in a sense, especially seriously, four or ten years old, everybody's asking scientific questions and so on and so on. But I'm a mechanical engineer, which is largely classical physics. They say everything happens for a reason, whoever they are. And that reason is usually physics. Okay, there. Do you feel better? So then, living things are chemistry based on chemistry. And chemistry is really based on motion and energy. So chemistry is really physics. So life science is really okay, and so on and so on. But here's the two things. First of all, getting along with people, I think it's very important to accept that everybody you will ever meet knows something you don't. Even if I may, this is irony, everybody, even if I may stupid people know something you don't, even if you think they're stupid. Then the other thing, you know, there's an expression, that Charles Darwin wrote, Survival of the Fittest. And people have a tendency to think that evolution is related to people who work out the most, do the most crunches or some setups or something. But it's really, it's 19th century usage of this expression. He meant things that fit in the best. And one of the heartbreaking facts of life is from an evolutionary standpoint, you only have to be good enough. You only have to be good enough to live long enough to have kids, and then you can die, and the kids carry on. This is true of my old boss. who was a human near as I could tell. There were times I weren't sure, and I wasn't sure. And then it's also true of oak trees. You only have to be good enough. And so if we can accept that everybody is pretty much doing their best, then maybe we could get along a little better. So that's a long-winded thing, but sure. It's people making extraordinary claims about religion and what their deity is telling them what to do. But not everybody agrees on who, which deity has the latest information. And so I mention this because we're having a lot of trouble in the world's most influential society, the United States, with people making extraordinary claims based on unprovable ideas. Not that all ideas have to be provable. But accept that there are some unprovable things. Let's move on.

What's the, I mean, you mentioned just before about how you went to your 50th high school reunion. High school reunion. And I think you said 12 people didn't show up, not because they didn't want to, but because they're not here anymore.

As far as we know. Right. It's not because they didn't want to. Right.

What is it about death that you're seeing? that you appreciate and also frustrates you?

Well, I would, I mean, shoot from the hip, I would like to live forever. I would like to be able to throw a disc, a frisbee, as far as I could when I was 24, but that's probably unlikely. And then the other hand, death is what makes you get things done. I think, you know, you, It's what pushes you forward. Also, this business of experience, the older you get, the more life experience you have. And so it is to be hoped that you have better judgment about the time you have left. You will make good decisions relative to the time you have left. So this is an amazing and troubling thing. If you live to be 82 years old, and seven weeks, 82 years and a month and three quarters. Okay, now it depends on leap years, when the moment you were born, you know, it's four years thing there. You get 30,000 days.

Wow.

82 and seven weeks, 30,000 days. So let us do the following thought experiment. We're in Los Angeles, where do we go? SoFi, what's the name of the stadium? Yes.

Yes.

You go to the stadium, seats 75,000 people.

Probably.

Your life's going to take place on the field. You're watching your life in this thought experiment. And every day you sit in a different seat watching it in this thought experiment. You're watching your life day to day, it looks almost exactly the same. But after a few stadium sections, you notice you're looking at life from a different point of view. 30,000 days, so far, stadium. You don't get halfway around and you're dead.

Wow.

That's a debt sucks, man.

Wow.

And you're, when you're 10 years old, 30,000. Yeah, it's cool. But 67 years old, it's not as many.

What does that make you think about knowing that, you know, there are less days, hypothetically, unless we can figure out.

Some new- and then the other thing, if you live to be 120, what have you? Or is the quality of life as good out there? Right.

The health span versus the lifespan.

There you go, yeah. So what about it? It focuses the mind, as they say.

What do you focus your mind on these days the most?

Well, there's a couple of TV things I'd like to do, movie things I'd like to do. But let me ask you this. Why doesn't every interviewer on mainstream news channels or any news channel, news medium, whether it be broadcast or cable, television or print media or whatever the kids call the electric internet. Why isn't the first question, what are you doing about climate change? No matter whom you are interviewing. And if you're not doing anything about it, why not? And if you claim that climate change is not a, what's everybody's favorite word anymore? Existential. If it's not an existential threat, then what is it? Why doesn't everybody start with that? Because it is the biggest problem we have.

Really?

Yeah.

Yes.

And it's happening, it started, you might say it's happening in slow motion, well now it's happening in medium motion.

When will it happen in fast motion?

Well, there's a lot of speculation about that, and I will quote my friend Michael Mann. Do you know Mike Mann? Not the director.

Okay.

Do you know the hockey stick graph world's gotten been about the same? Now it's getting warmer and faster and faster. He was the lead author on the first publication of the hockey stick graph. And he updated, they updated, he and his colleagues updated it from time to time. His latest book, which is coming out anytime, I read an advanced copy of it, he believes now based on computer modeling that there won't be this catastrophe. where the Atlantic freeze, Atlantic Ocean freezes over and all of a sudden everybody can't breathe. Instead, it'll just get worse and worse, faster and faster and faster. So should we delay doing something about it? No, we should get on it every way we can right now. And then the other side, as I like to call them, refers to people like me as alarmists. Mike Mann is an alarmist or it's a pay attentionist. It's a what are you thinking, Ist? Get your head in the game, Ist. And what I say to conservative media with whom media people with whom I cross paths less and less frequently, cut it out. Just stop it. Just stop acting like this. Come on, you guys, you know better. Just stop it. And eventually a very high profile guy did get fired. and the lawsuits are going to go on for quite a while. But it is the biggest problem we have.

Let me ask you an ignorant question. How did the last ice age happen?

So it got named after a mathematician and scientist named Milankovic. So.

And how was the world before that, I guess?

Well, so. Oh, let's talk about the world before. What's everybody's favorite thing? Ten years old. Two things, space, dinosaurs. Turns out they're the same thing when you have an asteroid impact. All right. So the earth is tilted. Not only is the earth tilted, it's wobbling. There's a fabulous physics word, it's precessing. It's not just spinning, it's doing this thing, all right? Precessing. then the orbit itself is not quite a circle. This table is much closer to a circle than the Earth's orbit. Earth's orbit is a little of this, it's tilted, so you get these cycles called Milankovitch cycles. And the last ice age is closely related to the Milankovitch cycle. And keep in mind that in ancient dinosaur times, there was more carbon dioxide in the air than there is now, well over a thousand parts per million. Now we're a little over 400. The world was warmer. The world was so warm. How warm was it? Ice that we have is ice and snow melted. There was so much water on the Earth, liquid water on the Earth's surface that we had an Inland Sea in what is now Wyoming and Utah. If you've ever been to dinosaur Utah, it's amazing. Dinosaur, Colorado. I misspoke. Yes, dinosaurs were. that's the town. There were dinosaurs that were walking around. And then, you know, Tiktaalik, you know, the animal that had legs and fins at the same time, this transitional animal, was found in what is now Baffin Bay, Canada, because it used to be a swamp. All right, well then the wobble, the earth, the precession, this and that changes, and it starts to snow. and the snow stays up in the mountains and the inland seas drain and the amount of plant life on the earth's surface decreases and there's less carbon dioxide in the air, less all the sorts of gases in the air. And then it gets so froze up and so ice in the mountains that you can walk from what is now Russia to what is now Alaska. You're just walking around. Wow. In the summer, you know, it's hot and wonderful. You grow the giant cabbages and all that stuff and then you show up in North America By then you've got some tools. You just kill all the big mammals you can find and eat them. It's great.

Wow.

Now here we are. But all that is interesting and amazing, and the study of paleo climates, as they're called, ancient climates, has led people like Mike Mann and me to go, people, let's go. Stop it. Let's go. No, you're an alarmist. Yeah, yes, I'm a pay attentionist. So anyway, why is it to work the better?

Why is it something you care about so much?

Well, let's say that the thought experiment in the stadium, I got a solid 20 years to go, and it's just going to get worse and worse for everybody. So there's a time, and I use the word time, and time's only going one way, and I like to drop the second law of thermodynamics. You ever heard of the second law?

Tell me.

Well, you know it intuitively. Lakes do not freeze in the summertime. Heat always spreads out. And that sucks. I'm sorry. Heat always spreads out. And that's the second law of thermodynamics, which can be expressed mathematically with this mythic word entropy. Chemists love their entropy. Anyway, Bob. Heat's always spreading out. In order for you and me to live, let's say in West Texas today, you have to be able to sweat enough, to cool off enough to keep your molecules from breaking down, your DNA from breaking down so your metabolic processes don't stop. There's an upper limit to how hot it can be and a human can walk around. And in Fahrenheit, it's into the 130s.

Wow.

Right? So we'll just go into air conditioning. Okay, where are you gonna get that? And so furthermore, there'll be, as Mike Mann points out in his latest book, it's not hard fast. Some people will be able to live at 132. Other won't make it at 127. And anyway, populations, humans will want to move where it's cooler and cooler and cooler. Billions of people are gonna wanna move. Where are they going to go? What are they going to do when they get there? And whose resources are they going to want to share when they get there? This is all obvious to people on my side of it, and it's all fist-pounding, crazy-making.

When will it get to that point, though?

Well, that's what it talks about next week. Well, you said it would be, you said the Arctic would melt in by 2022, but it's still there. Okay. 2032, 2040. All right. so keep in mind, or I like to keep in mind, getting to be old news, I offered a bet to two different guys. Mark Morano, who is a he's a big climate denier. He works for the oil nominally organization funded by the oil and gas industry. And then Joe Bastardi, I offered him each bets of $10,000. that 2015-2025 would be the, I guess it was 2010-2020 would be the hottest decade on record. Neither of them would take the bet. And I chose $10,000 because I figured those guys were at a level they could afford, but also that's what Rick Perry, I mean that's what Mitt Romney offered Rick Perry. Do you own Chinese or Asian stocks or some $10,000? and Rick Perry is the governor of Texas. I don't have $10,000 without I'm a public servant. Anyway, neither of them would take the bet. They still wouldn't take the absolutely would not take the bet. The world's only gotten warmer and warmer. Each decade's gotten hotter and hotter. And ski resorts are going out of.

Business and people in West Texas are looking for someplace to go. So for someone watching or listening who is hearing this and says, okay, I understand this, but maybe they might be asking, well, isn't the weather patterns changing every decade or hundred years and it's getting warmer, then it'll get colder, then it'll get warmer.

Why would it get colder? What makes anybody say it'll get colder?

I have no idea.

Armies of scientists, climatologists, people who study this, point out that it's not going to get colder. It's only getting warmer and warmer. And as they say, especially Kate Marvel is really well spoken about this. Suppose there were extraordinary temperatures in West Texas and India. Southeast Asia. Suppose there were extraordinary temperatures and we didn't know why it was happening. Suppose it was just a mystery. That'd be really spooky. But we do know exactly why it's happening. We, humankind.

Why is it happening?

Because we put extra carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the air very fast. And this is what we tell everybody. It's the speed that we're doing it. Yes, in ancient dinosaur times, there was twice, two and a half times as much carbon dioxide as there is now in the air. It's the speed that we're doing it. And now instead of one or one and a half billion people, we have eight going on nine billion people all trying to breathe and burn in the same atmosphere and this is going to be trouble. But you got to be optimistic, Louis. If you're not optimistic, you're not going to get anything done.

For sure.

We're playing ping pong, table tennis, we're optimistic. that I could, you know, take a couple points from you. I may have been delusional, but that was, if you don't think you can win the game, you're not going to win the game. If you don't think we can address climate change, then we won't.

What's it going to take for us to actually make a change?

So vote, everybody. Vote. What can I do about climate change? And what people want to hear generally is recycle your plastic water which is good. Recycle nearly enough. Furthermore, the fossil fuel industry. And look, we all got here because we have fossil fuels. I'm, you know, I understand that, but we have to stop. We have to stop using fossil fuels the way we're using them now, not slow down, stop. And so get politically active in your community and elect people who are going to do something about this. And the things that I want to do about it are to have these big goals, big goals. In the overarching big sense, what do we want to do? Raise the standard of living of women and girls. When you raise the standard of living of women and girls, everybody is better off.

Benefits, Sam.

You know the old saying, happy women and girls, happy life. I paraphrase. When women have higher quality of life, they have fewer kids. The kids they do have have more resources. They do better. Everybody does better in the community, in the city, in the farm, in the world. So for this, three things. Clean water, renewably produced electricity that's reliable, and access to the internet or whatever the kids call the internet in the future. The electronic superhighway is what we used to call it back in the 1900s. so having these big goals in mind, we can make these big changes. Right. And when you talk about Texas and the extraordinary heat, here's an irony. And I did a, I used to, you know, did you know that I used to work in the oil field?

Really?

As a young engineer.

Wow.

A Seattle company had the premier oil slick skimming boat. The Coast Guard made of aluminum, lightweight, Coast Guard could take them on helicopters, put them at the oil slick, slap up the oil slick. So there was a derivative technology of doing what may seem like the trivial enterprise of separating oil and water in the Permian Basin. Everybody watch Friday Night Lights. On an older reference, In that area, when you pump up oil, the verb they use is produce oil. Ancient plants produce the oil and microbes. When you pump up the oil, you pump up a lot of very salty water.

Interesting.

And the oil, interesting, well said. The oil sticks to dust particles and becomes, these little particles become neutrally buoyant. They don't sink or they don't float and they plug up all the valves and everything. so I worked there for a couple years on this Gizmo. And the whole, the smell of oil is everywhere. Their pumps are everywhere. You go to West Texas or everywhere. Well, now they're wind turbines on the same plane. And there's so many wind turbines and so much solar energy and so many batteries in Texas this year, 2023. How many wind turbine, solar panels and batteries are there? There are so many that they haven't had a catastrophic electricity event that they had a couple of years ago because they've supplemented their power with renewable source conventional unexotic renewable sources. And so even with that, legislators, legislators there are fighting it. They're fighting the renewable.

Really?

It's just you guys, come on. Well, somebody's making money. Are you old enough to remember T. Boone Pickens?

That's his name, yeah.

It's the kids. Anyway, he was a fossil fuel bazillionaire, but he argued that, let's use natural, he argued for using natural gas as what he called the bridge fuel to renewable, and he was heavily invested in wind energy and tech.

Gotcha.

It's still a good idea. So let's go, people. Let's get her done.

I want to ask you about this because for those watching and listening and saying, okay, I hear you, I believe it, I understand it, and I'm going to take action on it. Right? But I feel a lot of stress in my heart and my mind.

Yes.

My relationships are struggling.

Yes.

I don't understand my brain.

Yes.

Or my mind and how these things work and how to master these things.

Master.

Or how to understand it and have more calm and peace in my own life to let alone go fight some fight about climate change when I'm stressing and struggling about money, relationships and understanding my mind. So I'd love to hear from your perspective about anything you've learned again, personally or through science on how to first understand our brains, our minds, how things work, the way we think and how we relate to ourselves so that we can have more peace and harmony in our own space before we try to conquer space and mastering that. Wonder if you can share some thoughts there.

So people talk all nowadays, they talk about mindfulness. That's a modern word. It's what I have for many years, decades called pay attention-tivity. Pay attention, people. It's not that easy, I guess, but another interesting thing. You know, we did the old show, the Science Guy Show. We had an expression, no bit to exceed 45 seconds, which was not a rule so much as a guideline for you Ghostbusters buffs. And so.

Now it's like four seconds on the clock.

Well, but see, and then it's also comforting to note that Socrates complained about the youth of today. Socrates, These young people, they have no respect. Same thing, people. And so I am not claiming to have all the answers, but paying attention is of great value. And there's two ways to be rich, have more or need less. That's easy enough to say. But when it comes to climate change and your general anxiety, doing something about it makes you feel better.

Sure.

In my opinion. Of course. Just doing something.

For sure.

Get politically active.

For sure.

And keeping in mind that that's hilarious. Keep in mind that just recycling newspapers isn't enough.

It's not enough.

Yeah.

We gotta get active in other ways.

Which is easy to say but hard to do. And we are living at this extraordinary time.

Sure.

You know, I mean, it's, you know, I'm so old, how old, I remember when Nixon resigned. and it was a big deal. High school and college, Nixon resigned. That's nothing compared to what's going on now. It's the hilarious comedy joke compared to what's happening now. Right. So let's get to work, people.

For sure, for sure. What have you understood about your own thoughts or your own mind over your 30 plus year career in really bringing science to the world, to the masses. What do you understand about the way you think, the way you feel?

Here's one thing for sure, accepting that when you present people with overwhelming evidence, the first time, human nature, you don't change your mind. You've had a lifelong belief. Whatever it is, astrology, haunted houses, going to a psychic and hearing from your grandmother.

Santa Claus.

Just a second. Keep in mind, Santa Claus, everybody, Santa Claus is magic. Yes, he can be in many, many places at once and he takes many forms. This is not rocket surgery, okay? This is, I think, you can show pretty convincing evidence that Santa can be in more than one place at the time. And then also, he lives at the North Pole, everybody. Santa lives at the North Pole because 90% of the people on Earth live north of the equator. I mean, he's got work to do. He's got things he's got to get done. So he lives where it's more accessible to all, to the world's land masses, where people live. I mean, that, I won't say it's obvious, but if you think about it, it's- Sure. It's susceptible to analysis, I think.

Sure, sure. So, what beliefs have you had to change in the last 20 years?

Oh, well, the one that I got in trouble with and now I get respect for was genetically modified food, genetically modified organisms. So I am still active with the Union of Concerned Scientists, which was started by a couple of guys, Kurt Gottfried especially, who are very concerned about nuclear weapons and nuclear pro, you know, the Oppenheimer, the movie's coming out right now and all that in the documentary. about him and very concerned about nuclear weapons. Well, now they, we are concerned about global problems writ large. I guess if it's global, it's writ large. And so I believed or accepted the idea that we did not need, humankind did not need to genetically modify crops, that there are enough resources globally that you could just create new species or modify species through conventional means by mixing pollen and ova, you know, the way Thomas Jefferson is supposed to have done. And this is my representation of wheat pollen, by the way.

Sure, sure.

Obviously. But now I've come to accept the idea that we're much better off modifying Really? Crops, yeah. And by we, I mean we can feed more people more efficiently. And we've reveled, the reason we have 8 billion people going on 9 billion people is because we've been able to feed them. And the people may not realize the first breakthrough in genetically modified crops was in cotton. That getting cotton plants that were not susceptible to boll weevils eating them, you know, I gotta have a home. That's an old song. The Bull Weevil explaining to the farmer, he's got to eat the cotton, 'cause sorry, dude, I need a home. Whereas the farmer's thinking, you know, it'd be better if you weren't here, Mr. Bull Weevil, or Ms. Bull Weevil. So genetically modified crops, I've changed my mind.

Really? I've gotten respect in the scientific community about it. But what are so many people, why.

Are they against genetically modified foods? Well, crops. So there's two things. I think the main thing is genetically modified crops have enabled industrial farming on a very large scale, not just big, but very large. And people are troubled by that consolidation.

It's kind of taken up the land from the small farmers.

Yeah, and so Thomas Jefferson again had this vision of an agrarian society where we all lived on farms, raised our own food and lived off the 19th century grid. But that's not what people want. People want to live in cities and do stuff. And I tell people all the time, you know, I used to work at Boeing, and we have a whole thing now where everybody's working at home, everybody's working remotely, virtually. When you build airplanes that can fly close to the speed of sound, with extraordinary reliability day in and day out. You can't do it at home. You need to have thousands of people come together with a plan and a giant building to build stuff. That's how it is. And so I think a fear of industrial farming has led people to oppose genetically modified food. in general. But there's no reason, well, there are reasons, we could modify our regulations so that giant corporations don't crush people and make their lives unlivable and so on. And the other big thing that's become representative of genetically modified organisms or crops writ large or big is the use of these genes to keep, to prevent insect attack and to enable extraordinary weed control. You know, if you're a farmer, if you're a gardener, weeds are a drag. You're fighting weeds all the time. So the classic example is glyphosate, Roundup is the brand name. and people love to hate Monsanto, which I can understand. Monsanto has been absorbed, everybody. There's no Monsanto anymore. And as people have pointed out, Monsanto was not, was not as big as Apple or Microsoft or Boeing. It was down in the lower 300s of the top 500 companies. I mean, it was successful, but it wasn't like this monolith, you know, Transformer. crushing cities or something. And so there's two things about glyphosate. It's scary because it kills weeds so effectively. And the second thing is everybody uses it. Every farmer who wants to stay in business and compete uses something akin to glyphosate or genetically modified crops. So, you know, we in the states are all about corn, corns and everything. We're made of corn. We all eat corn. The plastic is corn.

Right.

Well, you wouldn't have all this corn without genetic modifications that keep the European corn borer invasive species from destroying corn crops. And that is mod understanding DNA so well that you could. And so that this protein produces a crystal in the corn borer that kills it, can't tolerate it or prevent or it. It doesn't eat it because it can see it coming in the insect sense. And so this leads to my biggest idea, my biggest idea, everybody, we have to accept that humankind is in charge now. We are running this planet. We did not apply for this job. Nobody filled out a form. But we are in charge now. Everything every one of us does affects everybody in the world because we all share the air. Nobody you meet and have a conversation with is not breathing. If you're a mortician, I guess, you know, you take meetings with people who aren't breathing, but we all share the air. And so when I was a kid, Intuitively, you would think nature's over here, we're gonna go camping in the woods, we're gonna take an axe and a hand axe and gotta cut our own firewood and this can be great. And nature's over there and we're over here. But now we're all in this everywhere all together. And so what we want is to have systems of governance, systems in place that take that into account, that preserve the environment for everybody. so that we can all have a high quality of life. Easy to say, not so easy to do.

Right.

Back to you. What.

Did you believe, or not even you, what was in the science community that was so backed, maybe as you were getting into your show 30 years ago and over the last 30 years, something that was known to be true in the world, in the scientific world, Oh, well, that has later been involved into something else and he realized, oh, actually this is not true. What it, what is?

Well, this is a cosmological thing and I mean that cosmology. When I was young, everybody presumed the universe was expanding and and Nolli was as expanding, was slowing down. There was no sound in space, just be. But, and this had, you know, ramifications. about our place in the cosmos and what happened before? Is there any such thing as before the Big Bang? Is that even a question? But now, going back to 2004, it was proven the universe is accelerating, getting bigger, faster and faster. And do you know why? Nobody knows why. So here we go. So you've heard of dark matter, dark energy. So it has some gravity. Nobody's really sure where it comes from, pulling everything apart. And I think about my grandparents, all four of whom were born in the 19th century. All four of my grandparents were born in the 1800s. They did not know there was relativity, let alone what it would lead to. And so in their lifetime, they saw relativity discovered, They saw the neutron discovered, protons proven to donate and accept in acids and bases, and then they saw nuclear weapons and they saw nuclear energy, and they saw this understanding of the cosmos, and they saw the they were around for the invention of the word big bang, the phrase big bang and the invention of black hole. These were things that no one existed, no one knew existed in the 1800s. Just think 30 years from now, when somebody figures out what dark energy and dark matter are, just think where it could lead. People don't know what side of the street they're on until they look at their phone, and your phone depends on both special relativity, the speed of spacecraft relative to the Earth, and general relativity, the speed of time as influenced by the Earth's gravity.

Whoa.

Dude, just think what could happen in 30 years.

What do you think people will discover about dark matter?

Oh, I don't know. It'll be quantized. There'll be particles of dark.

What does that mean, quantized?

In particles.

Okay.

So, you know the word electron.

Yes.

So, electricity or electric fields are manifested or produced or come to be because there are charges in particles, particles with charges. and protons. We talk about protons like that. You can go get a PET scan, proton emission tomography. You can go, yeah. And we don't smoke people. That was a joke.

Right, right.

And then we all take, it used to be called nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, MRI. Now we just call it MRI because it's cleared people out.

Nuclear, yeah, yeah.

But all those discoveries led to these things that we have every day. And the promise of nuclear energy was great. But nobody is comfortable with the waste. Even people who handle the waste very well have to handle it quite gingerly. Nobody wants it around. When I was taking physics back in the disco era, actually before the disco, in Motown, I was taking physics. Fusion was always 40 years away, fusion. But December of last year, People got more energy out than they put in. Fusion was done here on the Earth's surface. If we can come up with fusion energy on the Earth's surface, it will, dare I say it, change the world. And so there are pick a number, about a dozen universities and companies trying to fuse protons or neutrons to get tremendous amount of either heat or this crazy electric field that you could capture directly and produce electricity. It would change if we had unlimited electricity, we could get her done.

Wow.

Get it all done. We could feed everybody clean water, take carbon dioxide out of the air. Are you excited about sustainable aviation fuel? Who isn't?

That'd be amazing.

Yes. So we talk about a shortcut, man, if these guys and gals in South Dakota, can take municipal solid waste, MSW, and turn it into kerosene. Jet fuel is kerosene, just with some stuff to keep it from freezing, and then turn it into rocket fuel, which is the same thing just filtered, really filtered. Say what you will about Elon Musk, whoa, and Jeff Bezos, well, say what you will about those guys, but The ultimate goal of both of them is to use rocket fuel made from air. Take carbon dioxide out of the air, turn it into kerosene, turn it into jet fuel.

That would be powerful.

Oh man, so then you could use all the airplanes you have now and all the rockets you have now and just unlimited ways make kerosene. I mean, it would just be amazing.

Do you think that'll happen in the next 30 years?

30, yeah. Wow. But getting it for every airplane in the world next 30 years, that's something else.

That'd be tough, huh?

Yeah, but getting it for, say, enormous number of domestic flights or Northern Hemisphere flights, very reasonable. You guys, we could just, in Silicon Valley fashion, these entrepreneurs will solve the problem. They'll have first money and some venture capitalists and angel investors and everything will be great. And I'm a billionaire, so take my word for it. Or we could invest like crazy the way people did to create, everybody's talking about Oppenheimer, to create nuclear weapons. We could invest in basic research. We, and everybody, we have to redistribute wealth. Everybody wants to be a billionaire. Sure we do, but everybody can't be a billionaire and still have enough for everybody. unless we, you know, dip, use pennies instead of dark matter. I exaggerate. Back to you.

You mentioned the universe is accelerating and expanding, right? And in that acceleration is dark matter being created in that acceleration?

Don't know, man.

We don't know that yet.

I don't know, man. Somebody does. There's a cosmologist out there, an astrophysicist. Thank you. I don't know. I'm mechanical engineer.

What do we What do we understand or know about the universe expanding and accelerating and our own thoughts?

Oh, see, this is a great question. So is your brain expanding or the matter of you, is it spreading out in some amazing way? And is there some field going between stuff in some new way?

That's what I'm curious about.

Be that as it may be. to the woo-woo people out there, and I imagine you have a few woo-woo-ists. When science scientists make discoveries about entanglement of photons, do you know the double split experiment? Double slit experiment? Double split. I'm talking fast. So, So you guys, this is a digression, but it's worthy of everybody who in a scientifically literate society to consider. Have you ever looked through a piece of plastic, what have you, and seen a rainbow? Like they have glasses.

Yes. Okay.

That's a way to explain that is light travels in waves. So when they go through these finely divided pieces of plastic or glass, they constructively and destructively interfere with themselves on the other side caused by the slits, picket fence that the light's going through. Well, here's a strange and amazing freaking thing. People, if you do experiments on light to observe waves, you will find waves. If you do experiments on light to find particles, you will find particles. And anybody, even people who hate science fiction and hate me and hate Star Trek, have heard of photon torpedoes. We have photons. We can observe photons. So here's the strange and astonishing and amazing thing. If you set up a gizmo to shoot one photon at a time into the double slit, You get the same pattern. It's as though the photons know each other.

I've seen this. Yeah, yeah.

And this is a one thing about it is called entanglement that somehow the photons are entangled. When scientists discover that and prove it and do these experiments to demonstrate it, it doesn't mean that you have psychic powers. That's not the same thing. It doesn't mean you can you can bend spoons with your mind. That's a separate, different thing.

What do you mean?

Just co-opting scientific terms for these woo pseudo-scientific ideas is inappropriate. Can we say inappropriate? Sure. And taking somebody's money when you know better is also inappropriate.

Sure, sure.

So there was a big article the other day about Uri Geller. Ernie Geller? Ernie Geller. Ernie Geller. You guys are so young. So Uri Geller is renowned for bending spoons.

Okay.

And he- With his mind, right? Yes. He used to refer to himself as a mentalist. Now he's kind of pulled back from that. Are you a magician? Oh, I would never say. Sure. So I've been with a couple guys, but the notable guy was James Randi, who died a couple years ago. The Amazing Randi. so you're having, you're meeting, you're a science teacher convention, you're talking to James Randi, and he picks up the spoon from the table and he's talking to you about the spoon, and he's got the spoon and he's talking about this, and then he holds it up and spooned it, because he just bent the living heck out of it in his magic, you can't see it kind of way. You had a very strong finger. So that is apparently, by all accounts, what Uri Geller does. But people are still amazed, you know, that he, because he's a great Terrific shaman. But I mention this because when scientists discover entanglement, it doesn't mean that somebody's bending spoons with his mind, everybody.

Right.

I mean, correlation does not imply causation to get all philosophical buzz phrase on you.

Can you talk to me about the science of thinking? so what the. What a thought is.

Like, man, I don't know, man. So I spent a lot of time from time to time with brain people.

Okay.

And I'm not a brain person.

Yes. What have you learned about them, though?

Well, that everybody is trying to figure out what Consciousness is. Dr. Heather Berlin, friend of mine, is trying to figure out what Consciousness is. And her old guy she used to know very well, Kristoff, they're trying to figure out what consciousness is and they can't, or they haven't, rather not, they can't. They have figured it out so far, yeah. And we all want to know, and this is what philosophy is, is trying to figure out, you know this expression, justified true belief, JTF, JTB? Like, how can you prove anything is true? And it gets to this, I think, therefore I am. I'm thinking, therefore I must be alive. I mean, I must be here. But what goes on with our brains is so subtle and so troubling and such a freaking mess. And now we're all dealing, and I'm not changing the subject, we're all dealing with addiction. Everybody either knows somebody who's an addict or knows somebody whose life's been deeply affected by addiction. There's a guy in the news now, President Sun. And when you become an addict, apparently it affects your brain and you just don't think the way other people think. And it is an amazing thing. If you've been around addicts who just make up stories, who just lie, the stories are all self-consistent. and they're created from their consciousness somehow, almost instantly, but it's happening apparently through chemistry in your head. And so I'm not an expert in this, but I've done a couple shows on addiction and I've been around the brain people when they're arguing in brain people conferences, and it is utterly fascinating. And as a As a skeptic, a formal, I'm a member of both skeptic organizations. I read Skeptic Magazine, I read the Committee for Scientific Inquiry. Who doesn't? Your perception is so unreliable, one's perception, what you think you're seeing in the world. You know, the dress, was it blue and white or was it gold and red? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like your perception is, and that's just.

Talking about your, and your memory, too.

Your memory is a mess, man. You make stuff up all the time. And so. And you do it, apparently, to get through life. Like, it's a shortcut through getting through life, you know, for getting through life.

Have you ever had any extreme addictions?

Have I? Not as far as I know, except I do like toy trains.

Right. And more Obsession.

And I do like. Throwing Frisbees around. I'm not sure that's the same as an addiction.

I think seeing people struggle with addiction is one of the hardest things to watch, especially if you love someone, if you care about someone for five years. And it's also one of the most inspiring things to watch people overcome.

Oh man. So that just shows you. Is it because there's a higher power that is influencing people, or is it chemistry? Hmm. in your brain, interesting, chemistry in your brain seems much more reasonable to me. And so you get in this thing everybody's talking about now, gender fluidity, and I'm not changing the subject, it's that there's a spectrum for all of this stuff. Addiction, obsession, fascination with playing cards, Whatever it is, there's very seldom cut and dried, very seldom A or one or zero. And/or, or. Sure.

I want to ask you a couple of final questions here, Bill, but- Final!

No, I'm sorry, I've talked a lot. You have many questions.

Oh, it's okay, I can talk again. I want to acknowledge you for the constant impact you've made for, I get more than 30 years, but I'm just speaking from the shell.

This is 30th anniversary. We're going to have a big party in Seattle. Don't miss it if you can.

Nice, nice. And acknowledge you for your commitment to bringing education and entertainment to really mostly kids that have then grown up and become interested in these types of ideas.

I understand that was the modern word is intentional. We had very compelling research that 10 years old is about as old as you can be to get the lifelong passion for science. Wow. And it's probably, to me, it's about as old as you can be to get a lifelong passion for anything. When did you wanna tell stories? I mean, you were a little kid, right? Yeah. Yeah. When were you? Sports.

I was interested in sports.

Yeah. Yeah. And so that's why it was aimed at people in fourth grade. It wasn't. It wasn't an unconscious, intuitive decision. It was research. Except it's intuitive in the sense that when I was a kid, I love science, and I still do. And so.

Yeah, that's beautiful. Again, I acknowledge for the impact you consistently make.

I still don't get over it. I was in. I was in Bayeux, France, you know, where the cathedral is with the tapestry telling the story for illiterate citizens. And this guy, I watch your show. What? Do you watch it in French? No, I watch it in English. That's how I learn English. And all these people, people not of my ancestry, who watch the show and got it. It's just amazing to me.

It's beautiful.

I can't get over it.

What'S something about you, Bill, that most people don't know about you?

Well, I don't know. I like swing dancing. I like that music.

I'm a big salsa dancer.

Oh, salsa.

Yeah.

Yeah. I I really like that. And I'm able-bodied enough to do it. I really like that music. The music that you have coming of age, just. That's the music that you like. Yeah. But my parents, I guess, excuse me, my parents listened to swing music and I like that. But that's not all I listened to. I mean, I listened to my uncle, my father's brother, sang barbershop. And I don't know if you guys know barbershop, but only one guy is singing the melody. The other three guys are off doing some crazy chord structure, Hindemith or one of those.

Sure, sure.

Music theory thing.

That'S cool. What besides, you know, what's happening in the world of global warming, what is a fear of yours that you personally have?

Oh, that I'll be, that dementia will make me a burden. Really? Yeah. Um, that my family has absolutely no history of dementia. In fact, one of the, empowering or wonderful things, the same people that have ataxia seem to, as they say, you'll die with it, not from it. People live to be very old and they remain sharp the whole time. So that gives me hope, but that is a fear where you're just a pain in the neck to people, you know. And the other thing people use this expression, you don't want to suffer, you don't want to have so many health issues that just your life's miserable. But on the other hand, nobody's in any hurry to check out. No, let's go, man. Sure. James Randy, the guy talked about it all the time. He's alive. He was alive through modern science, you know, that man. I will not be surprised if cancer is solved because of these breakthroughs. Are you familiar with CRISPR?

Yes.

Yeah. Clustered. Clustered regularly interspace short palindromic repeats. People have been able, are going to be able to modify the genes, especially of farm crops, but then perhaps someday of people with, of, of, cancer cells or with ataxia and cancer cells given to, I mean, and cells given to cancer. The other thing, people love to make fun of lawyers. It's always a great joke. There's a blues lyric, you can tell me that a boatload of lawyers just sunk, but I still have the blues. But the reason people still want to move to the US is our laws are better. Our law, people have been sitting around in nerd fashion thinking about laws for 250 years. And so it's based on, in my opinion, which as you know is correct, is based on this desire or striving to make life fair, to make life fair for everybody, not just as many people as possible, but for everybody. And so, so that gives me great hope that we are continually moving to a more fair world. And by the way, as say, which will Barack Obama? Some people, I know many of you hate him or what, okay. But as he pointed out, if you couldn't pick out, you couldn't pick rather where you would be born on earth. This is a thought experiment. And as they say in law school, I own this hypothetical. You can't be born in the future. That's this rule. You can't pick where, but you could pick when. this would be the time you'd want to be born. As messed up as things might seem to be, it's better for more people now than ever in human history. There's less starvation per person, there are fewer wars, really, per person. There's less unfairness than ever. But we can sure do better, can't we?

Absolutely.

Can we do better?

Absolutely.

Let's be optimistic people. Let's get her done. Let's change the world.

I love it. This question is one I ask everyone at the end At the end of our interviews, I've got two final questions for you, but this one is towards the end. It's called the Three Truths. It's a hypothetical.

The Three Truths.

Three Truths, hypothetical question scenario. I ask out all my guests. Imagine you get to live as long as you want to live. Science and health optimization gets you to as long as you want to live, but it's the last day far in the future for your life in this existence.

And.

You are unable to leave behind any message you've shared before. All the content you've created, books, the TV shows, all of it for whatever reason, it has to go to the next place. It's not here anymore. Hypothetical. But on your last day, you get to leave behind three truths, three things you know to be true, or three lessons you would like to share with the world. And that's all we have to remember your message by. What would be those three truths for you?

I got to sort this out.

Yeah.

Because I got two right away.

Yep.

And then I have my father and mother would say, okay, here you go. Every person is responsible for his or her own actions. You're responsible for your own actions. Common sense is not that common. And the goal, your reason to live, what you want to do, is leave the world better than you found it. Leave the world better than you found it.

Well, those are your parents instilled those truths in you.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Who was, what was the most influential thing about both mom and dad?

Well, mom for academic achievement. She also said where you live is really important. Like, be comfortable, invest in making where you live comfortable. 'Cause if you don't like to be home, you just, life just gets to be un-mazing. And then my dad, was a very good Boy Scout. I had a very good regular experience in the Boy Scouts. I gotta tell you, there was no weirdness. It was just.

That's good.

And I. That movie, the Blair Witch Project. Get out of the woods, you idiots. What's wrong with you? Spend a night in the woods. Big freaking deal. Anyway. so that you can take care of yourself. You can be empowered. That would be something my dad would say. And every man's res- and my father was also, family's the most important thing. Yeah. Your family's the most important thing. It was a big deal with my dad.

That was beautiful.

Yeah. Well, I think everybody says that at some point. Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean people. My brother and sister are my best friends. I mean, we make each other laugh. I meet people that don't get along with their siblings. It's just very much out of my everyday experience. And I guess that came from our parents. As weird as I claim things were, it came from our parents.

Sure, sure. I love these truths, so thanks for sharing those from your parents. Again, 30th anniversary of Bill Nye the Science Guy this September, which is unbelievable.

There's a third generation of people watching this show.

Amazing.

It's a bunch of guys and gals in a warehouse in Seattle, a building still there.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

You have a show called the End is Nigh.

The End is Nigh. Turn it up loud, people, on Peacock.

Watch it. You're also a social media sensation.

Sensation.

Everywhere. TikTok, Instagram, you're just viral everywhere.

So understand the deal was, No bit to exceed 49 seconds. That was our informal hilarious gang. Jim McKenna, Aaron Gottlieb and me, the co-creators. And that was because that's just how we felt. We liked it. It was fun. TikTok is my jam, man.

You crush it on TikTok.

59 seconds? Wait, you got 10 extra seconds.

Let's go.

Let's go.

We'll have to do a TikTok after this. I love it. Again, I want to acknowledge you. Is there anything else we should send people to to let them be aware of and follow you besides social media, the TV show, anywhere else we can send people to support and serve you?

Well, thank you. Read my show, watch my books. So, I am very proud of the books I've written. They've become New York Times bestsellers, but very recently, this debate I did with this guy in Kentucky who near as I can tell really actually believes the Earth is 4,000 years old. He is absolutely wrong about that. That is absolutely incorrect. And he can run off with his Australian accent impressing people who think everybody with a British accent is an authority. Okay. But the concern there are the kids. You don't want kids growing up scientifically illiterate. I mean, that point of view is just silly. And I know he was brought up with it and he really believes it, but it just crossed 10 million views.

Wow.

10 million official views, which means, what does that mean in unofficial? 50, 40 million?

Right.

Right.

So, is that a YouTube or where is that?

It's on YouTube, yeah. The kids with their YouTubes.

Gotcha.

But undeniable, the first book. is about evolution. And I think it would be great if everybody understood evolution and our place in the cosmos, what I like to call our place in space. And the reason I took this job as CEO of the Planetary Society, world's largest non-governmental space interest organization advancing space science and exploration so the citizens of Earth will know the cosmos and our place within it. is because these discoveries we make in space affect us all, both practically, we all have satellite communications, weather reports that are accurate within five minutes, and global communication and so on. But spiritually, thinking about your place in the cosmos affects all of us. And if we were to discover life on another world, it would change this one, people. We find evidence of bacterial fossilized pond scum on Mars, it will change the way you feel about being alive. If we find evidence of life in the atmosphere of Venus, phosphine gas, it will like there are microbes, so-called aeroplankton, floating around and it will change you. If we find Europaeans under the ice on Europa, the moon of Jupiter that Galileo discovered, if we that will change you. Are there Enceladusians orbiting Saturn? It will change you. So that's why I do that as a full part-time job.

Wow.

Now, and the other thing about space in the States, especially US especially, brings people together. People that hate each other in Congress agree to fund NASA. The best brand the United States has, NASA is the best brand the United States has. So that's why I do all these things, people. When you're in love, you want to tell the world, science! And science, or the process of science, our ability to evaluate evidence, so-called critical thinking, is how we're going to address climate change. It's how we're going to feed everybody, not by pretending it's not happening, it's not going to do it. Sure. Back to you.

Powerful, Bill.

I appreciate you being here. I got one final question.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I talk so much. You're good, I love it.

The final question is, what is your definition of greatness? something that fills you with respect. What's everybody these days greatest of all time?

Rather than goats.

Yeah. That's fleeting. This too will pass, as they say. Who's ever the fastest human, 100 meters? That guy's not gonna be 100 meter champion or gal is not gonna be 100 meter champion 20 years, probably not in 20 years. certainly not in 50 years. And so that's going to pass. But how does it make you feel right now? That person was great. What that, what happened was great. That was a great thing, how it makes you feel. My definition of greatness then is you makes you feel that something is wonderful, fills you, everybody loves the word awesome, but fills, fills you with awe. or respect, respect. And then there's, you know, like quantum entanglement, which is if you separate two particles that we're interacting and you make it so that they can't communicate, they still will act like they're communicating.

Really?

Being separated. So these kind of features seem very odd when quantum mechanics was founded.

And of course, a lot of people that have.