Cosmic Queries: GMOs with Bill Nye (Part 1)

Guest host Bill Nye the Science Guy says he’s changed his mind about GMOs. Find out why when he and co-host Chuck Nice answer fan submitted questions about the controversial subject of Genetically Modified Organisms.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:21Bill Nye?

  Greetings, greetings. Bill Nye here. Welcome to StarTalk Radio. It's cosmic queries, taking your questions from the cosmos and providing insights, perspectives, nominally answers. And I'm here with my beloved colleague Chuck Nice. Chuck, good to see you.

• 0:40Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Bill. Always good to be seen. Good to see you, too.

• 0:43Bill Nye?

  And so you have some queries from out there in the electric internet space.

• 0:47Chuck Nice?

  That is correct, from the ether known as the internet. We have from all over, whether it's Twitter, or Facebook, or Google+, any of the many incarnations where you'll find StarTalk.

• 0:59Bill Nye?

  This is what the kids use.

• 1:00Chuck Nice?

  This is what the kids use.

• 1:01Bill Nye?

  With their electric computer machines.

• 1:03Chuck Nice?

  Pretty soon, we'll be on Snapchat, and that will actually destroy my daughter's life, because Dad is on Snapchat.

• 1:10Bill Nye?

  Oh, that would be, it would be no point in belonging.

• 1:12Chuck Nice?

  Well, this is what happens. My daughter, she goes onto something, finds a new app. I'm like, "Oh, that's kind of cool." And then the moment I get on it, she's just like, "This app's totally not cool anymore." And then she's like, "Now I'm on this app." I'm like, "Oh, okay."

• 1:25Bill Nye?

  So, you don't have any inclination to get on her algebra app? Or her world history app?

• 1:33Chuck Nice?

  No, I would never do that, because I don't want to give her the excuse to get off of it.

• 1:37Bill Nye?

  That's what I'm saying. That's exactly what I'm saying. Kids today. All right, let's get to work.

• 1:41Chuck Nice?

  Hey, let's get to work.

• 1:42Bill Nye?

  Genetically modified organisms.

• 1:44Chuck Nice?

  Yep, that is what we're talking about. Before we begin, I have, we're doing a two-parter here, and I have a ton of questions from GMOs, and they are all, here's the weird thing, and I don't know, they are all addressed to you. They're saying, "Bill, dear Mr. Nye, dearest Mr. Nye, why are all these people asking you about GMOs?"

• 2:02Bill Nye?

  Here's, here's the thing.

• 2:03Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:04Bill Nye?

  I wrote a book, a New York Times bestseller, Undeniable.

• 2:09Bill Nye?

  Evolution and the Science of Creation. Yes. And in that book, I had. By the way, it's a great book. I love you, man. Yeah. By the way, in that, or the point is, or the thing of it is, in the book, I have a chapter about genetically modified organisms. Right. And at that time, when I wrote it, I said, it's always good to be cautious. It's, you don't know what you're gonna do to the ecosystem. But this led to controversy because it turns out GMOs, in my opinion, I spent some more time. I met the guy who won the World Food Prize. Okay. Uh, Rob Fraley won, it's like the Nobel Prize for farming, for agriculture. Agriculture. And he's, in my opinion, really not such a bad guy.

• 2:54Bill Nye?

  And he believes that we can raise more food than ever on less land. In other words, we have 7.2, almost 7.3 billion people on Earth today. Okay. He believes, or his colleagues, believe they can raise food for 9 billion people on 2% less land. Which is great. That's a noble goal. That is a noble goal. And here's the thing that happened, in my opinion. Uh, Monsanto developed something called glyphosate. Okay. Or rather, a salt of glyphosate. This is a way to put this chemical onto soil and have it stay there pretty well. Okay. Anyway, it kills everything that's green. Kills everything by inhibiting the chikimate acid pathway.

• 3:37Bill Nye?

  So you're literally salting the earth. Yes. So. However, uh, what Rob Fraley and these several other guys who are working at Monsanto, the be-hated Monsanto, what they did is develop a gene that lets this chikimic acid pathway get completed in the green plant anyway. Gotcha. And this is the so-called Roundup-ready soybean corn, cotton was the first one. Right. And here, there's two things. Now, everybody is familiar with Roundup as a weed killer. It does kill weeds. It kills any green plant. Any green plant. With a couple of exceptions, which are quite relevant. Anyway, uh, he, uh, argues that glyphosate is really not such a bad thing.

• 4:22Bill Nye?

  Compared to all the other herbicides, glyphosate is pretty benign. Which I, I've done research now and I've decided that's true. I've changed my mind about genetically modified foods. That's the, that's the top line. So it's the top line. You've changed your mind about GMOs. And so I looked into it. There's no difference between allergies among GMO eaters and non-GMO eaters. There is a big difference in inputs from an agricultural standpoint. Organic farming takes a lot more water, takes a lot more tillage. Yes. It ends up, actually you end up with less diversity of microbes in the soil. With, uh, modern roundup-ready crops because you don't have to till. You don't have to turn the soil over to kill the weeds. Right.

• 5:03Bill Nye?

  However, there is a notorious weed called pigweed, which is every bit as friendly as it sounds. Oh, okay. And, uh, But is it as delicious as bacon? Actually, they used to, we people used to eat it. Eat the leaves of aranthus, uh, plants. Uh huh. But now it's considered a weed because it's, you have to go to a lot of trouble to get the food worth out of it. Gotcha. And it has a redundant gene now. In other words, it has evolved over the last couple of decades. Okay. So that it has, uh, amplified the gene that makes this, you can make it acid. And so Roundup doesn't kill it. It can't kill it. Yeah. So it's, Now you have a Roundup-resistant weed now. That's what you got.

• 5:45Bill Nye?

  So, right now, they control what the, the adverb is mechanically. They tear it up, they dig it up. Yeah. And these guys that, The old-fashioned way. That's right. These, the farmers at Monsanto and Pioneer and DuPont, they all tell stories. These are seed companies. They all tell stories when they were kids, they were farmers, they dug up weeds. Right. And it was not really the good old days. So, uh, I've changed my mind about genetically modified organisms and that's why these things have come in. I mean, I, but I would claim, Chuck. That I went about it in a scientific fashion. Let's take a query.

• 6:18Chuck Nice?

  Let's go to the queries. This is Corey Garst coming to us from Google Plus. What kind of research has been done to show what effects GMOs do or do not have on humans?

• 6:33Bill Nye?

  Well, this is exactly the point. This is, uh, thank you, Corey. Is that his name?

• 6:37Chuck Nice?

  That is Corey Garst from Google Plus.

• 6:39Bill Nye?

  Uh, from out there. Uh, so what they, we, it has done is that is the one thing you can test is the effects of food. I mean, that's one straightforward thing you can test. That's, that's not that different from 20 years ago. You feed the food to your good friends, the lab rats.

• 6:57Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 6:58Bill Nye?

  Yeah. And you, and the mice, and you say, what do you think?

• 7:01Chuck Nice?

  Right. So.

• 7:02Bill Nye?

  Steve, if that's his name.

• 7:03Chuck Nice?

  That's the mouse's name, Steve.

• 7:05Bill Nye?

  Henrietta.

• 7:05Chuck Nice?

  Right. As long as it's not Mickey, you're fine.

• 7:08Bill Nye?

  Uh, I think Mickey's really hard to.

• 7:11Chuck Nice?

  That's a hard lab rat to have, Mickey.

• 7:13Bill Nye?

  Well, to kill would be really hard.

• 7:15Chuck Nice?

  Right. Yeah. Well, for some.

• 7:17Bill Nye?

  So the thing is, uh, there's no, the genetically modified food has no effect on us. I mean, that is to say, there's no difference between it and organically raised food. This is scientifically provable.

• 7:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:28Bill Nye?

  It's certainly provable to my satisfaction. And, uh, that's like the most straightforward thing about it is to see if it's still as nutritious. And see if, see if it has any allergic effect, and it absolutely does not. In fact, in general, all of these foods are more nutritious. They're.

• 7:45Chuck Nice?

  Well, now that, now see, that is the first time I've ever heard that assertion made.

• 7:48Bill Nye?

  Well, just in general, I mean, you get more soybean per hectare, per acre.

• 7:52Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I got you.

• 7:52Bill Nye?

  You get more corn per acre, per hectare. You get bigger kernels of corn.

• 7:57Chuck Nice?

  So from a voluminous standpoint.

• 7:59Bill Nye?

  Well, not just that, if you're gonna, if the, if the bushel of corn weighs so many kilos or pounds, how much of that is nutritious corn? And how much of that is cob, unedible, inedible cob?

• 8:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that's a very good point.

• 8:12Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yes. You get a lot more.

• 8:13Chuck Nice?

  You get a lot more, uh, kernel than cob.

• 8:16Bill Nye?

  Yeah. And that's in that one example, the famous example. So then the other thing that's happened. With genetically modified foods, and this may be in the, in the future queries. The other thing that's happened is, uh, it's led to the success of this technology of allowing you to put glyphosate on fields and then plant things like crazy, is people have raised enormous tracts of land in a single crop, because it's easier.

• 8:40Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 8:41Bill Nye?

  And this is so-called monoculture. And this has had two things. First of all, you, you lose diversity in your farming, and which leads to, uh, a loss of diversity in the microbes that support plants and a loss of diversity in the, the rate at which different pollinatable flowers appear. This is to say.

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 9:01Bill Nye?

  If all the soybean plants come to go to flower at the same time, the bees have to work that whole deal.

• 9:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:09Bill Nye?

  They can't go from this plant to that plant to this plant. You'll notice the cherry blossoms show up first.

• 9:14Chuck Nice?

  Right, and then...

• 9:15Bill Nye?

  That's their trick.

• 9:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:16Bill Nye?

  So the bees and everybody, they show up and do the...

• 9:18Chuck Nice?

  And they're like, "Hey, you know, we're doing cherry blossoms right now."

• 9:21Bill Nye?

  Can we say "do" on this show?

• 9:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 9:22Bill Nye?

  Do, they're doing the cherry blossom.

• 9:23Chuck Nice?

  The "do and cherry blossom," come on, you know, birds do it, bees do it.

• 9:25Bill Nye?

  That's right.

• 9:26Chuck Nice?

  We know what they're doing.

• 9:26Bill Nye?

  Then the juncles show up, then the daffodils, and there's a sequence that has come to be the revolution.

• 9:31Chuck Nice?

  Who, by the way, clearly the whores of the plant world, the daffodils, but I'm just saying.

• 9:36Bill Nye?

  It's just on your mind.

• 9:37Chuck Nice?

  (laughing)

• 9:38Bill Nye?

  It's just on your mind.

• 9:39Chuck Nice?

  (laughing)

• 9:40Bill Nye?

  I mean, not that there's anything wrong with that, whatever you're into, consenting adult, it's all good, harvestable plants, fine. No, so, uh, this has led to monoculture, but, uh, I, I go along with the idea, I mean, I, no, I claim that the success of, uh, genetic modification with respect to glyphosate herbicide does not necessarily mean you plant a monoculture and stress out bee colonies.

• 10:06Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 10:07Bill Nye?

  You could, that's not the cause and effect.

• 10:10Chuck Nice?

  That's so funny when you say that, I just hear Jerry Seinfeld going, "What are we gonna do? There's so many flowers all at once." (laughing) That was a terrible Jerry Seinfeld impersonation.

• 10:20Bill Nye?

  Yeah, and it was also, my understanding, that was you doing Jerry Seinfeld bee, a bee.

• 10:25Chuck Nice?

  A bee, yes.

• 10:26Bill Nye?

  A female bee.

• 10:27Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly.

• 10:28Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so, by, by the way, all the bees you see are girls, they're all females, you very seldom see a man bee.

• 10:33Chuck Nice?

  Because they kick the drones out as soon as they're finished mating with the queen, and it's just like, they go straight Beyonce, "To the left, to the left, all your stuff in a box, to the left, get out."

• 10:44Bill Nye?

  (laughing) I'll keep that in mind, should I become a drone. A bee, a drone bee.

• 10:50Chuck Nice?

  A drone bee.

• 10:51Bill Nye?

  But nominally, the way you started that, it sounds like good work if you can get it.

• 10:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it does, in a way.

• 10:58Bill Nye?

  So, there's no difference in allergic reaction and, um, and health concerns with respect to genetically modified foods with, uh, compared with organic or non-genetically modified foods.

• 11:10Chuck Nice?

  And we know that because the research has been done on mice.

• 11:12Bill Nye?

  Oh, well, on mice and people.

• 11:14Chuck Nice?

  On people.

• 11:14Bill Nye?

  It's been going on for almost, uh, 25 years.

• 11:18Chuck Nice?

  Fantastic.

• 11:18Bill Nye?

  And nobody gets sick from it. In fact, people are, in general, they get more food from a given hectare or acre of land. And the strange thing that was pointed out to me, and I did some research. Well over 90% of the world's farmers are small farmers.

• 11:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:34Bill Nye?

  And they all use Roundup-ready crops, or genetically modified crops, because they're just so much more productive.

• 11:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 11:41Bill Nye?

  So as I say about glyphosate, and I'm not an expert on Roundup, this is my thing, but I've done some research. Uh, there's two things that happened when Roundup was introduced. First of all, everybody was afraid of it, because it does kill every green plant.

• 11:54Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's something to be afraid of.

• 11:56Bill Nye?

  Then the second thing is, everybody started using it, because it works so well.

• 12:01Chuck Nice?

  But see, that's even more disturbing, though.

• 12:04Bill Nye?

  Well, there you have it. It's these, this is the, uh, the troubling bifurcated effect.

• 12:09Chuck Nice?

  Hey, this is scary as hell. I know what, we should all use it.

• 12:12Bill Nye?

  Well, that's what happened.

• 12:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 12:14Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 12:14Chuck Nice?

  All right. Hey Cory, that was a great question, and, um, uh, and a great answer by Mr. Bill Nye. All right.

• 12:22Bill Nye?

  I love you, Chuck.

• 12:24Chuck Nice?

  Let's move on to Gabe Sabo.

• 12:26Bill Nye?

  Yes, Gabe.

• 12:27Chuck Nice?

  Gabe's coming. Yes, Gabe is coming to us from Facebook and says, "Need a straight answer here, Bill. What equals a GMO? And what equals selective breeding? Where is the line drawn?"

• 12:39Bill Nye?

  Well, that's a great question, Gabe. It really is a great question, so...

• 12:43Chuck Nice?

  Look at you, Gabe, you show off.

• 12:44Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah, it's really good, because...

• 12:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay, go ahead.

• 12:47Bill Nye?

  This is, this is the question, when I wrote this chapter, uh, in the first version of my book about evolution, I had a pretty clear idea in my mind about the distinction, and the distinction was whether or not humans were influencing it. That was my, uh, idea, influencing the genome. So if you breed within the species, you shape, like George Washington, used to take tweezers and a magnifying glass and shake the pollen from one wheat... Uh, plant onto the eggs, the ova of another.

• 13:17Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:17Bill Nye?

  To get a hybrid, a new type of wheat. That was within the species, intraspecies.

• 13:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:22Bill Nye?

  And I thought to myself, taking a gene from another species, let's say the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium, and putting it in corn, BT corn.

• 13:32Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 13:33Bill Nye?

  Uh, that would be.

• 13:34Chuck Nice?

  Did you say BET corn?

• 13:36Bill Nye?

  Uh, no, no, that's, that's different.

• 13:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 13:39Bill Nye?

  That's a television.

• 13:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's.

• 13:41Bill Nye?

  Outlet.

• 13:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 13:42Bill Nye?

  And I don't know what their relationship. I mean, they have bad jokes, but I don't know if that's the same as BET corn.

• 13:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 13:49Bill Nye?

  Corny.

• 13:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:51Bill Nye?

  Television.

• 13:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:52Bill Nye?

  Uh, but we all have bad jokes. That would be an example there, right there. So, uh, anyway, I thought, when I wrote the chapter, I thought, well, that's not a, that's a clear distinction, rather, that one's genetically modified in an extraordinary way.

• 14:05Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:06Bill Nye?

  By bringing a gene from another genome and another species and putting it into species of interest, uh, compared with shaking the pollen in the ova, which would be intra within the species.

• 14:15Chuck Nice?

  Within the species.

• 14:16Bill Nye?

  However.

• 14:17Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 14:18Bill Nye?

  It has been pointed out to me that, that hap- that these species, uh, insert their genes into each other all the time in nature. And when I started the research.

• 14:27Chuck Nice?

  That, that.

• 14:27Bill Nye?

  I know, I know. I want you to think that way. I want you to think.

• 14:31Chuck Nice?

  That makes for lively speculation, that's for sure.

• 14:34Bill Nye?

  Anyway, so if you ever see a gall on the side of a tree, the big bulge.

• 14:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, the bulge.

• 14:39Bill Nye?

  That's where a virus has not only infected the tree, but gotten its genes into the tree's cells.

• 14:46Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 14:47Bill Nye?

  But then, as I was finishing research and turning in the final, uh, the word final, the last manuscript, version of the manuscript, this fabulous research came out about sweet potatoes. And so it turns out the sweet potatoes that you and I know and love, presuming that you know them and love them.

• 15:04Chuck Nice?

  I do indeed.

• 15:04Bill Nye?

  Uh.

• 15:05Chuck Nice?

  It's very difficult for a, a black person not to know and love sweet potatoes. It's just part of our culture.

• 15:12Bill Nye?

  Okay, uh, well, I, I'm, I'm substantially bent to, according to a genetic re- uh, genetic assay that was done on me.

• 15:21Chuck Nice?

  Uh-huh.

• 15:22Bill Nye?

  Uh, and, but I, and I love sweet potatoes.

• 15:24Chuck Nice?

  There you go, buddy.

• 15:25Bill Nye?

  Coincidence.

• 15:25Chuck Nice?

  What'd I tell you?

• 15:26Bill Nye?

  Coincidence.

• 15:26Chuck Nice?

  What'd I say, my fellow brother?

• 15:28Bill Nye?

  So, uh, that aside, these, these genes from outside the sweet potatoes clearly got in there, naturally.

• 15:37Chuck Nice?

  Naturally.

• 15:38Bill Nye?

  So, that humans accelerated, you can argue quite strongly, and for me convincingly, that this is what humans do. Uh, we hybridize plants, either the old fashioned way, George Washington's tweezers and magnifying glasses.

• 15:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:54Bill Nye?

  Glass, or the modern way with biotechnology. So what has happened at companies like Pioneer Seeds, which is part of DuPont, uh, Conagra, and especially Monsanto, they have made the transition from being, uh, chemical manufacturers, industrial chemical manufacturers, fertilizer and pesticides, into a biotech firms.

• 16:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:20Bill Nye?

  And so you go there, everybody, all the scientists are geneticists, that's who they hire, they're not chemists so much anymore. It's, uh, it is interesting, and I'm right there with you, everybody. Monsanto used to make Agent Orange.

• 16:32Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 16:33Bill Nye?

  So did Dow Chemical.

• 16:34Chuck Nice?

  And I heard that that's awesome stuff.

• 16:36Bill Nye?

  Yeah, it's awesome for certain applications. Uh, but, uh, in general, it's, it is part of a dark past. I don't think these companies are really, I mean, they were hired by the government to make this stuff, and they did, and they don't do it anymore. I don't know. What do you do?

• 16:52Chuck Nice?

  This is true. Okay.

• 16:54Bill Nye?

  I used to work at Boeing on commercial airplanes, because I wanted to work on commercial stuff instead of military stuff. But Boeing makes a lot of weapons.

• 17:01Chuck Nice?

  Yes, they do.

• 17:02Bill Nye?

  So, okay.

• 17:03Chuck Nice?

  People don't know this, but they are the, uh, the real life Tony Stark of the world. Boeing is the, and McDonnell Douglas, that's the real life.

• 17:12Bill Nye?

  They got absorbed.

• 17:13Chuck Nice?

  Oh, they're the same.

• 17:15Bill Nye?

  That's right. It's all of a piece now, and that would, that absorption was permitted to happen to preserve the fabulous military industrial complex.

• 17:22Chuck Nice?

  So, look at that.

• 17:23Bill Nye?

  But with that said.

• 17:24Chuck Nice?

  They're almost like the intraspecies of George Washington wheat experiment.

• 17:28Bill Nye?

  So, we're talking about genetically modified organisms in food here on StarTalk Radio, and we'll be back with Bill Nye, that's me, and Chuck Nice over there, right after this.

• 17:44Bill Nye?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your guest host, Bill Nye, sitting in for my beloved Neil deGrasse Tyson. And I'm here with my good friend Chuck Nice, who is a thoughtful, insightful commentator on the human condition and science. And he has in his hand the secret sheaf of cosmic queries. These will be questions that came from you out there in the electronic ether space.

• 18:11Chuck Nice?

  That is correct. And you have not seen them. And so, which I'm highly impressed by the fact that both you and Neil are able to answer these questions off the top of your head. It's fantastic. Not that we're trying to stump.

• 18:22Bill Nye?

  No, no, we would know. None of our listeners would do that. They're all happy.

• 18:29Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, especially when they like on the Twitterverse. No, there's no negativity there at all. Ever. Right. This comes from Patreon. And this is, and Patreon, you know, you can go ahead and support the show.

• 18:41Bill Nye?

  You can be a patron.

• 18:43Chuck Nice?

  You can make a patron.

• 18:44Bill Nye?

  Of StarTalk Radio Podcast.

• 18:47Chuck Nice?

  And we will definitely.

• 18:47Bill Nye?

  Science Comedy.

• 18:49Chuck Nice?

  We will definitely read your questions on Cosmic Queries when you are a patron through Patreon. All right, here we go. My name is Keilia Silvis. Sorry, it's so hard. It really wasn't. I'm currently working as a scientist in the Optogenics Core at the University of Minnesota. First of all, let me just say that I was really impressed with the fact that you changed your views on GMOs. You truly deserve your title, Science Guy. My actual question, I believe that GMOs are a powerful tool that could help humans fight climate change and better utilize our diminishing resources. What would be your dream GMO to take on this challenge? Mine would be carbon scrub, carbon scrub, carbon scrubbing trees to help clean the atmosphere.

• 19:30Bill Nye?

  Yes, a tree is a column of carbon. A forest is a collection of column of carbon, columns of carbon. And wouldn't it be nice to have fast growing trees that would get big, be made of, what a tree is made of Chuck?

• 19:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:44Bill Nye?

  Is air.

• 19:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 19:46Bill Nye?

  It's quite troubling at first, but all that cellulose.

• 19:51Bill Nye?

  The lignin, all that comes from carbon, which the tree gets right out of the air. I mean, there's a little bit that you get if you're a tree, plant, from the soil.

• 19:59Chuck Nice?

  But most of it, you're sucking it right out of the air.

• 20:02Bill Nye?

  So, uh, this would be a wonderful thing. You know, people have proposed making artificial trees.

• 20:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:07Bill Nye?

  To take carbon out of the air, but how about real ones? And the thing I would say to her, to answer her question with a little more completeness is you don't want to have just one species. You want to have a diversity of columns of carbon of trees. And so to have fast growing trees that would take carbon out of there would be a wonderful thing. Furthermore, it'd be great if they were useful in some other enchanting ways.

• 20:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, like they made apples or something.

• 20:32Bill Nye?

  Yes, or they could shade your house.

• 20:34Chuck Nice?

  Right, or paint your house, even better.

• 20:39Bill Nye?

  Yeah. Well, what if they produce some, but seriously, what if they produce some varnish or pitch that was, you know, of great use?

• 20:46Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:46Bill Nye?

  Uh, cause trees, you guys, I know we don't ever want to cut them down. It's very trouble. But they do die of old age. They have a, just like so many other plants.

• 20:54Chuck Nice?

  So why not cut them down in the prime of their life?

• 20:56Bill Nye?

  Uh.

• 20:57Chuck Nice?

  You're gonna die anyway, old tree.

• 20:59Bill Nye?

  Wow, uh, not exactly, but yeah, let's, let's move on to the next question, Chuck. Cheerless, wow.

• 21:07Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's move into our next question, which comes from, uh, James Cultus. And, uh, which is so funny because his Twitter handle is at James Burdell.

• 21:20Bill Nye?

  I, I don't know, man, but that way he was incognito.

• 21:23Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 21:24Bill Nye?

  You just made him more incognito.

• 21:26Chuck Nice?

  I did. So here we go. Uh, he says, at Bill Nye. Can we modify organisms to produce different or increased vitamins and minerals?

• 21:36Bill Nye?

  Well, that's what we've done. I mean, this, uh, historically, I'm talking about how long have humans been farming, Chuck? 10,000 years?

• 21:41Chuck Nice?

  Uh, recorded time, yeah.

• 21:43Bill Nye?

  Something like that. So, talking about farming, not just hunting and scavenging and gathering. Yeah, so.

• 21:49Chuck Nice?

  Literally taking a plot of land.

• 21:51Bill Nye?

  You would not recognize an ancient corn plant, the decente. The decente, you wouldn't even know it looks like a, what does it look like? A miniature holiday light bulb. Anyway, now there are these, you know, corn cobs are long. Uh, you wouldn't recognize soybean, you wouldn't recognize cotton, you wouldn't recognize any of that. Humans have cultivated it over years, centuries, millennia, not millennia, tenths of millennia, hundreds of millennia, to get these things to be more nutritious, more useful, uh, and, uh, and more productive, and produce more productive farming. And as we like to say, Chuck.

• 22:26Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 22:27Bill Nye?

  There is really nothing natural about farming.

• 22:30Chuck Nice?

  Uh, right, because you're, you're manipulating the process the moment you till the soil and plant a seed.

• 22:36Bill Nye?

  You start cutting down trees to plant stuff, you're modifying the ecosystem big time.

• 22:40Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 22:40Bill Nye?

  So, uh, I appreciate this desire to be in tune with nature and have everything work out, but, and I appreciate Thomas Jefferson's dream of an agrarian society where we all hung out on farms and thought deep thoughts.

• 22:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:54Bill Nye?

  Uh, there on the porch with your, I presume, some dandelion wine or whatever he was into. Uh, and now, uh, everybody lives in cities, that's where we do these amazing productive things, and a few of us embrace the idea of farming and farming is not, we modify the land in an extraordinary way. So, the same thing has been going on since the beginning of farming, 10,000 years. Humans have been trying to improve that which we farm.

• 23:23Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha. All right. Hey, James, that was a great question. All right. And, uh, so we've been in the process of making superfoods forever.

• 23:30Bill Nye?

  Yeah, and the word "superfood" is now used to mean some extraordinary nutritious thing.

• 23:35Chuck Nice?

  Right, like kale. Everybody says kale is a superfood.

• 23:38Bill Nye?

  I like kale.

• 23:39Chuck Nice?

  I do too.

• 23:40Bill Nye?

  I grow kale at my place out in, uh, Los Angeles. It's a little bit, it's kind of a weed. Once you get it going.

• 23:46Chuck Nice?

  Once you get it going, you can't.

• 23:47Bill Nye?

  I got a kale tree.

• 23:48Chuck Nice?

  You might be, you might be sorry that you're growing kale.

• 23:49Bill Nye?

  No, no, no, no.

• 23:50Chuck Nice?

  No?

• 23:51Bill Nye?

  I love it. I love it. I put it in the salad directly.

• 23:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:55Bill Nye?

  After rinsing.

• 23:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yes.

• 23:56Bill Nye?

  Or I bake it in the oven and make these kale chips.

• 23:58Chuck Nice?

  You make your own kale chips?

• 23:59Bill Nye?

  Kale chips are a big fun.

• 24:00Chuck Nice?

  My god, Bill, you're like, you're like the science Martha Stewart.

• 24:03Bill Nye?

  Yeah, a little bit.

• 24:04Chuck Nice?

  That's amazing. I'm making my own kale chips. That's so cool. All right, let's move on to, um, this is, uh, Gerard Ducharme. And Gerard says, Bill, in your recent book, Undeniable, you give caution to the use of GMOs and food stuff. Now you're advocating their use. Could you explain or describe the science specifically that changed your perspective? So you talked about what you, what happened, but is there a specific scientific moment that you can look to that says, hey, man, this is cool now?

• 24:39Bill Nye?

  Uh, yes.

• 24:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 24:42Bill Nye?

  Should I talk about it? Yeah, so here's what happened. They, the man. I got Chuck nice to laugh. Chuck me out.

• 24:50Chuck Nice?

  You totally got me on that one.

• 24:52Bill Nye?

  Chuck me out.

• 24:53Chuck Nice?

  Yes. All right, go ahead. Please explain.

• 24:55Bill Nye?

  The man, who, many of whom are women.

• 24:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 24:58Bill Nye?

  Uh, at, at the beheaded Monsanto, uh, half, uh, it's almost half of the scientists are women.

• 25:06Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 25:06Bill Nye?

  Yeah, it's very cool. Genetics, geneticists. These are the people being graduated now.

• 25:11Chuck Nice?

  No wonder we hate them.

• 25:13Bill Nye?

  Chuck.

• 25:14Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry.

• 25:15Bill Nye?

  Chuck.

• 25:15Chuck Nice?

  Listen, I couldn't resist that, Bill.

• 25:17Bill Nye?

  Wow.

• 25:17Chuck Nice?

  I don't really feel that way.

• 25:18Bill Nye?

  No, no.

• 25:19Chuck Nice?

  You know, it was the natural progression for a joke.

• 25:21Bill Nye?

  He's been happily married or, or married, how long you been married? Seventeen?

• 25:24Chuck Nice?

  It'll be seventeen in August.

• 25:25Bill Nye?

  And some of those years, I didn't write this joke. Some of those years were happy, yeah. So, okay, uh.

• 25:32Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so go ahead.

• 25:33Bill Nye?

  So here's what happened.

• 25:33Chuck Nice?

  Half the, uh, scientists are women.

• 25:35Bill Nye?

  Uh, no, that aside. Uh, what they're able to do now, they, we, it, is assay the gene, this is to say, sequence the gene of an individual plant, let's say, at extraordinary speed. So twenty years ago, it would take you, oh, a month to get the gene sequence of, let's say, soybeans, a soybean plant. Now, they can do that, uh, they can get, I mean, I'm gonna try to do these numbers. They can get a hundred thousand in ten minutes. So that's about, that's approximately right. The, the, the final number is 10 million. They can do it 10 million times faster than they could 20 years ago.

• 26:19Chuck Nice?

  10 million times faster?

• 26:20Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so they can assay 10 million genes in a morning. And so then they are able to select which ones are definitely not promising. And eliminate those, which ones are clearly susceptible to certain diseases, but just by genetic analysis.

• 26:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 26:38Bill Nye?

  Then they grow-

• 26:39Chuck Nice?

  So they're doing their own natural selection in the course of a morning?

• 26:42Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's amazing. They didn't used to be able to do that. And the reason they're able to do it is they've developed these enzymes that stick to guanine, cytenine, adenine, cytosine, adenine, and thymine, the CAGTs of your genetic code.

• 26:57Chuck Nice?

  Right, that's the letters in the line.

• 26:58Bill Nye?

  Yes, and then there's four frequencies of laser light that uh, figure out how many of this one and how many of that one and what order they are in a zip of a blink schmink.

• 27:10Chuck Nice?

  Holy moly.

• 27:11Bill Nye?

  And it's just, the machine is very cool, like, the machines are very cool looking. And this is what, this is what changed my mind, is be able to do it 10 million times faster than they used to be able to do it.

• 27:22Chuck Nice?

  And, and more importantly, be able to eliminate the ones that are no good.

• 27:26Bill Nye?

  That's right, or clearly not suitable for, for farming and susceptible to diseases and so on. I don't want to judge, man. No, we're farmers and we want them to come out the way we want them. And so along this, along this line, then they plant the promising ones

• 27:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:41Bill Nye?

  in super controlled sterile greenhouses. And the ones that have suitable qualities, they propagate. And so it takes about five years of that. And then the FDA, or the Department of Agriculture, I mean, does another three years typically, sometimes five years. And then they agree that it's worth planting.

• 27:59Chuck Nice?

  That it's worth planting. Okay, now, two things, uh, as an addendum to, uh, Mr. Ducharme's question. Mr. Ducharme, uh, this is an excellent question that you asked, by the way. One, people would say you're playing God. That's the first thing.

• 28:13Bill Nye?

  Well, we're farmers. We've been doing that. I mean, look, if you're, uh, what's the guy's, uh, you know, the tumbling tumble? It's the, uh, wait, there's a, he's a cowhand, yippee ta yo, kay, you know, it's, uh, it's your misfortune and none of my own. He's talking to the cows.

• 28:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:29Bill Nye?

  In other words, I'm going to drive you, the cow, to Montana. You're going to eat grass all summer, then we're going to kill you and eat you. It's your misfortune, not mine. Okay. You, that's why you're vegetarian out there. I understand.

• 28:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:40Bill Nye?

  But my point being in that song, this business of farming and raising livestock for human consumption is what we've been doing for a long time.

• 28:49Chuck Nice?

  For a long time, and that's just the way it is.

• 28:51Bill Nye?

  And very few of us wander, there's our few tribes that wander through forests, subsistence living. And they know just where to go in the forest to subside, to subsist rather. But, uh, that's, you would not have seven billion people running around the world if everybody were trying that.

• 29:08Chuck Nice?

  And plus, that's a very dicey proposition.

• 29:10Bill Nye?

  Well, I mean, there's a lot, there's far fewer of those tribes left than, where, where are we? New York. Yeah.

• 29:16Chuck Nice?

  Right. Exactly.

• 29:17Bill Nye?

  We couldn't have eight million people living on 13, whatever it's, 28 square miles, or whatever that English unit is.

• 29:24Chuck Nice?

  We almost do, based on the subway, based on the subway ride I took over here.

• 29:28Bill Nye?

  You wouldn't do that with farm, i- if you were trying to farm on the same island.

• 29:32Chuck Nice?

  Boom. Okay. Excellent, excellent question. And, uh, thank you, Mr. Ducharme, and thank you, Bill, because the, the, the description of that machine is, uh, fantastic.

• 29:41Bill Nye?

  It's cool. So they chip, they chip the corn kernel, that's the verb.

• 29:46Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 29:47Bill Nye?

  And so the kernel will still grow, but by taking this little piece of it out, they're able to assay the gene completely and still have the thing grow. They can compare what they expected to happen with what happens.

• 30:00Chuck Nice?

  That's amazing.

• 30:00Bill Nye?

  Oh, it's just.

• 30:01Chuck Nice?

  I mean, that is just phenomenally amazing.

• 30:02Bill Nye?

  They've been messing with it, and it's a consequence of information technology. This is to say, it's a consequence of our ability to run computers at such extraordinary speeds. Let alone the chemistry of the thing with these, these, getting these, these enzymes to sort the, uh, cytosine, thymine, adenine, and guanine. It's amazing. It's amazing.

• 30:19Chuck Nice?

  Wow. All right. So now, uh, Michael Foley, coming to us from Google Plus, wants to know this. Is GMO too broad a category for any single statement? Should organisms grown from individually edited sequences of DNA be treated the same as vat grown meat, as golden rice, as grain, hybrid grains, as heirloom tomatoes? Also, we vat grow mammoth. Now, I don't know what the hell that means.

• 30:51Bill Nye?

  There was, there's guys who want to take mammoth genes and.

• 30:54Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah, who want to make a woolly mammoth again.

• 30:56Bill Nye?

  Jurassic Park.

• 30:56Chuck Nice?

  Because there's an Indian elephant right now that actually is only one small bit away from.

• 31:02Bill Nye?

  Chuck, who are you? You're all over this. Yeah, yeah.

• 31:06Chuck Nice?

  Anyway, I don't know how I remember all this crap. Uh, so this is what he wants to know. Is it too broad of a category for any single statement? I mean, is it all the same? Or is there a difference? Or, you know, he's saying.

• 31:17Bill Nye?

  Well, I've said many times, you got to go case by case, but that's what we do. That's what the people who are growing genetically modified crops, especially, that's their deal.

• 31:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 31:27Bill Nye?

  They absolutely do go case by case. But it comes to use of words. It's a really hard thing to control. Words are organic. That is to say, they, they're bottom up. Somebody coins a term that people like.

• 31:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:39Bill Nye?

  It sticks.

• 31:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:41Bill Nye?

  Is this a tomato or an heirloom tomato?

• 31:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:44Bill Nye?

  Uh, is it yellow or red? I mean, so these words are hard to control. That when you start trying to tell people, no, this is not genetically modified. This is intraspecies. You're just going to get into a fistfight about semantics.

• 31:59Chuck Nice?

  Right. So really, it's not about semantics. It's about going case by case and seeing what works and what doesn't.

• 32:04Bill Nye?

  But in the big picture, in the broad stroke.

• 32:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:07Bill Nye?

  I claim genetically modified crops are a good thing. That's that they're, they're to the benefit of humankind.

• 32:14Chuck Nice?

  So that's your baseline right there.

• 32:16Bill Nye?

  Right there. And what happened was when the genetically modified cotton especially was introduced and then the corn and soybeans, it was in the middle of the 1990s. It was kind of the same afternoon that the bovine spongiform encephalitis, the BSE, the mad cow disease.

• 32:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:36Bill Nye?

  Uh, emerged, especially in Britain.

• 32:39Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 32:39Bill Nye?

  And the two things got conflated. BSE got mixed with GMO and people thought they were all the same. They thought it was industrial farming, the man controlling things and making everybody sick. But they really, those two really are separate, separate issues.

• 32:55Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 32:55Bill Nye?

  Spongeiform encephalitis, mad cow disease, where your brain turns to a sponge.

• 33:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:00Bill Nye?

  Is separate from corn that the corn boar insect can't eat.

• 33:07Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha. Gotcha.

• 33:08Bill Nye?

  But you can't.

• 33:09Chuck Nice?

  But you can't. So, you know.

• 33:11Bill Nye?

  We're not susceptible to that protein. Passes right through us, not to give you too much information.

• 33:15Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay. Good. Now I, now I realize what happened to me last night.

• 33:18Bill Nye?

  No, no, you wouldn't even know. Sorry, you can't even notice. It goes right on through.

• 33:22Chuck Nice?

  Right on through, huh? Gotcha. All right. Well, that makes sense. Okay. So there you have it, Michael. There's your answer, man.

• 33:28Bill Nye?

  But what about the mammoth? How do you feel about the mammoth? Do you want to make one?

• 33:32Chuck Nice?

  I absolutely do.

• 33:33Bill Nye?

  I think it'd be the coolest.

• 33:33Chuck Nice?

  I think it'd be the greatest thing in the world. To actually see a woolly mammoth walking around.

• 33:37Bill Nye?

  Oh, man, come on.

• 33:38Chuck Nice?

  It would be the only animal I would actually, um, advocate being in a zoo.

• 33:44Bill Nye?

  Uh.

• 33:45Chuck Nice?

  Cause I don't believe in zoos, but.

• 33:46Bill Nye?

  But, but with that said, where else would that technology lead? Like, if you could successfully do that, could you bring back the great auk? Could you bring back, uh, other useful species that would, the frogs? The frogs that are being so stressed by that fungus. Could we bring all those animals back in a way that we would have more diversity in the ecosystem based on this trial with the mammoth? These are great questions.

• 34:12Chuck Nice?

  I have no problem with anything that you just said, as long as we're not bringing back predators.

• 34:18Bill Nye?

  Oh, you're talking about the movie where all the animals have had enough. You know, Chuck, it's really hard to get eaten by a lion. I mean, you have to, especially, just everybody if you're listening. We're in New York City. We're not going to get attacked by a lion. The same with shark biting. It happens, but not that much.

• 34:35Chuck Nice?

  All right. So my fears are unfounded.

• 34:37Bill Nye?

  Well, not, I mean, just keep them in perspective. Uh, struck by lightning is way more likely.

• 34:43Chuck Nice?

  Uh, Pete, uh, from Twitter wants to know, here in California, I'm very concerned about the drought. Apparently Pete's the only one, so.

• 34:53Bill Nye?

  You should be Pete, because this could be the future. It could be from now on, California's gonna have that little water.

• 35:00Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God.

• 35:01Bill Nye?

  And what are we gonna do about it?

• 35:02Chuck Nice?

  That is scary, so.

• 35:03Bill Nye?

  Well, I'll tell you.

• 35:04Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 35:05Bill Nye?

  When StarTalk returns with Chuck Nice and Bill Nye, right after this.

• 35:15Bill Nye?

  Welcome back, welcome back to StarTalk Radio. Bill Nye here, your guest host for my dear friend Neil deGrasse Tyson. And I'm here with my colleague and insightful science commentator Chuck Nice.

• 35:28Chuck Nice?

  First time that's ever been said.

• 35:29Bill Nye?

  And Chuck Nice will read your cosmic queries. These are questions that have come to us from the cosmos.

• 35:36Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 35:36Bill Nye?

  That's you all out there.

• 35:39Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. So before we went to the break, we had a cliffhanger that was given to us by Pete from Twitter. And Pete wanted to know, he says, "Here in California, I'm very concerned about the drought. Can GMOs make for less H2O consumption?"

• 35:56Bill Nye?

  Yeah, that's a, that's a big claim that I think is well substantiated by the genetically modified companies, genetically modifying companies, people that, companies that put genes from different species into farms, and species that we want to farm, crops especially.

• 36:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 36:12Bill Nye?

  And this seems, they claim, very reasonable that they can make crops that are drought tolerant.

• 36:17Chuck Nice?

  Drought tolerant.

• 36:18Bill Nye?

  They can hold their water. They don't let it evaporate through their leaves or stems the way nat, or way extant, native plants might. And they strongly believe that they can reduce the amount of water needed. Furthermore, it's very reasonable that we can put water capturing gels in the soil, in farm soil.

• 36:39Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 36:39Bill Nye?

  And these would be, you know, the, you put the foam rubber thing in the glass and it becomes a dinosaur.

• 36:44Chuck Nice?

  And it grows and...

• 36:45Bill Nye?

  It'd be like that, in the farm soil. And you can say, "Well, that's not natural." Well, farming's not natural. So using less water, doing more with less, Chuck. That's the key to our future.

• 36:56Chuck Nice?

  More with less.

• 36:57Bill Nye?

  Not to just do less. I grew up with Earth Day. And the hippies were all telling us, you know, "Don't drive, drive less, breathe less."

• 37:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:08Bill Nye?

  Use less clean water. In fact, if you can't, don't eat if you can manage that. Don't even eat.

• 37:13Chuck Nice?

  They certainly didn't bathe.

• 37:15Bill Nye?

  Uh, so wear dirty clothes, because that takes water to clean them. Yeah, so, uh, that turned out, not the eating part especially, turned out not to be popular. So now, the key is not to just do less. It's to do more with less. And that is the claim. Of the genetically modified seed companies that they are doing more with less and I I agree with them.

• 37:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:37Bill Nye?

  I'm not in the business, but I agree with them.

• 37:39Chuck Nice?

  So there you go, Pete. Uh, the the drought, uh, what what do they call it now? Drought tolerant.

• 37:46Bill Nye?

  Drought tolerant.

• 37:46Chuck Nice?

  Drought tolerant plants.

• 37:48Bill Nye?

  Especially, let's say it rains for a little while, like a cactus. It holds on to its water.

• 37:53Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 37:53Bill Nye?

  And then it lives through a drought.

• 37:54Chuck Nice?

  Bastard that it is.

• 37:55Bill Nye?

  I'm not saying we're turning cotton plants into cacti. I'm saying, uh, an example that you're all from, everybody's familiar with.

• 38:02Chuck Nice?

  Okay. All right. So let's go to Iana, who is at Goddess Memoirs on Twitter. Hmm. Sounds good.

• 38:09Bill Nye?

  Yeah, it does.

• 38:10Chuck Nice?

  It does. Goddess Memoirs. All right. Would soil on Mars force us to genetically modify foods to be able to grow there? Because of less sun, in in other words, leafless. Can we genetify?

• 38:22Bill Nye?

  Genetify.

• 38:23Chuck Nice?

  Genetify.

• 38:24Bill Nye?

  I feel genetified.

• 38:27Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 38:27Bill Nye?

  That we did.

• 38:28Chuck Nice?

  Can we genetify plants to the point where they don't even need photosynthesis, but they can still be eaten?

• 38:34Bill Nye?

  Well, we eat mushrooms.

• 38:36Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 38:37Bill Nye?

  Do, do, do, do.

• 38:38Chuck Nice?

  Look at you, man. Look at that.

• 38:40Bill Nye?

  Touche. So all that aside.

• 38:43Chuck Nice?

  I do eat mushrooms. As a matter of fact, I'm still having flashbacks from the last batch.

• 38:46Bill Nye?

  Oh, I can't hear you. So everybody, I know it sounds so romantic to go live on Mars to some of us. Among which I am not whom, uh, usage intended for comedic effect. Everybody, Mars is cold, crazy cold. And the sun is, uh, less than a quarter as bright. So it's dim. I mean, I know we take pictures there, but these are with cameras that are where the iris or the the system is set up to capture a lot of light before the picture is, uh, sent home here to Earth.

• 39:25Chuck Nice?

  So not a place to live if you have seasonal affective disorder.

• 39:28Bill Nye?

  Yes. And you can't breathe.

• 39:31Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 39:32Bill Nye?

  So, everybody, it sounds so romantic. If you really want to colonize Mars, go to Antarctica for a couple of years.

• 39:41Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 39:42Bill Nye?

  And don't, no, not on the shore where the birds are, and the orcas grabbing the penguins out of midair. No, no.

• 39:49Chuck Nice?

  None of this happy feet stuff.

• 39:50Bill Nye?

  Right, yes.

• 39:51Chuck Nice?

  None of that.

• 39:52Bill Nye?

  You go where it hasn't snowed in over a century, and see what, the dry valleys, and see what you think. Try it for a couple of years. And by the way, don't even breathe. Take all the scuba tanks you need, just to simulate it. So, I want to go to Mars. I want to look for signs of life on Mars. I'm the first guy to do that. But I don't want to go colonize it and then genetically modified crops, so they modify crops, so they can survive in a greenhouse on Mars. That would be charming.

• 40:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:22Bill Nye?

  But it's not a big goal of mine.

• 40:23Chuck Nice?

  So, what would be more, I know we're still in GMOs, but I just got to ask, what would be more desirable? Colonizing Mars, or colonizing the moon?

• 40:33Bill Nye?

  Oh, God. Wow. The moon would be, here's the thing. In Antarctica, we have a science base. We have a McMurdo Station, and people go there and they do scientific research. They make amazing discoveries. Earth used to be so warm, ancient dinosaurs wandered around on that continent, back in the day.

• 40:50Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 40:51Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 40:51Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 40:52Bill Nye?

  But we make those discoveries, that's good. But you don't go there to live. You go there to work.

• 40:57Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 40:57Bill Nye?

  And hang out for a while.

• 40:59Chuck Nice?

  It's like LA. I got you.

• 41:02Bill Nye?

  Uh, from your perspective.

• 41:03Chuck Nice?

  From my perspective, yeah.

• 41:05Bill Nye?

  He's, as Jews, pooh-poohs, is disrespectful of our beloved Los Angeles.

• 41:11Chuck Nice?

  Love Los Angeles, just couldn't live there.

• 41:13Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so, anyway, the same is true of Mars. Now, genetically modifying plants to make it on Mars, a worthy undertaking, but not something I want to spend a lot of invest, a lot of, uh, intellect and treasure on.

• 41:24Chuck Nice?

  All right. Okay. Let us move on to another question.

• 41:27Bill Nye?

  Another cosmic query.

• 41:29Chuck Nice?

  Another cosmic query, because we're almost up against the lightning round, which is fast approaching. Okay, so now, uh, this is from Inquiring Minds. Bill, you talk a lot about GMOs, you changed your mind, is Monsanto paying you?

• 41:45Bill Nye?

  No. In fact, we went out to dinner the other day, my editor Cory.

• 41:49Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I thought you meant you and Monsanto.

• 41:51Bill Nye?

  And Rob Fraley.

• 41:53Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, that may count, Bill.

• 41:54Bill Nye?

  No, no, so there were four of us at dinner, two Monsantoans. As, and Rob Fraley shakes your hand, he says, hi, I'm Monsatton.

• 42:01Chuck Nice?

  Ah, that's funny.

• 42:02Bill Nye?

  He hears all that stuff. And, uh, no, we, each team bought its own dinner.

• 42:08Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 42:09Bill Nye?

  Okay. So, however, when I visited Monsanto.

• 42:12Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 42:12Bill Nye?

  They offered me a sandwich and a cup of coffee, and I enjoyed both. But I flew myself there, I mean, in an airplane.

• 42:20Chuck Nice?

  Wait a minute, here's the real, here's the real question. Did that sandwich have genetically modified vegetables on it?

• 42:25Bill Nye?

  Sure, you can't avoid them, absolutely.

• 42:27Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 42:28Bill Nye?

  Uh, so, uh, by the way, I went to an anti-Monsanto rally here in New York City.

• 42:33Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 42:34Bill Nye?

  And I was really impressed by how thoughtless and, uh, short-sighted the people there were.

• 42:40Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 42:41Bill Nye?

  It was really something. I, I never, I just didn't realize. They got to the point, now Chuck, I don't know your political leanings, but it got to the point where they wanted you to believe that the President of the United States

• 42:54Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:54Bill Nye?

  is controlled by Monsanto.

• 42:56Chuck Nice?

  Well, isn't he? Come on.

• 42:58Bill Nye?

  Yeah, and so that he's actually...

• 42:59Chuck Nice?

  Please, he's a Kenyan Muslim.

• 43:00Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 43:01Chuck Nice?

  Socialist.

• 43:01Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 43:02Chuck Nice?

  He might as well be controlled by the United States Monsanto people, too.

• 43:05Bill Nye?

  And, uh, as people point out, Monsanto is in the top 500, Fortune 500 companies. But it's not in the top five. It's way down, like, at 200 or so.

• 43:16Chuck Nice?

  So they're not even that big.

• 43:17Bill Nye?

  And I mean, they're big, but

• 43:18Chuck Nice?

  Not that big.

• 43:19Bill Nye?

  They're not, they're not as big as Apple, or, or...

• 43:21Chuck Nice?

  Or Beyonce.

• 43:22Bill Nye?

  Or, or yes, or Beyonce.

• 43:25Chuck Nice?

  All right, there you go, people. There you have it.

• 43:26Bill Nye?

  Now, we're coming right up, Chuck, and what I, I don't, I'm reluctant to say my favorite part of the show. But let me say a part of the show I very much look forward to, and that is Chuck.

• 43:37Bill Nye?

  The lightning round.

• 43:37Chuck Nice?

  Yes. There it is, buddy.

• 43:40Bill Nye?

  So hit me the lightning round question, Chuck. Go for it.

• 43:42Chuck Nice?

  You know how it goes. Here it goes.

• 43:46Chuck Nice?

  Ben Miller from Facebook wants to know, isn't cross breeding genetic modification?

• 43:50Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 43:51Chuck Nice?

  Simple enough.

• 43:52Bill Nye?

  In a different style.

• 43:53Chuck Nice?

  In a different style. Okay. Steven Chef Flo from Twitter says, where can GMOs potentially take agriculture in 5, 10, and 50 years? Man, that's not really a lightning round question.

• 44:06Bill Nye?

  No, but the answer is it's we're in a arms race. Us versus the pigweed. Us versus the thing after the pigweed. And so, for example, what these genetic modified biotech companies want to do, seed companies, is keep up in the arms race. Make, stack the genes, as they say, so it's resistant to glyphosate, it's resistant to dicamba, this other style of herbicide, and it's resistant to the certain insects that attack that certain plant.

• 44:37Chuck Nice?

  Bingo. There you have it. Sampson Moses, talk about a biblical name there. Sampson Moses from Google Plus wants to know, why is it that everyone is afraid of new science? Is it just ignorance?

• 44:51Bill Nye?

  Uh, seems to be. Plus, keep in mind that scientists in the last century have promised a stuff that, and I say they, we, it, and the example I give you is the nuclear industry. Built these astonishing bombs. I mean, just amazing looking, world-ending bombs. And then, okay, maybe we can get some industrial power out of this, but it's pretty complicated and we have a lot of waste and trust us, and that's led to mistrust of science. With that said, with a scientifically literate populace, we can make good decisions about this as voters and taxpayers. Lightning round, let's go.

• 45:25Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Okay. Peter Gutierrez Jr. wants, or that would be Junior.

• 45:30Bill Nye?

  Junior.

• 45:31Chuck Nice?

  Junior. Uh, from Facebook wants to know, can GMOs occur naturally?

• 45:38Bill Nye?

  Well, this is the thing. Yes, this is the big paper that came out recently was the sweet potatoes, where these genes from other organisms got in the sweet potatoes that you and I Know and love and thank our stars and cosmic rays that they did because we enjoy them that much, uh, those potatoes that much more.

• 45:55Chuck Nice?

  Nicely done. This is new kid, Danny, new kid Danny from Facebook says, uh, number one, congratulations on light sail one.

• 46:05Bill Nye?

  Thank you. Uh, our test flight was a success. We got in orbit. We, we passed all the tests to qualify for the rocket. We got in orbit. We deployed the sails. We took the pictures. Yes.

• 46:17Chuck Nice?

  All right. So here's his question. What will be the significance of GMOs in our future manned missions in the solar system?

• 46:25Bill Nye?

  Well, they're already up there. When you go to eat astronaut food, you're eating, uh, food that's produced from genetic modification, from, uh, interspecies modification. And it's a good thing because the food is that much more delicious and nutritious.

• 46:39Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Thomas Riley from Facebook wrote this and he wants to know, hey, Bill, what is your position on labeling of GMOs in the supermarket?

• 46:47Bill Nye?

  Uh, I think it's fine. In fact, I, I've said to those guys at, uh, at Pioneer and Dow and, um, Conagra and Monsanto, Monsanto, I've told them, why don't you say, put proudly GMO on there? Let's see what happens.

• 47:03Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Makes sense. Makes sense. Makes sense. Okay.

• 47:08Bill Nye?

  Let the market sort it out. If people don't want it, then the, the, it'll, we'll see what happens.

• 47:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay. This is Matt Eli from Facebook. Clearly Matt does not agree with you. Hey, Bill, since change your views on GMOs, have you spent time with other respected scientists, uh, in the not so GMO crowd to give them a chance at a rebuttal and present new evidence to you? So in other words, he doesn't agree. Do you spend time with any scientists that don't agree with your change?

• 47:37Bill Nye?

  Yes, yes. I'm a member of the advisory board of the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Union of Concerned Scientists traditionally is very anti-GMO. So I argue with those people. Now and then. Argue a connected series of statements to establish a proposition, and I think GMOs are fine.

• 47:52Chuck Nice?

  There you go, and their meetings take place at the Hall of Justice.

• 47:57Bill Nye?

  Okay. Whoa.

• 47:59Bill Nye?

  Thirty seconds.

• 48:00Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. Okay, this is from Charles Lee Thorpe, who wants to know, perhaps some of the fear around GMO crops is that we are opening up Pandora's Box. Do you anticipate a future where we become GMOs ourselves? That is the fear.

• 48:12Bill Nye?

  Uh, you, you are GMO. Your parents chose each other. Thank you very much, everybody, for the lightning round. We've had a wonderful time. Thanks for listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm, uh, here with Chuck Nice.

• 48:24Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 48:24Bill Nye?

  And I am your guest host, Bill Nye, and we look very forward much to our next StarTalk podcast, and I hope you will, dare I say it, turn it up loud!