Simon Goes Nuclear with nuclear energy influencer Isabelle Boemeke

“Nuclear” might make you wince—but the real problem isn’t the energy, it’s the branding. Safe, low-carbon, and scalable, nuclear could be a climate hero—if only we told the story right. Isabelle Boemeke is on a mission to change how we think about nuclear energy. A Brazilian model turned the world’s first nuclear influencer, she created her alter ego, Isodope, to show a new generation the benefits of clean energy—while cutting through the fear shaped by war movies and disaster shows. In her new book, Rad Future, she makes the science, history, and promise of nuclear power accessible to everyone. In this episode, we talk about why nuclear scares us, how we need to rethink the climate conversation, and why embracing nuclear energy could be one of our smartest moves yet. Isabelle also shares her personal journey—from modeling to advocacy, building Isodope, and helping shift the conversation around clean energy for a better, brighter future. This is… A Bit of Optimism. Learn more about Isabelle’s work here. https://isodope.com/ And order the new book Rad Future here. https://isodope.com/rad-future/

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

• 0:00Simon Sinek?

  This episode is brought to you by True Classic. I wear their T-shirts and have long before they became a sponsor. And it's really cool to see how their company is growing.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Before AI, it was cryptocurrency mining.

• 0:12Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  You know, we were using, the data centers were using the same amount of electricity as a country in Europe.

• 0:19Simon Sinek?

  So hot tip here, top tip for all you Gen Z and Gen Alphas. If you truly, truly, truly care about global warming and climate change and saving the environment, take fewer selfies.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  I'm sure that's gonna land really well.

• 0:34Simon Sinek?

  I don't think that's gonna go very well.

• 0:37Simon Sinek?

  How good at branding are you? Think you could brand another energy bar to stand out in a crowded market? Or maybe you've got a new energy drink, supplement, or athleisure brand you want us to pay attention to? How about this one? Nuclear power. With events like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, it's a heavy task for anyone wanting to change how we think about nuclear energy. Well, Isabel Boemeke is up for the challenge. And here's the amazing thing. It's working. I was always open-minded to nuclear electricity, not a zealot, but open. Thanks to Isabel, I now understand the history of nuclear and how it got such a bad rap. And I have to say, I'm converted.

• 1:20Simon Sinek?

  Isabel, along with her social media alter ego Isodope, has found a very modern way to help us understand the truths of nuclear electricity, how it may be the best solution we've got to tackle climate change, and offer us a reliable source of electricity to power our AI future. She's a Brazilian model and fashion influencer who understands branding, social media, and her generation. And with her new book, Rad Future: The Untold Story of Nuclear Electricity and How It Will Save the World, Isabel might just save the world. This is a bit of optimism.

• 2:05Simon Sinek?

  I'm so curious how a young girl who grows up in Brazil, who unlike other little girls who dream of being, you know, I don't know, a princess, that you became obsessed with nuclear electricity. Where in a young girl's, you know, upbringing, you know, do you discover nuclear plants?

• 2:38Speaker 01

  I remember being about six years old and just...

• 2:40Simon Sinek?

  Are you serious?

• 2:41Speaker 01

  No, of course not.

• 2:45Simon Sinek?

  My Barbie nuclear power plant?

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Actually, what I'm about to tell you is probably boring because I did grow up with Gisele Bundchen as the Brazilian icon.

• 2:55Simon Sinek?

  Right. Supermodel.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  She was, yes. I mean, I think she was categorized as an uber model, which is goes beyond the supermodel.

• 3:04Simon Sinek?

  It's higher than supermodel? It's like a supercar and a hypercar.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 3:08Simon Sinek?

  What makes, what makes a supermodel an uber model? And what's a...

• 3:14Speaker 01

  I believe the earnings.

• 3:15Simon Sinek?

  Oh.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  I believe at the peak of her career, Gisele was making like $42 million a year. And the second top model was making something like 16. It was just the gap between her and every other supermodel was gigantic.

• 3:31Simon Sinek?

  Okay, so you...

• 3:33Speaker 01

  So I grew up with Gisele being, you know, this, she was also from the same state as I am, which is the southernmost state in Brazil. It's very specific because it doesn't, doesn't feel like Brazil. If I tell you I'm from Brazil, you think of Rio, you think of the beach, the Amazon forest. And this place where I'm from and where Gisele's from is like Texas. Just like a bunch of farmland and cattle and just like people grow corn and just agriculture in general.

• 4:02Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  A lot of German descendants, the good Germans. I always make sure I clarify that.

• 4:07Simon Sinek?

  That's true, because there were a lot of Nazis who fled to Brazil.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:11Simon Sinek?

  That's true.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  My last name is German, but I made my dad track down the whole genealogy to make sure. I'm like, okay, we're good. It was late 1800s, no problems here. But what's so weird about the place where I was born and lived for a long time is... There are people there who still don't speak Portuguese. They speak, they full on speak German. Not even German, a dead German dialect.

• 4:33Simon Sinek?

  No kidding?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Yes, it's really crazy. So during, I think it was Wednesdays. All of these German families would go into the city.

• 4:41Simon Sinek?

  Did you speak German as a kid?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:43Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  But these people would go into the town, they would, they would live in little farms around the town and they would go into the town to get paid. And all of a sudden, the town would be taken over by people speaking a dead German dialect. When Brazil played Germany in the World Cup, they were cheering for Germany.

• 5:01Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  They're like full on Brazilians. Anyway. So I did grow up looking up to Giselle and it wasn't really a dream of mine, but I kind of knew somehow that I was gonna end up becoming a model.

• 5:13Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Don't ask me how. And that did happen. One day I was leaving my high school, I was about sixteen years old. And this guy runs towards me and he's holding a microphone in his hand and there's a guy with a camera behind him and he goes, are you a model? Puts the microphone on my face. Of course I wasn't a model, I was a high school student. So I said, no. He said, well, there is a contest here happening tomorrow. You have to, you have to go. It's for the biggest modeling agency in Brazil. And I ended up going and ended up placing third in the country.

• 5:46Simon Sinek?

  Wow.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  And that started my, my modeling journey. So I moved to the United States and, and began working as a fashion model. And there is a whole entire chapter of my life that happened there. Until one day I randomly came across a tweet by a planetary scientist called Carolyn Porco, where she was talking about molten salt thorium reactors.

• 6:07Simon Sinek?

  Silly, molten salt.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Thorium.

• 6:10Simon Sinek?

  Molten salt thorium reactors.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:13Simon Sinek?

  Okay, don't know what that is.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  I didn't know what that was either, but isn't that a cool name?

• 6:18Simon Sinek?

  Good name.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Great name.

• 6:19Simon Sinek?

  Good name for Star Trek.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  And I was just curious about it. I was like, wait, what is a molten salt thorium reactor to your point? But also it was interesting that this female scientist was speaking positively about nuclear. So I did what most people would do in that place. I went on Google and I typed molten salt oreum reactor. And everything that came up was just way beyond my understanding. So I couldn't understand the technology.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  But it was, it did something to my brain where every time I talked to somebody who was working in energy or concerned about climate change, I would say, have you heard of molten salt oreum reactors? And they would say, no. But let me tell you about nuclear.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  And then they would kind of whisper behind closed doors or like, they would just be very weird about it and say, you know, nuclear is way safer than people think. We needed to solve climate change, but people absolutely hate it. And that in itself was also so odd and interesting because why would it be the technology that's necessary, that is safe, is hated, right?

• 7:31Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  So again, just for many, many years.

• 7:34Simon Sinek?

  We, we, yeah, I mean, people, people are afraid of nuclear power. They're afraid of nu-, when they hear the word nuclear.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:40Simon Sinek?

  Like unless you're absolutely schooled in it, which most of us are not. When you hear it, you're just like, ah, you know, and then you remember like Three Mile Island or Fukushima. And then you're like, I don't know. I don't know. It seems dangerous. Right. You're right. It has a bad brand.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  It just has.

• 7:57Simon Sinek?

  And so to the point where these scientists are like, come here. It's like they're, they're pushing drugs. Like, come here. Nuclear. It's all about nuclear.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Right. Well, they do say it's all about nuclear, but it was, it was almost like they were terrified to even admit that it was a solution to climate change.

• 8:10Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  And I don't know if they were terrified or, or if they were just hopeless at that point, you know? Yeah, we, it's a great technology, but it's never going to happen because people hate it so much. So that also stuck with me. Like, why? What an interesting thing. I, Brazil turns out to be a very anti-nuclear country. I didn't know that growing up. I don't have any memories of hearing even people talk about nuclear. So I didn't have that perception myself. But again, just the curiosity. This was back in like 2015, 2016. And then 2019 happens. And I see the fires in Australia, in the Amazon, and in California as well.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  And I was just depressed about the state of the world. Like, you grew up with climate change, right? You, do you remember worrying about climate change as?

• 9:07Simon Sinek?

  No.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  No. I grew up learning about it in school and so on. And I was worried, but it also, it always felt like a future problem. You know, oh, this thing is happening. We're gonna figure it out. The adults in the room has, have gotten it. And I remember when I saw those fires, realizing for the first time that, no, we have not made enough progress in solving this problem. And as a matter of fact, it's getting worse. I just felt completely hopeless about the state of the world. And as I started looking into solutions for climate change, I came across nuclear again. And I was like, oh, this is interesting.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Let me now dedicate the time to really understand the technology. And I think everybody who has misconceptions about nuclear or who doesn't know anything about it, when they start reading, they come out the other side feeling like they found Jesus or something.

• 10:08Simon Sinek?

  When did isotope show up?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  So I had-

• 10:13Simon Sinek?

  You, you became sort of like a self-appointed nuclear evangelist.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Influencer.

• 10:17Simon Sinek?

  Huh?

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Influencer, yes.

• 10:19Simon Sinek?

  Sorry, influencer. There used to be evangelists, now they're influencers. A nuclear influencer. And basically, sort of Max Headroom style, making this sort of, you created a whole persona, talking about the benefits and trying to help improve the brand of nuclear, right?

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I came out the other side thinking, oh, my God, okay. Everything people think they know about nuclear is completely wrong. When you talk about the accidents, people think millions of people died from nuclear accidents. That's absolutely not true. And then every single thing that people have this misconception about is completely wrong. And so I was faced with that and I was like, okay, maybe this is the role I can play in helping solve the climate crisis, as absurd as it sounds, is I can translate all of this information that's readily available into something that people want to consume. So I'm looking at that and I'm thinking, okay, I have this like very odd skill set, which- Came from modeling, which is like branding and and making sure I can sell something, right?

• 11:25Simon Sinek?

  Influencing.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Influencing.

• 11:26Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  I have somewhat of a social media platform, not huge, but something. Yes. So how can I now get all of this information that's in my brain into a medium that young people can relate to and are interested in in, you know, engaging with?

• 11:43Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  So I went on a a ten day fast. It's a true story. You didn't know about this.

• 11:51Simon Sinek?

  Like a hunger fast?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:53Simon Sinek?

  Hunger protest?

• 11:55Speaker 01

  N- not a hunger protest.

• 11:57Simon Sinek?

  Why? Why did you do that?

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Well, this is

• 12:01Simon Sinek?

  I didn't know this.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  This is a time when intermittent fasting was the the rage, you know, in health.

• 12:07Simon Sinek?

  So so if taking one morning off is healthy, you figured taking ten days off is really healthy?

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't figure. There's a lot of research.

• 12:15Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  There's a lot of research.

• 12:17Simon Sinek?

  Is this one of the is this one of these like cleanses where you like you do a week of, you know, cayenne pepper and honey and hot water?

• 12:25Speaker 01

  No, because it's a full on fast.

• 12:28Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  And also that has all sorts of connotations. And I I know that you are like me in that you're allergic to woo.

• 12:36Simon Sinek?

  I'm pretty, yeah. By the way, completely unrelated, but I just learned this. I just learned this from survival training. I didn't take it, but but I learned this. That we can survive three weeks without food.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:50Simon Sinek?

  But we can only survive three days without water.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  I didn't know I didn't know there was three weeks without food, but I did know it was

• 12:57Simon Sinek?

  Three weeks without food, but only three days without water.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  That's that is unbelievable.

• 13:01Simon Sinek?

  Isn't that insane?

• 13:02Speaker 01

  By the way, some people probably survive way longer without food, depending on how many how many extra

• 13:07Simon Sinek?

  The point is water is the thing that kills you.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:09Simon Sinek?

  So like when people go hiking, more more hikers die during the day than at night. Day hikers die, not night hikers. Because day hikers don't. No, no, no, no, because they don't pack enough supplies. Because night, you're like, oh, we'll have tons of supplies. So they so what they what day hikers do is they put tons of energy bars in their bag. So they got plenty of food, but they don't have plenty of water. They only bring a little bit of water. They're like, oh, we're just going for the day. So it's it's lack of water that kills people, not lack of food. Anyway, I just thought I'd throw that out there, a little factoid.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Exactly. I wasn't gonna die.

• 13:38Simon Sinek?

  So you weren't gonna die because you were drinking plenty of water. You were drinking plenty of water for ten days.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm drinking plenty of water. They give you broth, they give you like broth for electrolytes and all of that, because even water alone, you know, can be.

• 13:49Simon Sinek?

  So you had some something, some.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  So some something.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  I was doing it for totally just for health reasons. But if you look into the history of fasting, you know that it's been used historically for spiritual reasons.

• 14:03Simon Sinek?

  And protesting.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  And protesting, which wasn't the case.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  It wasn't the case at the time.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  So I come out the other side of it after the ten days. I'm in this cabin in the middle of nowhere, brushing my teeth and I look into the mirror. I'm like, hmm, what if I become a nuclear energy influencer?

• 14:26Simon Sinek?

  Go on.

• 14:28Simon Sinek?

  I love, I love this story.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Which is like the type of idea that you obviously would have after ten days without.

• 14:33Simon Sinek?

  Ten days, yeah, ten days without food. So you're in a complete delirium. And that's when you decide I'm gonna invent this idea, invent a character and become a nuclear electricity.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Influencer, exactly. So, so I look, but, but by the way, I have this idea and I'm doing what you're doing now, which is just like.

• 14:52Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  That's absurd.

• 14:53Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  And then the next thing I did was tell my partner that. And he said, that's a great idea, which he also had fasted for ten days, so I think.

• 15:03Simon Sinek?

  So you're both.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  We're both delirious.

• 15:05Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  And I just started pitching it to people. You were one of the people I pitched it to.

• 15:11Simon Sinek?

  What did I say?

• 15:12Speaker 01

  You said, that's, you laughed. And then you said, that's a really cool idea.

• 15:18Simon Sinek?

  I mean, I wouldn't have lied to you. If you had told me, if I thought it was a crappy idea, I would have been like, hmm.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  No, yes.

• 15:23Simon Sinek?

  Think that.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  You're, you're extremely honest.

• 15:26Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  So you, I think you would have said.

• 15:29Simon Sinek?

  I would have told you.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  You'd have told me, but I don't know, I would get on a flight and somebody sitting next to me would be like, what do you do for a living? And I'd say, I'm a nuclear electricity influencer. And the responses were, oh, it was never like, oh, cool. It was always something like, what? But what about Chernobyl? And they would have all these questions.

• 15:48Simon Sinek?

  So what is the answer to Chernobyl?

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:50Simon Sinek?

  What about Chernobyl? Let's let's now go through this. First of all, I want to go back up a little sec.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:54Simon Sinek?

  Okay. Because when you were, when you started writing your book, you came over, we, we worked together a little bit on it. And I learned something from your book that blew my mind.

• 16:09Simon Sinek?

  And I find it absolutely fascinating, which is the actual reason why nuclear power has such a bad brand.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Hmm. I know what you, yeah.

• 16:20Simon Sinek?

  It's so interesting.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:22Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:24Simon Sinek?

  Why does nuclear power have such a bad brand?

• 16:28Speaker 01

  There are several reasons, but the number one reason, and that's the original sin, what I call.

• 16:34Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Is that nuclear fission was discovered in nineteen thirty eight in Germany.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Full stop.

• 16:44Simon Sinek?

  Stop, exactly.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  There is nowhere, nowhere, I mean, I guess there are other moments in history, but this was one of the moments in history that that discovery just was the worst possible time.

• 16:57Simon Sinek?

  Worst place.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Worst place.

• 16:59Simon Sinek?

  Worst time.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Worst time.

• 17:00Simon Sinek?

  I just need to, I just need to underscore this. So of course, human beings are working on better sources of energy, more reliable sources of energy, since we figured out electricity and energy. Right? And they figure out nuclear fusion.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Fusion.

• 17:15Simon Sinek?

  Sorry, fusion. They figure out nuclear fission, which is nuclear power, in nineteen thirty eight in Germany.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:21Simon Sinek?

  So of course, this incredibly powerful thing that they discovered, because it's nineteen thirty eight, a year before we go to war, before Germany goes to war, the immediate reaction is, hey, we can make a weapon out of this thing.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Well, the immediate reaction was, hey, this discovery is really exciting. Hitler is probably trying to make a bomb with this. So that, that, that is literally what kickstarted the Manhattan Project. Is I think, and a physicist wrote a letter to President, to President Roosevelt at the time and said, hey.

• 17:56Simon Sinek?

  They figured out, the Germans had figured out fission.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Have figured out fission, we better get. On a path to build a bomb because they're probably trying to do it.

• 18:04Simon Sinek?

  So the reason the word nuclear has such a bad reputation, such a bad brand is not because it's dangerous, it because its very first iteration was the Manhattan Project nuclear bombs and it was built in in the time of war. Had it been discovered in nineteen forty six, we wouldn't be having this conversation and the whole world would probably be nuclear powered.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 18:27Simon Sinek?

  I think that's so.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  And it's also fascinating because for since the beginning of the nineteen hundreds, people were scientists were already imagining.

• 18:36Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  You know, atomic energy, what it would be able to to provide for the world, all the technologies it would it would create. And it was it was it was almost like a technology that existed in in a superposition, if you if you might say, of incredible potential both for destruction and creation. But at the time, it was just like potential.

• 18:58Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  And then the first use of the technology is weapons. So it kind of becomes firmly cemented.

• 19:04Simon Sinek?

  And we could have Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and that's and and the famous mushroom cloud.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  The mushroom cloud.

• 19:09Simon Sinek?

  That we see from the Manhattan Project, or anybody who saw the movie Oppenheimer, like, that is the human race's introduction to nuclear power.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:17Simon Sinek?

  Or nuclear energy in this case.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Nuclear.

• 19:19Simon Sinek?

  Nuclear, the nuclear, the word.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 19:21Simon Sinek?

  Experience, nuclear.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  This is the human introduction to nuclear.

• 19:24Simon Sinek?

  Right. And then we spend the rest of the Cold War in a nuclear competition, fearing more nuclear war after we've seen from the nuclear nuclear bomb. So anybody who says, hey, what if we took that exact same thing and made safe electricity out of it? It's the brand is done.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, and the and the US government in the in the early fifty s really tried to push for nuclear electricity.

• 19:49Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  So President Eisenhower gave this famous speech at the UN Assembly General called Atoms for Peace, where he talked about how, obviously, we had developed these weapons, but it was time to use atomic energy for peaceful purposes only. So that's electricity, that's agriculture, medicine, obviously, like radiation therapy is also nuclear.

• 20:10Simon Sinek?

  That's another word that's got a bad brand, atomic.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:12Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, even though it's related just related to atoms, but again, it's the bomb.

• 20:16Simon Sinek?

  Atom bomb, right.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  So, so the Adam Serpice speech kind of kickstarts, you know, this whole campaign to promote the peaceful uses of nuclear.

• 20:26Simon Sinek?

  So Eisenhower was the OG nuclear electricity influencer?

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Yes. I'd say a lot more influential probably, but yeah. And what's so fascinating as well is even Walt Disney got involved in this pro-nuclear campaign at the time. So for those who have seen, he made a whole movie called Our Friend, the Atom. And in it, he explains how nuclear fission works. Himself talks about what we just talked about, you know, we started with the bomb, but there are all these amazing uses of this technology. And he was so obsessed with nuclear and he thought nuclear was the future. And to this day, Disney World in Florida has a license to build and operate a nuclear power plant.

• 21:08Simon Sinek?

  No kidding?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Yes, he wanted to power Disneyland with nuclear. He never was able to fulfill that, but you know, he applied for a license and so on.

• 21:17Simon Sinek?

  And the funny thing is, is like, so, so then we have, okay, so we have, we have, nuclear power exists here and there. We've had a few significant accidents, the three that I mentioned, Three Mile Island, which is when, when did that one happen?

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Seventy nine, nineteen seventy nine.

• 21:33Simon Sinek?

  So that one happened in seventy nine. We had Chernobyl in eighty.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Eighty seven.

• 21:39Simon Sinek?

  Eighty seven, and then we had Fukushima in.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Twenty eleven.

• 21:42Simon Sinek?

  Twenty eleven, okay, let's go through them, right? And those are just the, those are the big famous ones. Yeah, I mean, okay, so.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Which, by the way, just like to pause there.

• 21:52Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Imagine any other technology that has existed for seventy years.

• 21:58Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  And all you can point to is three accidents.

• 22:02Simon Sinek?

  Well, yes, I hear you. Yes, statistically, that's true. But I think, like many things, they're big, they're significant, and they get a lot of news coverage, so.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Like airplane crashes.

• 22:14Simon Sinek?

  Like airplane crashes, so they sometimes feel bigger than they are. So what happened at Three Mile Island?

• 22:20Speaker 01

  So Three Mile Island was the first big incident. It wasn't not, it wasn't even an accident. It was an incident. It was the biggest nuclear incident in the United States. People say the biggest and the most catastrophic. And when you say that, you probably imagine, oh, my God, people died, lots of people got sick. But in reality, the plant's safety systems, they kicked in and were doing exactly what they were supposed to do. There were some human errors, so people came in and and turned off the the cooling system that had kicked in. And it caused a partial meltdown of the reactor.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  They released some radioactive gases into the atmosphere just to relieve the pressure in the reactor. But the release of radiation was not significant at all. So all of the science, all of the studies that have been done have concluded that the release of radiation was so small that it didn't cause a single, let alone a single death, a single cancer case. So nobody died, nobody got sick from Three Mile Island.

• 23:29Simon Sinek?

  I didn't know that.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  But you know why it was the most catastrophic accident in American history?

• 23:34Simon Sinek?

  In for nuclear for you go on, yeah?

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Because we turned away from nuclear electricity because of that accident that didn't kill anybody.

• 23:42Simon Sinek?

  Freaked everybody out.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  It freaked everybody out.

• 23:44Simon Sinek?

  We're moving in a nuclear, so the brand was getting better, we're moving in a nuclear direction. And then Three Mile Island freaked everybody out.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Well, the brand was getting better in the fifties and and sixties.

• 23:53Simon Sinek?

  Thanks to folks like Walt Disney and Eisenhower.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Then the environmental movement in the early seventies start starts getting, you know, they start turning against nuclear. Mostly because of the connection to weapons and to military, mostly because they saw nuclear as the big man.

• 24:10Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  It was kind of like nuclear is so correlated with military and the big and the government.

• 24:16Simon Sinek?

  Nothing to do with environmentalism. It had to do more with like left wing politics, anti military kind of thing.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  It was.

• 24:21Simon Sinek?

  Because again, the brand was so closely associated with military usage.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 24:25Simon Sinek?

  That they just lumped all the word, anything nuclear in with that. Okay.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, you got that exactly right. And for the first fifteen years after the discovery of nuclear fission, only military could operate nuclear reactors. So it was really connected to military. So yes, this sentiment, to your point, wasn't as much about the environment. It was really more just. Left wing, we hate the government. It was like, this was doing, obviously, like, anti Vietnam war, anti establishments.

• 24:53Simon Sinek?

  So it's anti Vietnam, anti military. It's just, it's just, unfortunately, nuclear, again, bad timing nuclear. You're always trying to go to the party at the wrong time, the wrong place. And so you screwed it up in nineteen thirty eight, Germany, and now you, you have your first accident in the, in the seventies.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  By the way.

• 25:10Simon Sinek?

  It's post, it's post Vietnam, though.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Yes, but, but.

• 25:13Simon Sinek?

  It's post Vietnam, but I understand. The sentiment is.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  The sentiment, the vibe, right? Like that, that whole generational vibe. Not only was it during this time, the accident happened twelve days after the premiere of The China Syndrome, which is a thriller about a nuclear reactor meltdown.

• 25:31Simon Sinek?

  Oh, no.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Featuring Jane Fonda.

• 25:34Simon Sinek?

  Oh, God.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Can you believe, by the way?

• 25:36Simon Sinek?

  It's like having a major shark attack ten days after the movie Jaws comes out.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:41Simon Sinek?

  Like, no one's getting in the, as if that movie didn't freak everybody out enough.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:45Simon Sinek?

  Got it.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 25:46Simon Sinek?

  So now let's flash forward to Chernobyl.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  So then you flash forward to Chernobyl. So obvi- by the way, there it's like, okay, nuclear is too dangerous, even though nobody died, right, from this accident.

• 25:56Simon Sinek?

  Politics, bad timing with movies, Hollywood.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:00Simon Sinek?

  Close association with military. Keep going.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  So then we move to Chernobyl, which was a completely different accident. This is a completely different reactor design. This is a design that didn't have what we call a containment dome, which is a big concrete and steel house that stays over the reactor. So in case there is an accident, radiation doesn't go into the environment.

• 26:21Simon Sinek?

  It's a safety precaution.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  It's a safe, yes. Um, it had a bunch of design flaws. And it was also obviously operating in the Soviet Union, which wasn't known for being transparent.

• 26:33Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  And, and the reactor.

• 26:35Simon Sinek?

  Understatement.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, understatement. And the reactor operators were.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Weren't really informed of the design flaws. I'm gonna skip over like a thousand pages of complicated nuclear physics here. But basically, the reactor exploded. And with explosion, the core also caught on fire. And so it's just releasing radioactivity into the air.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Now, after the accident happened, for days, they didn't warn the population. So people are drinking contaminated milk, they are eating contaminated food. The way they found out about Chernobyl actually was a nuclear power plant in Sweden picked up higher radioactivity levels in the air. And they're like, that's weird. So they inspected their plant and realized their plant was totally fine. So this is how cool like nuclear science is. They were able to trace the type of radioactivity that they were detecting and look at the wind patterns. And they like traced it all back to the Soviet Union.

• 27:34Simon Sinek?

  Wow.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  So that's how they figured out that Chernobyl had happened.

• 27:36Simon Sinek?

  And then then Gorbachev had no choice but to come clean.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 27:40Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  So this was really, you know.

• 27:44Simon Sinek?

  I saw the HBO TV show, the mini series.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 27:48Simon Sinek?

  Chilling.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Chilling.

• 27:49Simon Sinek?

  Chilling. Did you know this? Here's a quick aside, I don't know if you watched the the the commentary afterwards. But they said that the filmmakers said that they compressed timeframes and they made composites out of some people. But otherwise, it's very, very accurate. And they said that when they had competing accounts, they always chose the less dramatic ones so as not to be accused of over dramatizing what happened. Just think about that for a second. You saw the show, it's insane. And they pissed the less dramatic if they had competing accounts. Anyway.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Yes, and.

• 28:21Simon Sinek?

  I mean, it's and and it goes quite deeply into the human, the the design flaws. And because it's communist, you know, Soviet Union, their desire to lie, hide, fake.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 28:34Simon Sinek?

  Not tell anybody, not admit anything. Even when it's happening, they're like, no, no, everything's fine here, nothing to see here.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:39Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  And I just told you that Trumma Island was nothing.

• 28:44Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Okay, this was, this was a hiccup, this was not an accident.

• 28:47Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Chernobyl was a tragedy.

• 28:49Simon Sinek?

  For sure.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  However, when you ask people, how many people you think died from Chernobyl? They'll tell you millions, hundreds of thousands. The confirmed number of fatalities is less than one hundred, period.

• 29:05Simon Sinek?

  But what about cancers over the course of years?

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Exactly, so that's.

• 29:08Simon Sinek?

  I mean, that's, those are significant. Probably not in the millions, but.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  However, just to give you an example.

• 29:14Simon Sinek?

  But that, but that's not the nuclear plant per se, right? There is the design flaw because they didn't have the dome, which would have contained a lot of it. But also, that was politics, which is they could have evacuated people.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Right, they could have evacuated people quickly if they admitted to the, obviously to the accident. So a lot of that was just mismanagement in general. But again, you know, like, I'm not gonna excuse that and say, people still got cancer, right?

• 29:35Simon Sinek?

  And it's still, and it's still a meltdown, it still happened. Still an explosion of the nuclear power plant.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Totally, it's still an explosion. People got, people died from radiation poisoning, right? However, in the Chernobyl series, one of the most like amazing moments is when these three guys go into the basements. You remember this, they go into the basement of the reactor to open a valve and let some water on a suicide mission.

• 29:58Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Except, two of them were still alive last year.

• 30:03Simon Sinek?

  No kidding.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  And one of them died in like two thousand and five from heart problems. Totally unrelated to the accident. The other thing people don't know is, there were four reactors at Chernobyl. One of them obviously exploded, the two other ones ended up closing earlier. But one of them kept operating and making electricity until the year two thousand. And this is the one that was right next to the one that exploded.

• 30:27Simon Sinek?

  Wow.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  So again, yes, it was an accident, yes, it was a tragedy. It's so far removed from what people think it was. Now you asked about the cancers. It's very hard, obviously, to trace down, because how are you going to?

• 30:43Simon Sinek?

  Right, you can't, yeah, not everybody who gets cancer came from.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Not everybody who gets cancer, but obviously, with radiation exposure, you would imagine that the people who were closer to the accident were exposed to more radiation, right? So you can kind of calculate. Several studies have looked into it. The most credible ones think it would be around four thousand deaths from cancers related to Chernobyl.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  There were about sixteen thousand cases of thyroid cancer. Thankfully thyroid cancer has a survival rate of like ninety nine percent.

• 31:19Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  So these people got surgery and so on. Again.

• 31:23Simon Sinek?

  These are bad, bad things, but you're putting.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  A tragedy.

• 31:26Simon Sinek?

  But.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  But then you compare to the normal operation of fossil fuels, right? Which is what we use right now for our energy.

• 31:34Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Even when everything goes right in a fossil fuel plant.

• 31:38Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  In the world, we have four million people dying every single year from air pollution alone. Caused by, by burning fossil fuels.

• 31:48Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  And so we would basically need to have two hundred Chernobyls. At, I'm being very conservative here. We would need to have two hundred Chernobyls a year for nuclear to be as dangerous as fossil fuels.

• 32:03Simon Sinek?

  Because nuclear is completely clean. The only byproduct, I believe, is steam.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so when, when you drive by a nuclear power plant.

• 32:11Simon Sinek?

  Aren't you impressed that I even knew that?

• 32:12Speaker 01

  I am very impressed that you knew that. Yes. How did you know that?

• 32:16Simon Sinek?

  I don't remember.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Did you read my book?

• 32:18Simon Sinek?

  I, I don't remember that from your book. It's one of the useless facts I've picked up along. My mother calls me a walking encyclopedia of useless information.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  I can relate to some of that. But it's always fun conversations.

• 32:30Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, exactly. Good for Trivial Pursuit.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 32:32Simon Sinek?

  Yep.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, when you're driving by a nuclear power plant, some, some of them have the big cooling towers, not all of them.

• 32:38Simon Sinek?

  Looks like a smokestack, but it's just steam.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Looks like a smokestack, but it's just steam. Yes, it's literally, because that's how nuclear power plants make electricity.

• 32:45Simon Sinek?

  It's running a turbine.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. Literally.

• 32:49Simon Sinek?

  The heat, the heat from the nuclear reactor heats, heats water, which drives steam, which moves a turbine, which makes electricity.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  There you go. Yes, good. Yeah, so, so basically.

• 33:00Simon Sinek?

  Very old fashioned.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  That's what I was gonna say. Basically, all energy production is kind of like that.

• 33:04Simon Sinek?

  It's pretty old fashioned, yeah.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, like.

• 33:06Simon Sinek?

  So that's the funny thing about energy production, right? It's whatever's making the thing that makes the turbine go, where it heats the water to make the turbine go. That's what we're debating. Well, how to, how to heat, how to heat the water.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  So like with hydropower dams, you have the water just from.

• 33:18Simon Sinek?

  The water just moves.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Moves the the turbines.

• 33:21Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  And then with wind, obviously, is the wind. The turbines. Solar is very, is the only one that's very different. But then with coal, with natural gas, with methane gas and nuclear, it's that you heat up water. You create steam that spins a turbine and creates electricity. But with coal and methane gas, you're literally burning it, right? You're lighting it on fire and that's the heat that's heating the water. And with nuclear, you're tapping into the energy inside the nucleus of atoms. And how cool is that?

• 33:53Simon Sinek?

  Very, it's very science fiction. Okay, so we're going on our little tour of nuclear accidents.

• 34:00Simon Sinek?

  Fuji, uh, uh, Fukushima.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Right, so Fukushima. So Chernobyl, just to like, you know, make a conclude on Chernobyl. Yes, it was bad, not as bad as people think.

• 34:11Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  What's also really crazy about Chernobyl is now, obviously, it's like a huge evacuation zone. And because people left, a lot of wildlife came back. So it it became this really weird accidental exercise on rewilding.

• 34:25Simon Sinek?

  It's the only place in the world with three-headed deer. Kidding, joke, joke.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  It's a joke.

• 34:29Simon Sinek?

  It's a joke.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  But really, you just have all these species that

• 34:34Speaker 01

  have just gone back to their, you know, what was their original.

• 34:37Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Habitat. Okay, so Chernobyl happens. This is it, right? This is like nuclear is done, it's too dangerous.

• 34:45Simon Sinek?

  Did freak out the world.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  It did freak out the world with reason.

• 34:48Simon Sinek?

  I was a kid when that happened, yeah.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Germany, for example, I mean.

• 34:51Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, Germany used to be big into nuclear, now they're not.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  They were never huge in terms of the population, but after Chernobyl, they were, they were very much done. And then obviously Fukushima happens.

• 35:03Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  So Fukushima was in Japan. It was a huge earthquake. It was like a nine point zero earthquake.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  And the earthquake itself is not what caused the accident. Some people think, oh, you you can't put a reactor in an earthquake prone region. And that's not true because they're designed to withstand earthquakes.

• 35:23Simon Sinek?

  Just like the buildings in Japan are designed to withstand earthquakes.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Some of them, yeah, but but yes, exactly. What happened was then the earthquake caused a massive tsunami. And it would also not have been a problem if the seawall of the Fukushima plant was a little bit higher. But it wasn't. And so the tsunami came in and inundated the diesel generators in the basement. And so the reactor shut down as it was supposed to, but then it was cut off from electricity from the city. And then the diesel generators that were supposed to be cooling the reactor down were not working because they got flooded. And so you had meltdowns. And again, you know, another nuclear accident that just confirmed people's beliefs.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  However, the Japanese government was much quicker. They immediately, obviously, admitted that it was happening. Evacuated a bunch of people, evacuated three thousand people, if I'm not, no, way more than that, evacuated thousands of people. And so there were two thousand and a hundred fatalities, but it was all caused due to evacuation. So it's like people who needed medicine or. Again, this was in an area that had suffered a major earthquake and tsunami. And you're evacuating all of these people. But from a radiation safety perspective, again, nobody died and nobody got sick from radiation.

• 36:51Simon Sinek?

  Okay, so Hughes, you know this better than I do, which is the problem with branding, or in this case, misbranding, bad brand, right? Is it's emotional.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:01Simon Sinek?

  And even though, so associated with with the nuclear bomb was the introduction to the word nuclear, atom or atomic. That's how we're introduced to it, which is bombs and wars and mushroom clouds. Then, for whatever reasons, you know, well, we know what the reasons, Cold War reasons, the military holds close hold on that technology. We have a couple of accidents, which two of them were human error. And there was bad politics in both of them, or it was associated with politics, right? Cold War, closed communism, and the other one was just, you know, sort of

• 37:41Simon Sinek?

  left-wing, anti-government sentiment, which fuels this negative brand. And so we, we fear, and fear is an emotion, nuclear. And that word scares the heck out of people, right? Nuclear power scares the heck out of people, that word. And I, I applaud that you're calling it nuclear electricity. So facts and figures, and we're saying how much, what actually happened, how many people died, and you know, what the safety precautions are, and the technology works, and all of these things. And, and all we can point to are these three accidents, you know, since the seventies. You know, it, it's all irrelevant. There was no mass hysteria about sharks before the movie Jaws. But good luck getting people to go into the ocean who are afraid of sharks by giving them statistics about the fact

• 38:26Simon Sinek?

  that, and here's a real statistics, more people die from dog attacks every single year than have ever been killed by sharks since we measured, since we started measuring shark attacks. Right? So, again, facts and figures don't help someone go back into the ocean.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:42Simon Sinek?

  So, how do, and, and this, and by the way, I'll even go so far as to say that even though I know you, you are concerned about climate change, even, for people who aren't, for, you know, it, get off of it, because it's, it's a cleaner, more efficient, better form of, of cheaper energy. Right? Is that true?

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Right. And that's the thing. I'm, I came to it from a climate concern, as you, as you mentioned.

• 39:11Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Lots of people don't believe in climate change.

• 39:14Simon Sinek?

  There's an, there's an economic argument to be made here as well.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Not in the United States, at the moment.

• 39:19Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Yes. So here's the thing, okay? So what happens? Nuclear was economic at one point in the sixties and seventies.

• 39:27Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  And then you have changing regulations.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  You have people turning away, you have utilities who once planned on building, just to give you an example. When Thurma Island happened in seventy nine.

• 39:43Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  Before it happened, there were a hundred and twenty reactors ordered. After it happened, all of the orders were cancelled.

• 39:50Simon Sinek?

  No kidding.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Not only because of it, you know, nuclear was getting expensive at the time already. But that was kind of the nail on the coffin.

• 39:59Simon Sinek?

  The price is high, like flat screen TVs were expensive when they first came out kind of thing. Is that what you, is that the argument? It's like it's a new technology, it's expensive for the short term.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  It was kind of the financing mechanisms for nuclear because it's a big upfront investment.

• 40:11Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Um, uh, at the time, it was basically impossible to finance this big project.

• 40:17Simon Sinek?

  What I'm learning, right?

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:19Simon Sinek?

  Um, which is the demands for power in our world right now are so exponentially high. Not just because we don't turn our lights off, which apparently saves very little power. I'm, I'm, I'm learning. Um, but the demands uh on AI. AI is uh and crypto and all these things, but AI in particular are so power intensive. And we have, plus we have these massive data centers that need cooling and all of this. So the demands, and so what I'm learning is that uh that their private sector, not the energy company, is building their own nuclear reactors to power their own AI technology.

• 41:00Simon Sinek?

  Because it's the only thing they can find that's efficient enough to provide the, the electricity, to provide the power to power AI and computing for the future. So like, those people aren't necessarily concerned about the, the, the environment at all. But they see nuclear, these are, these are hardcore capitalists who see nuclear as the best solution to power AI.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, so as you pointed out, there was, there was a period of time where we were debating whether we would even grow our energy demand.

• 41:31Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Okay, sounds crazy in hindsight.

• 41:33Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  But there was a period of time where like, have we reached peak energy demand?

• 41:37Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  Obviously, as soon as AI came out, we started understanding the the the amount of electricity that they this data centers need. So just to give you an idea, if you ask

• 41:51Simon Sinek?

  By the way, data centers, all those photographs that you take on your phone, that you never look at, the thousands and thousands of pictures that we all take on our pictures, on our phones, they go into the cloud, have to be saved somewhere. That somewhere is a data center.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Right. And that's just, by the way, that was already accounted for, right? But enter AI. And you have this huge data centers that are training on huge sets of data and processing all that data and then obviously being used by all the people, including myself. And I think anywhere that you go now, you ask everyone who here uses AI, though, everybody will raise their hands.

• 42:30Simon Sinek?

  Sure.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  So we have already adopted this technology. We're not going back. Let's just just say that. But if I were to make a Google search without AI and have the same search on an AI app, it would use 10 times more electricity.

• 42:48Simon Sinek?

  Wow.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. So so it's for now.

• 42:51Simon Sinek?

  That ship has sailed, yeah.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  That ship has sailed. We are increasing our electricity demand.

• 42:55Simon Sinek?

  Wow.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Now, there's an argument that obviously it's going to become more efficient and da da da. But we know that we just keep developing technologies that use more electricity.

• 43:04Simon Sinek?

  Maybe eight times or six times, but it's still, that that's more efficient, but it's still more.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  And also, we don't even know. I mean, before AI, it was cryptocurrency mining.

• 43:13Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  You know, we were using the data centers were using the same amount of electricity as a as a country in Europe.

• 43:19Simon Sinek?

  So so so hot tip here, top tip, for all you Gen Z and Gen Alphas, if you truly, truly, truly care about global warming and climate change and saving the environment, take fewer selfies.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  I'm sure that's gonna land really well.

• 43:35Simon Sinek?

  I don't think that's gonna go very well.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  They're gonna be like...

• 43:38Simon Sinek?

  But the funny thing is, it's true.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:42Simon Sinek?

  It is.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Y- yes.

• 43:45Simon Sinek?

  It's like, it's like, it's like, it's like people telling us to turn off the faucet when we're washing our hands. You know, like turn it on, put the, turn it off when you're washing your hands. So if you take one selfie, two, instead of eighty-seven.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:57Simon Sinek?

  Per, per.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  But you gotta make sure you look good, you know?

• 44:00Simon Sinek?

  That's the thing. Like if some, if I give my phone to somebody else and be like, can you take my picture, please? It drives me nuts that they hold the shutter button down and I have to go through fifty-six pictures. They all look exactly the same. Why is this a thing? Anyway, but I digress.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  I have a solution for climate change.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Hear me out.

• 44:23Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, exactly. I've, I've got it all figured out. I invited Ryan Bartlett, the founder of our sponsor, True Classic, to sit down for a conversation. We call this, "An Ad with Authenticity." The reason the product works so well is because it's what people can't see is that you have a culture that does the exact same thing without the T-shirt.

• 44:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. The culture is a hard one, as you know. Like to build and ramp up over time and to get just A players that are just crushing it and have the right DNA and buy into the system. And it's, it takes a long time to get it great. It's taken us five years. I mean, early on, it was just much of ragtag entrepreneurs throwing stuff together, making things work and, and being scrappy. But now, when I interview somebody, I'm usually like the last interview. They've already made it by the time they get to me, by the way, because like I'm not really part of it anymore. I'm like the last guy. They're like, "What a team. This is incredibly impressive." And I'm like, "Listen, it's, it's not me. Like, they're just great in their own right. I'm lucky to have them. They really are fantastic."

• 45:27Speaker 02

  I mean, I sit in these rooms with these executives and I'm just like, "Who am I? I'm just this broke musician from the Midwest, like sitting amongst these Ivy League killers? Like, how did I end up here?" You know, I have a lot of those moments where I'm just, I feel very like, "I don't even deserve to be in this room, honestly." Like, these people are so much smarter than me.

• 45:46Simon Sinek?

  I'll pay you another compliment. So, based on the story of the hiring, right? Um, I know of another company and another famous business owner, I'll leave the name out. Because people know who this person is. There was a true story. It was either an intern or entry level. Somebody very, very junior was applying for a job. And they think they had something like seven or 11 interviews, like a preposterous number of interviews, right? And the final interview was with the CEO, right? And everybody said, yes, yes, yes, yes. This kid was amazing. Everybody loved this kid, you know? The CEO meets them, the answer is no. Kid doesn't get a job. What's the point of having all those interviews? When one person undermines the authority of everybody in the value chain, right?

• 46:30Simon Sinek?

  It's worth noting that this company was plagued with office politics. And despite what the CEO may say publicly about how great business was and what kind of leader they were or thought they were, I know for a fact that this company was plagued with office politics. And office politics are people attempting to assert control wherever they can because they don't feel like they have any control. That's what office politics are. And the fact that you have somebody interfering for a job at your company, and they get all the way up to you, and you view yourself as simply a rubber stamp, that you just trust your team, that if your team likes this person, then you're just happy to meet them. And it's proof of how you're leading your company and the culture you've built. It's proof.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Okay, but here is a point I like to make. That a lot of people say that, you know, we can't rely on technological solutions for climate change. That the only true way to solve this problem is to use way less energy. And I got mad at that argument. Because it's always people who grew up in an energy-rich society. And they don't understand the huge privilege that it is to grow up with air conditioning, a laundry machine, a dishwasher, heating. And just in general, in a society that has access to large amounts of energy. You have better hospitals, better roads, better infrastructure in general.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  And one of the arguments that I also hate, you know, one of the reasons why I also hate this argument is that who gets to decide what's a good use for energy, right? So some people love to, like, their life is traveling and going to a different country and visiting different cultures. So who is going to decide how much energy everybody can use? To for what?

• 48:25Simon Sinek?

  Your austerity is not is is not the best.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  But by the way, I know this sounds crazy. This is a serious proposal that a lot of people have as a solution to climate change. And and a lot of young people have fallen into that. So I think.

• 48:37Simon Sinek?

  Sir, your argument is not necessarily use less, although we could all stand to be a little more efficient. But your argument is not to significantly use less to solve the problem, which that ship seems to have sailed anyway. Like, we've known about this forever and we're all idiots and don't do it. Right? It's like we're bad at saving money, too. We're just bad long term planners.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  And once we adopt the technology, it's very hard to go back.

• 49:00Simon Sinek?

  Have nothing. Like, like if you live in in the developing world and you have less, you have to use less because otherwise you'll like you just don't have it. But to your point, which is, you know, the wealthy nations are the are the guiltiest of wasting the most.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:15Simon Sinek?

  But to your point, which is instead of austerity, have more available that's cheaper, that's efficient, that doesn't do damage to the environment.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:24Simon Sinek?

  And so you can you can actually have your cake and eat it too. You can have all the electricity you want without doing any harm to the environment.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Well, that's then that's the thing that I came out with nuclear is that that's it's the true definition of progress. Right? When you think about progress in a technological sense.

• 49:41Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  It's you're enabling people's lives, you're making people's lives better.

• 49:47Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  While also reducing the impact on humans and the environment.

• 49:52Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  And that is literally what nuclear does. Because it gives you all the electricity without the emissions. And uses the least amount of materials out of all energy sources. When you have to mine for things.

• 50:05Simon Sinek?

  Mine.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Well, you have to mine way less.

• 50:07Simon Sinek?

  What do you have to mine?

• 50:08Speaker 01

  You have to mine the fuel, the uranium fuel.

• 50:10Simon Sinek?

  Oh.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Yes. But it's because the energy density of nuclear is so high.

• 50:14Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  It's a million times more dense than fossil fuels.

• 50:17Simon Sinek?

  Got it, got it.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  So I talk.

• 50:18Simon Sinek?

  A lot less mining, so you might might a lot less mining.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  A lot less mining. You when you build a nuclear power plant, it lasts eighty years. And so you don't have to replace one every so often.

• 50:29Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  There's some people that say they could let they could last even longer than that.

• 50:33Simon Sinek?

  How long does a coal plant last?

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Like sixty.

• 50:37Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  Could let could last, but but but coal uses a lot more fuel for the fuel.

• 50:43Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Because one one uranium pellet, which is the fuel using nuclear reactors, roughly the size of a gummy bear.

• 50:49Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Has as much energy as two thousand pounds of coal.

• 50:53Simon Sinek?

  Wow.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Yes. It's crazy. Doesn't compare.

• 50:57Simon Sinek?

  Gummy bear versus a ton.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:59Simon Sinek?

  One gummy bear has enough. This is like science fiction stuff.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:02Simon Sinek?

  One gummy bear.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Has as much energy.

• 51:05Simon Sinek?

  Has as much energy. Uh one gummy bear of uranium has has the same amount of energy as a ton of coal.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  A ton of coal.

• 51:12Simon Sinek?

  Wow.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  A ton in the literal sense of a ton.

• 51:14Simon Sinek?

  Uh there's a right, literally, like uh uh the actual ton. Here's another thing that I think people don't realize. It's a military example, unfortunately, but it is what it is. Which is the United States's uh fleet of uh aircraft carriers and submarines.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:27Simon Sinek?

  Are all powered by nuclear reactors. They do not have like guys shoveling coals into a furnace at in the, you know, in the in the bowels of an aircraft carrier.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:37Simon Sinek?

  But they do have nuclear reactors that can power these aircraft carriers and submarines. And the amazing thing is indefinitely. The only thing that restricts how long a nuclear powered submarine can stay under the ocean is how much food they can carry.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:52Simon Sinek?

  Cause you have unlimited electricity, unlimited power, unlimited oxygen.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:57Simon Sinek?

  Cause they make their own oxygen from the from the water and unlock unlimited drinking water, because they desalinate.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:03Simon Sinek?

  The only thing, so the the point is it's it's limitless electricity.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:07Simon Sinek?

  You don't have to fill up the coal. I mean, you don't have to fill up the the the fuel if it's a diesel powered submarine. I think people don't realize that the military has been using nuclear powered engines and and and uh uh uh prepar uh you know, propulsion for decades.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Decades.

• 52:24Simon Sinek?

  And has never, ever, ever, ever had an accident.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Never had an accident. And not only that, to your point, the new submarine designs, they can't, they don't need to be refueled for their entire life. They don't need to go anywhere and put more fuel in.

• 52:39Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  To your point, you know, the only thing that limits.

• 52:42Simon Sinek?

  They don't have to come to the surface to let off to let off exhaust, because there is no.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  There is no exhaust.

• 52:46Simon Sinek?

  There is no exhaust.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:47Simon Sinek?

  So I just want people to realize that the the military has already adopted this for the efficiency, for the extendability, for the, you know, over the course of time, it's way cheaper. And the fact that it's emission free.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:59Simon Sinek?

  Amazing.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  It's it is really incredible. So. Yeah, it's already been done, right? When people say

• 53:05Simon Sinek?

  This is not, this is not science fiction that you're promoting here.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  This is, I'm not trying to promote something that, oh, it's something that's gonna come along in five years. We already do that. In the military, France already mostly decarbonized, meaning mostly got off fossil fuels for their electricity in the seventies, because they went all in on nuclear.

• 53:25Simon Sinek?

  Is France the most nuclear powered nation in the world?

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Well, not in terms of percentage, just because the United States is much bigger.

• 53:31Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Um, sorry, in terms of percentage, yes.

• 53:34Simon Sinek?

  Per capita.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so France's electricity is around seventy percent nuclear.

• 53:40Simon Sinek?

  That's amazing.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  The United States is around eighteen percent.

• 53:43Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  But we do have a lot more reactors, but we also have more energy demand.

• 53:46Simon Sinek?

  More physical electricity than?

• 53:48Speaker 01

  We make more physical electricity.

• 53:49Simon Sinek?

  But they're seventy percent clean.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Seventy percent clean, yes. The electricity, not all energy, but

• 53:54Simon Sinek?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  But electricity, and this all happened in the seventies. During the first oil crisis, the, the French were like, we cannot depend on these countries.

• 54:03Simon Sinek?

  So why aren't we, like, I applaud you for having Isodope, which is your, your, do you still do her?

• 54:09Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a softer version.

• 54:11Simon Sinek?

  It's a softer version.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  I had way more time during COVID.

• 54:13Simon Sinek?

  That was, yeah, I used to love your videos. They were fun.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:17Simon Sinek?

  You went all in on production value.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  All in, yes.

• 54:19Simon Sinek?

  That was very

• 54:20Speaker 01

  It was just me with a green screen.

• 54:21Simon Sinek?

  I mean, COVID was a thing. Yeah, but, no, but you must have had fun on Amazon with the costumes that you ordered. I never, I don't think I ever saw you wear the same costume twice.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  No, yeah, I did. I had like some props, you know, like I was good with the, with the, like, the makeup and everything.

• 54:35Simon Sinek?

  I mean, COVID was a, lockdown was a thing.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  I didn't get into making sourdough.

• 54:41Simon Sinek?

  So let's, right, you didn't go, exactly. Instead of making sourdough, you became an influencer. The, the

• 54:49Simon Sinek?

  i- is there hope?

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 54:52Simon Sinek?

  Do you think we'll ever have nuclear reactors at home? Mini nuclear reactors to power our homes? Cause I've got solar panels on my house.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  How do they work for you?

• 55:01Simon Sinek?

  You know, they get less efficient when they get dirty, which is all the time. So like, I have to spray them clean every now and then. But, uh, I live in California, so we get a lot of sun, which is great. But I'm, I, my electricity bill every three months is like thirty bucks. I pay connection fees.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 55:16Simon Sinek?

  So I pay, I pay zero.

• 55:20Simon Sinek?

  I'm ostensibly zero. I'm basically, I have an electric car that I charge during the day. So I don't even pay for fuel for my car. So yeah, I'm pretty much running on solar.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  That's awesome. Well, California makes a lot of sense.

• 55:31Simon Sinek?

  Mainly, mainly because I just wanted to stick it to the man. No, I'm serious.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  You would have been anti-nuclear in the seventies.

• 55:36Simon Sinek?

  You know, because when I bought it, like, yeah, I got some tax rebates, but like, the amount of money that I'm saving on electricity bills and the amount of money I had to pay to install it, it's going to take a long time to get that money back. But I love sticking it to the monopoly.

• 55:51Simon Sinek?

  I just can't help it. I just can't help it. It just, when there's a monopoly and I just am sticking it to the man.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  But it's, why would you not want that, right? If you can get electricity from

• 56:01Simon Sinek?

  The sun.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  The sun that's hitting your roof.

• 56:03Simon Sinek?

  I pay.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Every day.

• 56:04Simon Sinek?

  People go to the gas station and pay for fuel and I charge my car during the day and it costs me zero to run my car.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  Do you have batteries as well?

• 56:13Simon Sinek?

  I do.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  How many?

• 56:14Simon Sinek?

  Uh, three.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  But you're still not fully, you, could you be off-grid or not?

• 56:18Simon Sinek?

  I could be off-grid if I allowed my batteries to run all the way down at night.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 56:22Simon Sinek?

  But I don't let them go below, I think, seventy percent.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  For longevity?

• 56:26Simon Sinek?

  No, no, for emergencies.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  For emergencies.

• 56:28Simon Sinek?

  Because we do have blackouts in California, in Southern California. And so if we lose power,

• 56:35Simon Sinek?

  I can run my house normally, um, all night until the batteries recharge the next day with the sun.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  That's really incredible.

• 56:42Simon Sinek?

  But if I were allow, if, if I turn that function off and allow the batteries to drain every night, I could be off the grid.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  I think that's a perfect example of locally grown energy is what I like to talk about.

• 56:56Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  And one of the really stupid things that happened with the whole anti-nuclear movement is that suddenly this idea of one hundred percent renewables came about.

• 57:07Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  And it was like, we have to power the entire world with a hundred percent renewables. And that means solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and batteries. I think those are the main ones. They don't even like hydro that much. And so in a place like California, it makes a lot of sense to go all out on solar.

• 57:24Simon Sinek?

  Because we have sun.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  Cause they have ton of sun.

• 57:27Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  In a place like Germany, it makes no sense. There's also no hydro potential. Basically, the only thing you could build in Germany is wind and nuclear, but they went anti-nuclear. Um, so you asked earlier, is there going to be a day where I'm gonna have a tiny reactor in my home?

• 57:46Simon Sinek?

  Depends where?

• 57:46Speaker 01

  It depends where, exactly. It depends where. There might be a day.

• 57:50Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  For the United States in general, small reactors don't make a lot of sense because we have a big grid that requires a lot of electricity.

• 57:58Simon Sinek?

  Mm hmm.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  And you can have things like solar and batteries everywhere. So I see the United States going more towards the big reactors that can, that can feed the grid. Why are you laughing?

• 58:10Simon Sinek?

  I'm just, I, I just, I just love you nerding out on this stuff.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  Oh, I have such a, I, we can go ten layers deeper here.

• 58:17Simon Sinek?

  I know.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  Um, but you know, right now, the whole conversation is about small reactors.

• 58:22Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  Tiny reactors, small reactors. Here's one thing that a lot of people don't know.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  We tried all of those in the fifties, in the heyday of nuclear, after like around Manhattan Project. These people were experimenting with everything.

• 58:38Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Like molten salt reactors that we started talking, you know, we started this whole conversation with. Breeder reactors, which is another exotic type of reactor. The army had microreactors powering remote bases that could be carried in a, in like the back of a truck.

• 58:56Simon Sinek?

  Wow.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  What happened? They were all way technically complicated.

• 59:02Simon Sinek?

  Mm hmm.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  So ended up being too expensive, so they couldn't compete with a diesel generator, basically. So now when I hear people saying, oh, we're gonna build all of these tiny reactors.

• 59:12Simon Sinek?

  They've done it, they've tried it all.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  Well, I'm excited and you know, hey, there could be some major technological advances that nobody foresaw. However, I'm afraid to put all my hopes in that basket. Because we have tried. And we have gotten to a technology that works. That works incredibly well.

• 59:31Simon Sinek?

  So why don't we? Is it just bad branding? Or is it the electricity? Is it the power? Is it the power companies? Is it the the coal and and is it the coal uh mining lobbies? That just don't want to? Why can't they just reinvest in nuclear?

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Well, so there was there was a lot of that, all of that. And all of that caused nuclear projects to go way over budget, including overregulation. And so it got really expensive. And so now the anti-nuclear people say, oh, you know, I'm not anti-nuclear, but it's too expensive.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  When they made it expensive in the first place.

• 1:00:04Simon Sinek?

  Do you want to know another thing where government uh where private sector lobbying was a stupid decision? I don't remember the exact numbers, but um the IRA, oh, the treasury, sorry. The treasury had determined that if we, the average lifespan of a dollar bill is one year. And the average lifespan of a coin is is thirty years. And so they determined that if we abandoned dollar bills and went to a dollar coin instead. We would save billions of dollars a year in printing and uh and paper and ink costs, right? Billions, just by going to a dollar coin. But the paper and ink lobby would hear none of it. And so we still have dollar bills.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  Are you kidding me?

• 1:00:47Simon Sinek?

  I'm being deadly serious. So when you talk about business getting in the way of progress and saving money, we talk about, you know, all this desire for efficiency and saving money. Nope, it's the paper and ink lobby is the reason we have dollar bills and not dollar coins. Because the government recommends dollar coins.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  That's baffling. It makes me so angry.

• 1:01:06Simon Sinek?

  But it but it's the same argument.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Because the American people paying for this waste.

• 1:01:10Simon Sinek?

  People paying for their dollars, literally.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  Literally.

• 1:01:13Simon Sinek?

  So, yeah, and it's pure waste just by going to, and like you look at the rest of the world. Low denomination, like in the UK, there's no pound note, it's a pound coin. They've even started using alternatives. They've started using plastic for um for some of their money. Because it lasts decades as opposed to a year.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  That is mind blowing.

• 1:01:37Simon Sinek?

  Well, think about it. If you're running a paper and ink business.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:40Simon Sinek?

  And you do printing money, you would love to reprint that amount of dollar bills every single year.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:01:45Simon Sinek?

  It's purely, it's so that, so you go back, it's the same argument that the, that lobbying doesn't have the interest of economics.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:54Simon Sinek?

  It doesn't, forget about the environment. It doesn't even have economic interests. It has self-interest.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:02:00Simon Sinek?

  And so I think, so, so the question I go back to then is, I mean, I know you're hopeful, but you know, do you think the brand is better? Are we less afraid of nuclear electricity now?

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Um, it's kind of crazy because when I started posting my videos online five years ago, I had no idea. I was like.

• 1:02:19Simon Sinek?

  It's all because of isotope?

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  It's literally because of iso-, no, but, but you know, I was like, is this gonna do anything? I didn't know if it was going to do anything. I had no hope. I was playing an infinite game.

• 1:02:31Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  You know, I was like.

• 1:02:33Simon Sinek?

  Thank you. Nice plug.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  Nice plug. But you know, I was like, I have to do this. I have to do this. Otherwise, I'm gonna be so depressed with my life. This is what I have to spend my time on. No hopes. Now, five years later, everything has changed. So just to give you a data point, back then, only forty nine percent of Americans were positive towards nuclear or wanted more nuclear. Now it's sixty one percent. In five years.

• 1:03:04Simon Sinek?

  And it's cross-political, right?

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, usually conservatives tend to lean more favorably towards nuclear because of the connection to the military.

• 1:03:13Simon Sinek?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  And liberals still are anti-nuclear.

• 1:03:18Simon Sinek?

  Because of the connection to the military?

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  Because of the, well, yes, the, the entire history, but also the connection to the military.

• 1:03:23Simon Sinek?

  I mean, I want to go back to that. To me, it blew my mind. And you, by the way, your work completely converted me. I mean, I was open-minded to nuclear, but now I'm all in because of your work. Oh, deadly serious.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 1:03:34Simon Sinek?

  And when I, when, because I didn't understand the brand and I'm gonna, we started at the beginning of this episode, we talked about it. And I think to double click it on at the end, it blows my mind that we discovered fission, nuclear fission, the ability to split the atomic, uh, the, the, an atom to create electricity, to create power. It was discovered in nineteen thirty eight, Germany.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  It's.

• 1:03:56Simon Sinek?

  And then, as you said, Einstein sent a letter to the president, to Roosevelt, and said, "The Germans have figured this out. If you don't figure this out and get on this, they're gonna make a nuclear bomb before you." And thus is born the pursuit of nuclear power.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:04:11Simon Sinek?

  It is just, and that's why the brand is the brand.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  That's why. It's, it's the beginning of why, right?

• 1:04:16Simon Sinek?

  Because planes crash, even by human error. And there's, there's, there's explosions at coal plants, whether it's bad design or, or, or, or human error. And people die when there's explosions there. Heck, I live in California. The frickin' power company is constantly accidentally lighting fires that destroy thousands of homes. You know, the number of things that are tied back to the power companies because of negligence. And yet we're like, oh, yeah, power company, you know? And the point is, of course, accidents are gonna happen, you know, of course. But fundamentally, I'm just blown away how the whole resistance to nuclear has nothing to do with science. It has everything to do with branding.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  Totally. And, and to your point, it's, it started with the bombs and the mushroom clouds and so on. And then you have the few, the first accident, the second accident, and it's just confirming, confirming the fear, confirming the fear.

• 1:05:10Simon Sinek?

  They were ten years apart from each other.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Yes, totally. And then we got to where we are, but the hope that I have is young people do not have that emotional reaction towards. Because they didn't grow up with the Cold War.

• 1:05:26Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  With the drills. People during the Cold War were doing drills.

• 1:05:29Simon Sinek?

  We were afraid of nuclear war. It's called nuclear war.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:32Simon Sinek?

  Nuclear bombs. The only time, like, it's, it's, as you said, it's bad branding.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  It's just bad branding. These people would hide under their desks.

• 1:05:41Simon Sinek?

  Isabel, thanks so much for stopping by.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:05:44Simon Sinek?

  So much fun.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:05:46Simon Sinek?

  That was fun.

• 1:05:49Simon Sinek?

  A bit of optimism is brought to you by The Optimism Company and is lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius and Devon Johnson. If I was able to give you any kind of insight or some inspiration or made you smile, please subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts for more. And if you're trying to get answers to a problem at work or want to advance a dream, maybe I can help. Simply go to simoncennick.com. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other.