Bill Nye The Science Guy On Mastering Your Brain, The Science of Human Connection & Addressing The World’s #1 Issue EP 1471

The Summit of Greatness is back! Buy your tickets today – summitofgreatness.com – Bill Nye is an American science educator, engineer, comedian, television presenter, inventor, keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling author. In his role as the creator and host of the Emmy Award-winning television series Bill Nye the Science Guy, Nye helped introduce viewers to science and engineering in an entertaining and accessible manner, fostering an understanding and appreciation for the science that makes our world work. He is currently the executive producer and host of the new science series The End is Nye, which is available to stream on Peacock. Today, Nye is a respected champion of scientific literacy who has challenged opponents of evidence-based education and policy on climate change, evolution and critical thinking. He currently serves as CEO of The Planetary Society, the world’s largest and most influential non-governmental space organization, co-founded by Carl Sagan. In this episode you will learn,The importance of connecting with individuals on a deeper level in order to address humanity’s most pressing issue of global climate change. How to maintain balance while using 100% of our brainsThe best ways to keep our brains healthyHow to master your mind before taking action on global issuesWhat 30 years of scientific research has taught Bill about communicationFor more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1470For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960Peter Diamandis on the positive global impacts of innovation – https://link.chtbl.com/1264-podMatt Damon and Gary White on providing clean drinking water on a global scale – https://link.chtbl.com/1248-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Lewis Howes?

  Calling all conscious achievers who are seeking more community and connection. I've got an invitation for you. Join me at this year's Summit of Greatness, this September 7th through 9th, in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, to unleash your true greatness. This is the one time a year that I gather the greatness community together in person for a powerful transformative weekend. People come from all over the world and you can expect to hear from inspiring speakers like Inky Johnson, Josprey Singh, Vanessa Van Edwards, Jen Sincero, and many more. You'll also be able to dance your heart out to live music, get your body moving with group workouts, and connect with others at our evening socials.

• 0:44Lewis Howes?

  So if you're ready to learn, heal, and grow alongside other incredible individuals in the greatness community, then you can learn more at lewishouse.com/summit2023. Make sure to grab your ticket, invite your friends, and I'll see you there.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:22Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 1:46Lewis Howes?

  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, yeah, 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.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:16Lewis Howes?

  And

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Sure, I'm an expert.

• 2:17Lewis Howes?

  You're an expert in relationships?

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Sure. Oh, and all that, whatever you listed there.

• 2:22Lewis Howes?

  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?

• 2:53Speaker 01

  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, before you're 10 years old, everybody's asking scientific questions and so on and so on.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  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, uh, like, 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'll ever meet knows something you don't.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  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 that, 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 a 19th century usage of this expression. You meant things that fit in the best.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  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, 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.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  So that's a long winded thing.

• 5:22Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  It's people making extraordinary claims about religion and what their deity is telling them to do. But not everybody agrees on who which deity has the latest information. And so I mentioned 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.

• 5:58Lewis Howes?

  What's the, I mean, you mentioned just before about how you went to your 50th.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  High school reunion.

• 6:04Lewis Howes?

  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.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  As far as we know.

• 6:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  It's not because they didn't want to.

• 6:13Lewis Howes?

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

• 6:25Speaker 01

  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, 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

• 7:05Speaker 01

  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. We go to the stadium.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Seats, 75,000 people. Probably.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Every, 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, 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 your life from a different point of view. 30,000 days, SoFi Stadium, you don't get halfway around and you're dead. Wow. That's a, that sucks, man. Wow.

• 8:23Speaker 01

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

• 8:30Lewis Howes?

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

• 8:39Speaker 01

  And then the other thing, if you live to be 120, what have you, or is the quality of life is good out there?

• 8:44Lewis Howes?

  Right. The health span versus the lifespan.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  There you go. Yeah. So what about it? It's a focuses the mind, as they say.

• 8:54Lewis Howes?

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

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Uh, well, there's um.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  A couple of TV things I'd like to do, movie things I'd like to do. But let me ask you this.

• 9:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Why doesn't every?

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Interviewer? On mainstream news channels or any news channel? Uh, a news medium, whether it be broadcast or cable television or print media? Or whatever the kids call the electric internet? Why don't? 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 threat. 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.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  It is the biggest problem we have.

• 9:58Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 9:59Speaker 01

  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.

• 10:09Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. When will it happen in fast motion?

• 10:11Speaker 01

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

• 10:19Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Do you know the hockey stick graph? World's gotten been about the same. Now it's getting warmer faster and faster. He was the lead author on the first publication of the hockey stick graph. And he upped it. They updated, he and his colleagues updated from time to time. Um, 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.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  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 thinkingist? Get your head in the gameist? And what I say to conservative media with whom media people with whom I cross paths less and less frequently.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  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.

• 11:45Lewis Howes?

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

• 11:51Speaker 01

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

• 11:57Lewis Howes?

  And how was the world before that? I guess.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Well, so, oh, let's talk about the world before. What's everybody's favorite thing? 10 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. It's, there's a fabulous physics word. It's precessing. It's not just spinning, it's doing this thing. All right.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Precessing. And 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's a little of this. It's tilted, blah, blah, blah. So you get these cycles called Malinkovich cycles. And the last ice age is closer related to the Malinkovich 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, 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

• 13:12Speaker 01

  in what is now Wyoming and Utah. Have you ever been to dinosaur Utah? It's amazing. Dinosaur Colorado, I misspoke. Yes, dinosaur, that's the town. There were dinosaurs that were walking around. And then, do you know Tiktaalik? Do 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. Alright. 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.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  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 just walk around, cool. 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.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes, I'm a pay attentionist. So, anyway, the sooner we get to work, the better. Why, 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. Time's only going one way, and I like to drop the second law of thermodynamics. You ever heard of the second law?

• 15:11Lewis Howes?

  Tell me.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  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. Chemist love their entropy. Anyway.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  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.

• 16:06Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Right? So we'll just go into air conditioning. Okay, where are you gonna get that? And so furthermore, there'll be, there's a, as Mike Mann points out in his latest book. It's not hard fast. Some people be able to live at 132, other won't make, 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 want to move. Where are they gonna go? What are they gonna do when they get there? And whose resources are they gonna 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.

• 16:45Lewis Howes?

  When, when will it get to that point, though?

• 16:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Mark Morano, who's 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.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  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 figure, 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. You know, do you own Chinese or Asian stocks or some $10,000? And Rick Perry is like governor of Texas. I don't have $10,000 with that. I'm a public servant. Anyway, neither of them would take the bet. They still wouldn't take, they 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.

• 18:13Lewis Howes?

  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 100 years and it's getting warmer, then it'll get colder, then it'll get warmer?

• 18:27Speaker 01

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

• 18:30Lewis Howes?

  I have no idea.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  When armies of scientists, climatologists, people who study thisists, 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 and 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.

• 19:05Lewis Howes?

  Why is it happening?

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Because we put extra carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the air very fast. And this is what we tell everybody, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. 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 the same atmosphere. And this is going to be trouble. But you gotta be optimistic, Louis.

• 19:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  If you're not optimistic, you're not going to get anything done.

• 19:45Lewis Howes?

  For sure.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  We're playing ping pong, table tennis.

• 19:47Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  I was optimistic that I could, you know, take a couple of 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.

• 19:58Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  If you don't think we can address climate change, then we won't.

• 20:02Lewis Howes?

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

• 20:05Speaker 01

  So vote, everybody, vote. What can I do about climate change? And what people want to hear generally is recycle your plastic, which is good.

• 20:16Lewis Howes?

  It's not enough.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Recycle, it's not nearly enough. Furthermore, the fossil fuel industry, and look, we're all got here because we have fossil fuels. I'm, you know, I understand that, but we have to stop.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  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, 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 say raise the standard of living of women and girls, everybody is better off.

• 21:01Lewis Howes?

  Benefits, yeah.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  You know the old saying, happy women and girls, happy life. I paraphrase.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  When women have a higher quality of life, they have fewer kids, the kids they do have have more resources, they do better. Everybody does better. Uh, in the community, in the, 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.

• 21:40Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  And when you talk about Texas and the extraordinary heat.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Here's an irony. And I did a, I used to, do 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, lap 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, did everybody watch Friday Night Lights? An older reference. In that area, when you pump up oil, the verb they use is produce oil.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  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.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  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 of 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?

• 23:24Speaker 01

  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. Yeah, yeah. Well, somebody's making money. Are you old enough to remember T. Boone Pickens? His kids. The name, yeah. It's the kids. Anyway, he. Was a fossil fuel bazillionaire, but he argued that let's use natural, he argued

• 24:06Speaker 01

  for net using natural gas as what he called the bridge fuel to renewable and he was heavily invested in wind energy in Texas.

• 24:15Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha, gotcha.

• 24:16Speaker 01

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

• 24:20Lewis Howes?

  I wanna, I wanna ask you about this because for those, for those watching and listening and say, okay, I hear you, I believe it, I understand it, and I'm gonna take action on it, right? But I feel a lot of stress in my heart and my mind.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:37Lewis Howes?

  My relationships are struggling.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:39Lewis Howes?

  I don't understand my brain.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:41Lewis Howes?

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

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Master.

• 24:46Lewis Howes?

  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, 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?

• 25:24Speaker 01

  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 attentivity.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  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, A, so much as a guideline for you Ghostbusters buffed. And so.

• 25:58Lewis Howes?

  Now it's like four seconds on the screen.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  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. It's easy enough to say. But when it comes to climate change and your general anxiety, doing something about it makes you feel better.

• 26:35Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  In my opinion.

• 26:36Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Just doing something.

• 26:37Lewis Howes?

  For sure.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Get politically active.

• 26:39Lewis Howes?

  For sure.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  And keeping in minding that, that's hilarious, keep in mind that just recycling newspapers aren't gonna do it.

• 26:48Lewis Howes?

  Not enough. Yeah. You gotta get active in other ways.

• 26:50Speaker 01

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

• 26:55Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  You know, the, 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 a hilarious comedy joke compared to what's happening now.

• 27:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  So let's get to work, people. Come on.

• 27:18Lewis Howes?

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

• 27:34Speaker 01

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

• 27:54Lewis Howes?

  Santa Claus.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Sin, sin, just a second.

• 27:56Lewis Howes?

  Maybe real.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Now, 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, pretty convincing evidence that Santa can be in one, more than one place at a 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.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  I mean, that, I won't say it's obvious, but if you think about it, it's susceptible to analysis, as we say. Sure, sure. So... What beliefs have you had to change in the last 30 years? Oh, well, the one, 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 Godfrey especially, who are very concerned about nuclear weapons and nuclear, you know, the Oppenheimer, the movie's coming out right now and all, and the documentary about him. And very concerned about nuclear weapons. Well, now they, yet we are concerned about

• 29:25Speaker 01

  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.

• 30:01Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Obviously. But now I've come to accept the idea that we're much better off modifying crops.

• 30:09Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And by we, I mean, we can feed more people more efficiently. And we've revelled, the reason we have eight billion people going on nine 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 boll weevil explaining to the farmer, he's gotta eat the cotton, because, sorry dude, I need a home. Whereas the farmer's thinking, you know, it'd be better if you weren't here, Mr. Boll or Ms. Boll weevil. So genetically modified crops, I've changed my mind.

• 30:52Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 30:52Speaker 01

  And I've gotten respect in the scientific community about it.

• 30:54Lewis Howes?

  But why do so many people, why are they against genetically modified foods and crops?

• 31:00Speaker 01

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

• 31:17Lewis Howes?

  Right, and it's kind of taking up the land from the smaller farmers.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  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 18th century grid. But that's not what people want. People, people want to live in cities and do stuff. And I, 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.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  You need to have thousands of people come together with a plan and a giant building to build stuff.

• 32:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  That's how it is. And so I think. 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

• 32:47Speaker 01

  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, man. 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's 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.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  It was down in the lower 300s of the top 500 companies. I mean, it was successful, but it wasn't like this monolith in 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, 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.

• 34:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  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 understanding DNA so well that you could.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  And so that this protein produces a crystal in the corn borer that kills it, can't tolerate it, or prevent, or it, it's, doesn't eat it because it can see it coming in the insect sense. And so the, 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

• 35:09Speaker 01

  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 it's gonna be great. And nature's over there and we're over here. But now we're all in this everywhere all together.

• 35:46Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  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.

• 36:03Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Back to you.

• 36:06Lewis Howes?

  What have 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?

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 36:25Lewis Howes?

  That has later

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 36:27Lewis Howes?

  Been involved into something else and you realized, oh, actually, this is not true. What it, what is?

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Well, this is a cosmological thing, and I mean that cosmology. When I was young, everybody presumed the universe was expanding. And, and Nolly was his expanding, was slowing down. There was no sound in space, just be. But, uh, 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? Uh, but now, more than about 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.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  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 and 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

• 37:58Speaker 01

  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 what crazy, what it could, 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 is influenced by the earth's gravity. Whoa, dude, just think what could happen in 30 years.

• 38:38Lewis Howes?

  What do you think? People will discover about dark matter?

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know that it's, it'll be part, it'll be quantized. There'll be particles of dark.

• 38:48Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean, quantized?

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Uh, in particles. So we, you know, the word electron.

• 38:52Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  So electricity or electric fields are manifested or produced or come to be because there are charges in particles, particles with charges. And, uh, uh, protons, we talk about protons like that. We, you can go get a PET scan, proton emission tomography, you can go, yes. And we don't smoke, people. That was a joke. And then, um, And then we all take it. It used to be called nuclear magnetic resonance imaging MRI. Now we just call it MRI.

• 39:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  People, 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.

• 39:42Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  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

• 40:26Speaker 01

  or this crazy electric field that you can capture directly and produce electricity. It would change, if we had unlimited electricity, we could get her done.

• 40:35Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  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?

• 40:45Lewis Howes?

  That'd be amazing.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  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.

• 41:22Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Take carbon dioxide out of the air, turn it into kerosene, turn it into jet fuel.

• 41:28Lewis Howes?

  That'd be powerful.

• 41:29Speaker 01

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

• 41:42Lewis Howes?

  You think that'll happen in the next 30 years?

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Thirty, yeah.

• 41:45Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 41:45Speaker 01

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

• 41:49Lewis Howes?

  That'd be tough, huh?

• 41:50Speaker 01

  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, we'll let 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

• 42:34Speaker 01

  we do, but everybody can't be a billionaire and still have enough for everybody unless we, you know, use pennies instead of duck frag or whatever. I exaggerate. Back to you.

• 42:45Lewis Howes?

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

• 42:55Speaker 01

  Don't know, man.

• 42:56Lewis Howes?

  We don't know that yet.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  I don't know, man. If somebody does, there's a cosmologist out there, an astrophysicist, thank you. I don't know. I'm a mechanical engineer.

• 43:04Lewis Howes?

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

• 43:13Speaker 01

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

• 43:30Lewis Howes?

  That's what I'm curious about.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Be that as it may be, to the...

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Woo woo people out there, and I imagine you have a few woo wooists. When scientists make discoveries about entanglement of photons, do you know the double slit experiment? Double split. I'm talking fast. So, so here, you guys, this is a digression, but it's worthy of everybody who in a scientifically literate society to consider.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Have you ever looked through a piece of plastic, what have you, and seen a rainbow? Like they have glasses.

• 44:15Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Okay. That's, the 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.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Well, here's the 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, 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,

• 45:20Speaker 01

  you get the same pattern. It's as though the photons know each other.

• 45:24Lewis Howes?

  I've seen this. Yeah, yeah.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  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 move, you can bend spoons with your mind. That's a separate, different thing.

• 45:52Lewis Howes?

  What you mean?

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Just co-opting scientific terms for these woo-

• 45:58Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  pseudo-scientific ideas is inappropriate.

• 46:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Can we say inappropriate?

• 46:02Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  And taking somebody's money when you know better is also inappropriate.

• 46:09Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  So, there was a big article the other day about Uri Geller.

• 46:14Lewis Howes?

  Ernie Geller?

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Uri Geller.

• 46:16Lewis Howes?

  Uri Geller.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  You guys are so young.

• 46:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  So, Uri Geller, who's renowned for bending spoons-

• 46:21Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  And he-

• 46:22Lewis Howes?

  With his mind, right?

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  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."

• 46:31Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  So, I've been with a couple of guys, but the notable guy was James Randi, who died a couple of 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 the spoon- because he just bent the living heck out of it in his magic, you can't see it kind of way.

• 46:59Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Very strong finger. So, that is apparently, by all accounts, what Uri Geller does. But people are still amazed, you know, because he's a great, terrific showman. But I mention this because when scientists discover

• 47:15Speaker 01

  entanglement, it doesn't mean that somebody's bending spoons with his mind. Everybody.

• 47:21Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Causation, I mean,

• 47:25Speaker 01

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

• 47:31Lewis Howes?

  Can you, can you talk to me about the science of thinking? Of what a thought is?

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Man, I don't know, man. So, I spend a lot of time, from time to time, with brain people. I am not a brain person.

• 47:45Lewis Howes?

  Yes. What have you learned about them, though?

• 47:47Speaker 01

  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-

• 48:04Speaker 01

  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 haven't figured it out. They haven't so far, yeah. And we all want to know, and this is what philosophy is, is trying to figure out. Do you know this expression justified true belief? JTF, JTB? Like, how can you prove anything is true? And it gets to this ergo somera, 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.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  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. The guy in the news now, that president's son. 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. When you've, 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.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  And so I'm not an expert in this, but I've done a couple of shows on addiction and I've been around the brain people when they're arguing in their brain people conferences. And it is utterly fascinating. And as a skeptic, a formal skeptic, 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, the dress? Was it blue and white?

• 50:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes, yeah, red or whatever, yeah.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Like, your perception is, and that's just something about your

• 50:12Lewis Howes?

  And your memory, too.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  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.

• 50:25Lewis Howes?

  Have you ever had any extreme addictions?

• 50:27Speaker 01

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

• 50:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  And, uh,

• 50:33Lewis Howes?

  More obsession.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  And I do like, um, uh, throwing frisbees around.

• 50:40Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  I'm not sure that's the same as an addiction.

• 50:42Lewis Howes?

  I thi- 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.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Oh, man. So that just shows you, is it because there's a higher power that is influencing people, or is it chemistry?

• 51:04Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  In your brain?

• 51:06Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Chemistry in your brain seems much more reasonable to me. Uh, and so you get into this thing everybody's talking about now, um, 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

• 51:29Speaker 01

  playing cards, uh, whatever it is, there's this very seldom, uh, cut and dried, very seldom a or, uh, or, uh, one or zero, and or, or.

• 51:42Lewis Howes?

  Sure. I wanna, I wanna ask you a couple of final questions here, Bill, but I'm

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Final? No, I can, I'm sorry, I have talked a lot. You have many questions and I keep going on.

• 51:51Lewis Howes?

  Again, I want to acknowledge you for the constant impact you've made for, I got more than 30 years, but I'm just speaking from the show.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Thank you, yes. It's 30th anniversary. We're gonna have a big party in, in Seattle. Don't miss it if you can.

• 52:02Lewis Howes?

  Nice, nice. And, um, 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.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  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.

• 52:26Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  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 want to tell stories? I mean, you were a little kid.

• 52:33Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. When were you interested?

• 52:34Lewis Howes?

  Play sports, I was interested in sports.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  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 loved science and I still do.

• 52:54Lewis Howes?

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

• 52:58Speaker 01

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

• 53:27Lewis Howes?

  It's beautiful.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  It's just, I can't get over it.

• 53:29Lewis Howes?

  This question is what I ask everyone at the end.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  At the end.

• 53:33Lewis Howes?

  At the end of our interviews, I've got two final questions for you, but this one's towards the end. It's called the three truths. It's a hypothetical.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  The three truths.

• 53:41Lewis Howes?

  Three truths, hypothetical question scenario. Ask L my guess. 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, for your life in this existence. And you are unable to, 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.

• 54:25Lewis Howes?

  And that's all we have to remember your message by. What would be those three truths for you?

• 54:31Speaker 01

  I gotta sort this out.

• 54:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Cause I got two right away.

• 54:35Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  And then I have, my father and mother would say there's, okay, here you go.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  Every person's responsible for his or her own actions. You're responsible for your own actions.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  Common sense is not that common.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  And the goal, your reason to live, what you want to do is leave the world better than you found it.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Leave the world better than you found it.

• 55:12Lewis Howes?

  Well, those your, your parents instilled those truths from you?

• 55:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 55:16Lewis Howes?

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

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Well, mom, uh, for academic achievement. She also said, uh, 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 uneasy. And then acad, and then my dad, uh, was, uh, 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.

• 55:57Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  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. Uh, anyway, uh, so then you can, uh, you, you can take care of yourself. You can be empowered. That'd be something my dad would say. And, uh, every man's, and my father was also, family's the most important thing.

• 56:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Your family's the most important thing. It was a big deal with my dad.

• 56:30Lewis Howes?

  That was beautiful.

• 56:30Speaker 01

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

• 56:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  I meet people. My brother and sister are my best friends.

• 56:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  I mean, we make each other laugh. I meet people that don't get along with their siblings. That'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.

• 56:51Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. I love these truths, so thanks for sharing those from your parents. Again, 30th anniversary of Bill, Not a Science Guide this September, which is unbelievable.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  Can't you see there's a third generation of people watching this show?

• 57:05Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing.

• 57:05Speaker 01

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

• 57:10Lewis Howes?

  That's amazing.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:12Lewis Howes?

  You have a show called The End Is Nigh.

• 57:15Speaker 01

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

• 57:18Lewis Howes?

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

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Sensation.

• 57:23Lewis Howes?

  Everywhere. TikTok and Instagram. You're just viral everywhere.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  So understand, the deal was no bit to exceed 49 seconds. That was our informal hilarious gag. It was Jim McKenna.

• 57:34Lewis Howes?

  For TV, right?

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. 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.

• 57:46Lewis Howes?

  You crush it on TikTok.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  59 seconds? We got 10 extra seconds. Let's go. Let's go.

• 57:50Lewis Howes?

  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?

• 58:06Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. Read my show, watch my book. 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.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  I mean, that point of view is just silly. And I know he was brought up with it, and he really believes it.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  But it just crossed 10 million views.

• 58:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 58:59Speaker 01

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

• 59:05Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  So.

• 59:08Lewis Howes?

  It's on YouTube or where is that?

• 59:09Speaker 01

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

• 59:12Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  But undeniable, the first book is about evolution. And I think it'd 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 site, world's largest non-governmental space interest organization, advancing space science and exploration so that 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.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  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. If 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, are there microbes, so-called aeroplanthin floating around, it will change you. If we find Europanians under the ice on Europa, the moon of Jupiter that Galileo discovered, if we've, that will change you. Are there Enceladusians orbiting Saturn? It will change you.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  So that's why I do that as a full, part-time job.

• 1:00:44Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  Now, 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.

• 1:01:21Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  Back to you.

• 1:01:23Lewis Howes?

  Powerful, Bill. I appreciate you being here. I got one final question.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. I talk so much.

• 1:01:27Lewis Howes?

  You're good. I love it. The final question is, what is your definition of greatness?

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  Something that fills you with respect.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  What's everybody these days greatest of all time?

• 1:01:41Lewis Howes?

  Right, the goats.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's fleeting. This too will pass, as they say. Who's ever the fastest human 100 meters, that guy's not going to be 100 meter champion, or gal's not going to 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.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  My definition of greatness then is you makes it feel that something is wonderful. Fills you, everybody loves the word awesome, but fills, fills you with awe or respect. Respect.

• 1:02:26Lewis Howes?

  I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness Newsletter

• 1:03:09Lewis Howes?

  and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com/newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.