Pod Insights The Oprah Podcast Oprah and the Artemis II Crew: To the Moon and Back About this episode After their extraordinary, history-making trip around the moon, Oprah has an in-depth conversation with the crew of Artemis II: Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. From launch to landing, the Artemis II astronauts captured the world’s attention while offering a message of unity and hope from space. The crew shares how they were transformed after spending more than nine days traveling farther into space than any human being has ever been and how seeing the Moon and Earth from space changed their perspectives on life itself. Oprah talks to the astronauts about their jaw-dropping photographs, plus the emotional impact and iconic moments they experienced. They’ll also talk about what it was like to train together for years, the conversations with family about putting their lives at risk, and the stellar team on the ground that guided the mission. Their outstanding character, indomitable spirits and remarkable camaraderie shine through.
00:00:00 - Welcome the crew of Artemis II
00:03:40 - Re-entry to regular life
00:07:00 - The journey back to earth
00:09:40 - Life-altering experience
00:10:50 - How they were selected for Artemis II
00;12:48 - Naming the moon crater
00:17:02 - Watching the Earth set
00:19:50 - Talking to the Chaplain upon landing
00:21:20 - A defining moment
00:24:10 - Piloting Artemis II
00:25:20 - Being at ease with not knowing
00:25:50 - Is there other life out there?
00:28:20 - Being comfortable with being uncomfortable
00:33:30 - The crew was not ready to return
00:34:30 - Christina Koch’s message to girls
00:36:20 - Staying humble
00:40:00 - Discussing death with family
00:44:00 - Discussing death with the crew
00:47:30 - Suits can keep you alive for 6 days
00:50:04 - Training not to panic
00:54:50 - Representing humans in space
00:58:30 - In the hatch after landing
00:59:58 - Message from Reid’s daughter
01:01:40 - The guilt of pursuing your dream
01:03:40 - What they want to share with the world
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Transcript 13,119 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Oprah Winfrey? Hello, hello. How are you? Hi, Jeremy. Hello, hello, hello, hello. I have waited my whole life for this.
0:11 Oprah Winfrey? Guess who's on the podcast this week? Artemis 2! I love my mind. I can't wait till that's posted. That's my ringtone.
0:24 Oprah Winfrey? Hi, everybody on the planet Earth. It's such an exciting day around here in my backyard. You know, I remember just being 15 years old and I was watching the first moon landing and hearing Neil Armstrong say,
0:42 Speaker 01 "That's one small step for man,
0:46 Speaker 01 one giant leap for mankind."
0:49 Oprah Winfrey? And at the time, I couldn't even believe it. I remember standing in my aunt's house and they're like, "Are they really on the moon? I don't know. Are they really on the moon?" Yes, they were on the moon. So now, over five decades later, the Artemis 2 astronauts have returned to Earth after making their own history. Here's a quick look at that remarkable, remarkable journey. For the first time in nearly 54 years,
1:16 Speaker 01 Artemis 2 crew is go for launch.
1:20 Speaker 02 Four, three, two, one.
1:24 Oprah Winfrey? The world held its breath.
1:27 Speaker 02 Booster ignition. And liftoff.
1:29 Oprah Winfrey? As NASA launched four astronauts into space to complete a first-of-its-kind test mission to the moon.
1:35 Speaker 02 The crew of Artemis 2 now bound for the moon.
1:40 Oprah Winfrey? The crew of Artemis 2 included American astronauts Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Cook, and Canadian Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen.
1:51 Speaker 01 This is Jeremy. We are going for all humanity.
1:55 Oprah Winfrey? They spent more than nine days inside a spacecraft named Integrity.
2:00 Speaker 01 And we forgot how beautiful it is to look down on Earth.
2:03 Oprah Winfrey? Using gravity to slingshot around the far side of the moon, Integrity reached 252,756 miles from Earth, the greatest distance ever traveled into space by human beings.
2:15 Speaker 01 To all of you down there on Earth and around...
2:20 Oprah Winfrey? We love you from the moon. Artemis crew captured the world's attention.
2:25 Speaker 03 I don't think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we are looking at right now because it was otherworldly. It was amazing.
2:31 Oprah Winfrey? Not only for their awe inspiring courage going to the far side of the moon and back.
2:36 Speaker 04 What struck me wasn't necessarily just Earth. It was all the blackness around it. Earth was just this lifeboat hanging undisturbingly in the universe.
2:47 Oprah Winfrey? But also for the unique perspective they shared, a message of unity and hope.
2:52 Speaker 05 The purpose of humanity is joy and lifting one another up, creating together. This is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together.
3:08 Oprah Winfrey? I am just, the word honor doesn't even say enough, but I am so honored to be able to welcome you all to my backyard. Thank you. Thank you so much. The Artemis 2 crew, you all know them by name now. Commander Reid Weisman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Cook, and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen. It is a joy. I love that statement that humanity not being able to actually comprehend what you all saw and experienced. And I'm wondering now that you're back down to Earth in gravity, whether the comprehension has become more real for you. Does it get more real every day or is it still something that happened out there?
3:52 Speaker 03 I actually, maybe it's getting less real every day Oprah. It is, it has not gotten more real for me. I go back and look at, we all did a lot of journaling while we were up there and we're just starting to dig into those journals and really read through them. And it just, I just cannot believe we went and did this. I can't believe that the world trusted us to go do this and then the world followed along. It's like, it is the greatest honor.
4:15 Oprah Winfrey? And every time you see the tape, as we were rolling the tape leading into this episode, I could see you're still looking at it like that actually happened, right?
4:23 Speaker 03 I got to fly with Christina, Victor and Jeremy. We're just the best friends.
4:27 Oprah Winfrey? So I heard you started out as friends and then became best friends. Is that what happened?
4:32 Speaker 04 And I think we have a lot to thank our commander for because he set out that purpose from the beginning, that our ultimate goal was to come back as best friends. And it really set the tone for how we showed up for each other, how we handled our team cohesion intentionally. We worked on it and I'm really happy with where we ended up.
4:54 Oprah Winfrey? But I want to get back to that question, Victor. Do you feel grounded yet? Has the impact of what happened out there, including all of the press reaction from the rest of the world and our impressions of you, has that landed with you yet?
5:12 Speaker 05 Hearing that question come from you,
5:16 Speaker 05 I can easily say no, it has not. It's still pretty unreal. I spent the two weeks right after we got back when we were focusing on science collection and reconditioning, going to the gym and making sure that we were all healthy. And I wasn't watching the news, I wasn't online. And then we started the media tour last week. And it's just been amazing. I think we set out trying to do something meaningful, you know? And I think we are now seeing we maybe did OK. And the reaction is, it is unreal. It's what Reid said earlier, like it's hard to put it in context. And it's sitting here in your backyard. It makes it seem even more unreal.
5:56 Oprah Winfrey? This is not. I'm having an out of body experience, but yes. So I want to know, what has moved you the most about the world's reaction? What has moved you the most about the world's reaction to this journey? Because I think that every single person who experienced watching you all do that was moved inside in a way that not even we expected. So what has moved you, Jeremy?
6:22 Speaker 03 It's so heartwarming for all of us in that people just paid attention to something that was positive, collaborative. And for me, it's just such a sigh.
6:31 Oprah Winfrey? We so needed it.
6:32 Speaker 03 Absolutely. It was a sigh of relief that we don't want to just pay attention to the negative. We actually do want to create together. We do want to lift each other up. And it was just, we got home and it's like, oh, wow, people want that. Thank goodness.
6:44 Oprah Winfrey? Wow. And this is the thing, when you have had. The peak, ultimate experience that no one else has had. You've traveled a farther distance from the planet Earth than anyone else has. How do you come back down to Earth and enjoy a cup of coffee on the porch?
7:04 Speaker 04 Well, actually, it's funny because that's exactly what we enjoy the most. We enjoy these small things. And there may be this perspective change, at least for me. I experience it, say, when I'm walking on the beach and I look up at the blue sky. And I imagine what it looked like looking down at Earth and the beautiful, bright blue that is the sky from the other direction. And I can picture that. And I can picture the planet that I'm on, on this universal scale. But it just teaches you to just savor those small moments. Because when you're that far away, that's the only thing that matters. Because you're looking at a planet where every single person you love is.
7:45 Speaker 04 Every misstep, every success, every single cup of coffee is there. And those things are what truly matters. They're what bring meaning to a huge, giant universe.
7:57 Oprah Winfrey? I think one of the things that struck me is that you all realized immediately, but you've seen this before because you've all lived in the space station. So you know that we're suspended out here in this black space. And I love the word, the use of the word lifeboat, that we are the lifeboat. And that you can see from up there that all the things that we're fighting about, that there are no boundaries. I think that's what you said, Victor.
8:27 Speaker 05 I wish we could find a way to get billions of people to space, to see that perspective. It would not fix all of the things that are going on on the planet, but it sure would give some perspective and build buy-in. You know, just a willingness to look at things.
8:43 Oprah Winfrey? Build buy-in.
8:44 Speaker 05 It's buy-in, willingness. It's all about willingness. And I think that perspective can just nudge us in that direction because it does, it does truly put things in perspective. You get so far away from it. You know, I was thinking about this quote, this poem, while Christina was just talking. There's a T.S. Eliot poem, "Little Getting," and it's got this line that... We shall not cease from exploration. At the end of our exploring is this, that we will return home and see it as for the first time. That cup of coffee, that neighbor, that handshake. Oprah's backyard, it all has a slightly different feel and context when you get to go away from it and miss it a little bit. And I wish everybody could miss Earth. That is a gift to be able to say, I missed Earth.
9:28 Speaker 05 But you come back and I think now all of us feel like we are ambassadors of that. And you just have to find a way to share that.
9:34 Oprah Winfrey? Was ultimately it a, you all say you all kept journals. I've been keeping a journal forever. I love that you did. Was it ultimately a life-altering spiritual experience? How would you categorize it?
9:49 Speaker 03 I think I'm still thinking about that, but I definitely was deeply impacted by this journey. And I do think it was a very spiritual experience. But I also think that spiritual experience was presented to us because of the way we treated each other on this mission. We had so much love for each other. And I do not use that word lightly. We had so much love for each other.
10:11 Oprah Winfrey? Did you start out with the love?
10:13 Speaker 03 Yes, we start, we were very intentional about this. And I think we did start out with it. But you never know what's going to happen when the, when the engines light and when you're in space. And there were just moments right from the beginning.
10:23 Oprah Winfrey? But you knew you could all get along because you've been working together on the, yes.
10:27 Speaker 04 For three years.
10:28 Oprah Winfrey? So there was a baseline respect and regard for each other as colleagues.
10:33 Speaker 03 Of course, but there's always friction in there. There's always friction in any human relationship.
10:37 Speaker 04 High stakes environment.
10:38 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
10:39 Speaker 03 I think we surprised ourselves. We, after we landed, we talked about just, there was an extraordinary amount of grace up there. Even though that, you know, that was a bit of the expectation, I think it exceeded my expectations. There was a lot of grace given.
10:52 Oprah Winfrey? So tell us, how were you all selected? How does this process work?
10:56 Speaker 03 First, you have to become an astronaut. That's pretty competitive. I think there's a lot of luck that comes in that. The numbers are tiny and the, the applications are large. Go to Houston, interview for the job. To become an astronaut, I think the primary thing they look, you know you have a good technical background, but they just look, can you survive as a team player in a small spacecraft for a long time? And then for this mission in particular, we were just, we were all experienced space station flyers. We were fairly known quantities. We had Jeremy as the rookie, but he got selected when I got selected and he's probably the textbook team player. Team skills with Jeremy are really phenomenal. We knew the agency, we knew the mission, we knew each other pretty well, so it was pretty easy there.
11:36 Speaker 05 But there's a little bit of luck as well.
11:39 Oprah Winfrey? A little bit, what, explain?
11:40 Speaker 05 Because there's, you know, our office is 50 or so people and there are folks that are on the space station that have the skills and the timing was just, they were gone in space already and so they weren't even in the pool to be selected. And so I just want to acknowledge that.
11:54 Speaker 03 Absolutely.
11:55 Speaker 05 You can work hard and think, hey, I'm a great person for that mission, but you may not, the timing just may not work. So we are all very lucky.
12:02 Oprah Winfrey? But the person who put this together or the team that put this together and said, "It's going to be you, and it's going to be you, it's going to be you", must have seen something in each of you to say, "This is a good fit."
12:12 Speaker 03 I think you could take any four from our office and put them together and get a good fit. I really do.
12:18 Speaker 05 I believe that.
12:18 Speaker 04 And there's also something special about knowing that there's no way we are the ultimate four best people for this mission. And we have to accept that and recognize that bringing our best to the table is all we can do. And to carry that burden of knowing that there is luck involved and we aren't necessarily the perfect people if you looked all across the billions on the planet, but we're the ones that have the honor and responsibility and we're going to do our best.
12:46 Speaker 05 Pass that over.
12:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, that was awesome.
12:49 Oprah Winfrey? Okay, so what was, I have read and heard that the greatest bonding moment was when you all were on the other side of the moon and you named the crater after your wife Carol and that after that moment, y'all were just like connected forever. Is that, was that the moment? Or were there a series of moments?
13:11 Speaker 03 You should ask the whole crew, but for me in particular, that was, that was the moment where there was, we were bonded at that moment.
13:18 Speaker 01 Our science team helped us out with a couple of relatively fresh craters on the moon that have not been previously named. And our crew would like to propose a couple of potential names for those items or those areas. And so at certain times of the moon's transit around Earth, we will be able to see this from Earth. A number of years ago, we started this journey in our close-knit astronaut family, and we lost a loved one. The spouse of Reed, the mother of Katie and Ellie. And it's a bright spot on the moon. And we would like to call it Carol.
13:59 Speaker 01 And you spell that C-A-R-R-O-L-L.
14:07 Speaker 06 Integrity and Carol Crater. Loud and clear. Thank you.
14:14 Oprah Winfrey? Wow. That was a moment.
14:17 Speaker 05 It's kind of like how you asked if going was a spiritual experience. It's yes and no. That moment did something, but it also showed things that were in work for three years. We have been running this race, this lap of this race for a long time. And, you know, there was a moment where Christina came up with this idea. I believe it was originally your thought. We talked about it, the three of us. Jeremy went and talked to Reed to make sure that it would be okay. But then, I really do believe it was magic. When he started to speak during the mission, it just, I don't, I don't think he wrote it.
14:54 Oprah Winfrey? When you started to speak about Carol, yes.
14:55 Speaker 05 And he, he just, he got choked up, and we all got choked up at different times. The part that caught me is when he said it was, we were just looking at images, and it's a fresh, a newer crater, and it's, it's bright. It actually is a very light, what they call a high albedo spot on the moon. And he said Carol was a bright spot, and that's, that was the moment that I lost it. And I think the hugging was starting, and it just, it did do something, but it also... Reminded us of something that had been going on for three years.
15:24 Oprah Winfrey? So what did that mean for you and your family? One of your daughters posted about what that meant to have.
15:29 Speaker 03 That moment really came together. People don't know how much they should cherish, Jeremy, right? Right at that moment, because that moment was not planned for that time. We didn't know when we were going to do that. And both of my children had come into Mission Control to sit in the back when we passed the distance record for Apollo 13. And we could look out the window and see that crater. And Jeremy just knew it was the right time. It was the right time to do that. And I think for my kids, we haven't unpacked any of that yet. I think that's down the road. But just to know that their mom, who they love for eternity, there's a
16:07 Oprah Winfrey? Has a crater. There's a bright spot on the moon. There's a bright spot on the moon named after Carol. How did you know that was a moment, Jeremy?
16:15 Speaker 03 I think, you know, sometimes you just have a feeling when we, like Victor said, when we saw it for the first time, that was when I was like, oh, I actually feel like I have the words now to do this. We, when we were planning on the ground, I just didn't know if I'd be able to see it with the naked eye. And Kelsey and our science team helped send me some images so I could basically follow the breadcrumbs on the moon, going from the big craters to follow and map it till we could get to the smaller items. And then when we finally saw them, and they were so visual, like sitting right there. And then I just, I knew I had the words somewhere inside of me. And we were talking to the ground team and I just keyed the mic and kept going.
16:55 Oprah Winfrey? Wow. After the break. Did any of you think that perhaps there's some other life out here somewhere? That thought has to occur to you, that we can't be the only ones on tiny Earth. And so how have you resolved that question for yourself?
17:10 Speaker 05 Stay with us.
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17:42 Oprah Winfrey? Welcome back to the Oprah Podcast with the Cruel of Artemis 2. We can't imagine all of the incredible moments that you all experienced there. I heard you talk about witnessing an earth set. And just hearing the word "earth set", it made my eyes water because I love watching sunsets so much. And so, an earth set, explain to us what an earth set is.
18:08 Speaker 03 As you're going around the far side of the moon, you get the privilege of watching the only planet that we know houses life set behind the moon. Just like when you're at the beach and you watch the sunset over the waves and you can just see the sun start to evaporate down in the atmosphere. There's no atmosphere on the moon, but we could certainly watch as our home planet started to set. When the sun sets, you see it start to misshape through the atmosphere. If you're at the beach and you look at it over the... When the earth sets behind the moon, I've said this multiple times in different ways. I've never said it this way, but you know for a fact the moon cannot sustain life because there is no atmosphere. And as you're watching in crystal clarity with your human eye,
18:51 Speaker 03 the earth setting behind the moon, you can see the craters in the mountains on the moon in the earth setting behind the moon because there is no atmosphere. It's just crystal clear as that occurs. And then it's gone. In a blink of an eye, it's gone.
19:07 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah. One of the things you said is that I don't believe humanity is even prepared for what we're looking at right now. What did you mean when you said that?
19:16 Speaker 03 Victor was up in the docking hatch window and I was coming off a camera and he said, "Come on up and take a look." And he moved out of the way and I looked out that docking hatch at the moon. And at this point, the sun had eclipsed behind the moon. So now we had this dark gray sphere in front of us and a little bit of earth shine on the left side. The sun was bouncing off the earth and illuminating a little bit of the left side of the moon. And it was perfectly three-dimensional and nothing that I had prepared for in that entire journey prepared me to look out and see that. And I was so thankful that I had my friend there. And just to be honest...
19:50 Oprah Winfrey? You witnessed it too?
19:52 Speaker 05 The best I could do was just suggest somebody come look at it.
19:57 Speaker 05 I really, you know, the idea that people trusted us to go do this, that scientists were counting on us to describe what we were seeing. I really took that serious and loved sharing what we were seeing and how it felt. I didn't have it for that. I just, this took another brain, another set of eyes. Like, I cannot start putting words to it. There's so much about that. You can see the picture. You know, we take pictures sometimes, and when there's something bright, you can't see the stars in the background, for example. But I could see the ring around the moon glowing, and so there was a halo around the moon. But I could see stars through it. I mean, that alone, I went, wait, I don't, I do not understand, but I'm looking at it.
20:39 Oprah Winfrey? I understand you burst into tears when you could see the chaplain on the ship. What was behind that?
20:44 Speaker 03 I am not a religious person. I just had no other way to... When you come back from space, first of all, you have a lot of adrenaline. And we had gotten to the Navy ship, and I just, I'm looking across at Victor, and it popped into my head that on every Navy ship, there is a chaplain. And I knew there would be a chaplain on that ship, so I asked if we could see the chaplain. And when he walked in, I just, I just lost, completely lost emotional control. Like, of everybody on that ship, I thought he was probably the one that could come the closest to relating to what the four of us had just been through.
21:16 Speaker 05 That is also, it was a powerful moment for you. That was, of all these amazing things, that was a powerful moment for me, to watch you do that. Just, we talk about integrity. Our ship was integrity, and instead of...
21:30 Oprah Winfrey? I love that it was named that, yes. My gosh.
21:33 Speaker 05 And to live in integrity, we had an instructor from the National Outdoor Leadership School that talked about, you know, it's not you have integrity or you don't have it. Sometimes you're in it, and sometimes you're out, working to get back in. And so being in integrity, this statement makes me feel the same way. It's, I'm not a religious person, or I'm not a spiritual person, but I would say that even, I'm not speaking for you, but watching you, that was a spiritual moment for me. It was like being in integrity.
22:01 Oprah Winfrey? So I want to know, what was that moment like for each of you? For you, you, and Christina, and Jeremy, and Victor? Did each of you have one of those moments? You all had that moment together? What was a defining moment?
22:16 Speaker 04 Well, maybe the theme is home because when people ask me what surprised me the most about my space station mission and what you saw that surprised you the most, I say it was how you felt when you looked down at your home, where you're from, where you grew up, a place that you learned to identify on a map by the shape of the landforms. And for me, the first time I saw the Outer Banks of North Carolina come around and I first realized they crystallized that that's where they were. And I knew what that felt like to be on that spot on planet Earth. It was home and it took my breath away. And something on this mission that was a little different was
22:58 Speaker 04 we couldn't make out specific landforms or places on Earth, but the entire planet was home.
23:08 Speaker 04 And it was so far away and so perfect that I almost expected like I could look out the other window and see Neptune and that wouldn't be home. And the fact that that entire planet was home and there was so much else that wasn't was just something I'm still coming to terms with.
23:30 Speaker 03 It was so small.
23:32 Speaker 04 It was so small.
23:34 Speaker 03 When I hear her talking about this planet out the window, I just, I need you to visualize that it was about the size of your fingernail out the window. It was so small that we started calling home tiny Earth. And I just want, I want people that listen to this or to watch this to understand you just can't process how small Earth is until you're 250,000 miles away from it and all of that becomes so real.
23:56 Oprah Winfrey? Jeremy, for you, the moment?
23:58 Speaker 03 So many I could share with you, but I will pick one that really surprised me, that I wasn't prepared for. From all the videos and images I've seen before I flew was when I would look out and I would see tiny Earth, but then I would see, you know, not the field of view of a camera, but like the field of view of a human brain. And, you know, when I'm on Earth and I look up in the night sky and I see all the stars and to me, they're sort of painted on a canvas in the night sky. But when I saw them from space, it was like they were, it was a diorama I was looking at. And they had depth and I could see like these ones look closer, these ones look like they're further. But I wasn't just viewing this diorama, I was in the diorama. And to have the Earth and the Moon and all of that juxtaposition.
24:41 Speaker 03 I, I don't have the words, but it was this three dimensional, the three dimensionality of it that just, every time I saw that and perceived it, I was awestruck.
24:52 Oprah Winfrey? Well, Victor, we all know you were the pilot for Artemis 2. As a young boy growing up, was this the fulfillment of something that was beyond anything you could have imagined, or was this a part of the dream?
25:06 Speaker 05 Beyond, beyond, beyond imaginable, you know. I didn't know pilots when I was young, and so I, it's so interesting. I hear Reed talk about his childhood and wanting to be an engineer, but thinking that that meant driving trains. So I wanted to drive trains because mentors told me, hey, you're good at math, you might want to be an engineer. So I, I way, way beyond.
25:32 Speaker 05 But I, I, I used to stare up at the Moon. And so it's so amazing that, that image, this thing that all of us look at all the time, and maybe take for granted a little bit to get to see it in a new way. Maybe it is a little bit of a, you know, accomplishment of a dream that's always been back there, but definitely beyond anything I could imagine.
25:54 Oprah Winfrey? You, you said, "We explore to learn about where we are, why we are, understanding the big questions about our place in the universe", which I think a lot of people think about often. So what have you learned about our, our, about that big question about our place in the universe?
26:12 Speaker 05 First, to get comfortable with big questions, to get comfortable with questions. We're so quick to defend a position and want to have a debate, but to just appreciate questions. I, that, that's, I am very comfortable not knowing, I don't have the answer.
26:30 Oprah Winfrey? Did any of you think that?
26:33 Oprah Winfrey? Perhaps there's some other life out here somewhere. That thought has to occur to you, that we can't be the only ones on tiny Earth. And so how have you resolved that question for yourself?
26:46 Speaker 05 Statistically speaking, you just look at how big the universe is and you think there's gotta be something out there. And with all of the efforts of the United States and all of our partner governments, we have not found it yet. And so I would say that it's this massive opportunity for there to be something, but also a reminder how important it is for us to take care of this something that we know, because we haven't found another place that we could do this yet.
27:14 Oprah Winfrey? Okay, so let's talk about this. I just interviewed Jim Collins recently. Jim Collins is one of the great leadership executives and teachers and philosophers in the country. He wrote "Good to Great", and all the businesses use that book, "Good to Great". And he just recently wrote a book called, "What to Make of a Life", and he begins his story talking about John Glenn and how John Glenn first saw airplanes in the sky and then wanted to be a pilot. And he says that John Glenn didn't just aspire to be an astronaut, but that John Glenn and all the other people he writes about in his book, "What to Make of a Life", were encoded for it.
27:58 Oprah Winfrey? He says John Glenn was encoded to be an astronaut. I see you smiling. Were you encoded to be an astronaut? Like, it's just in there?
28:10 Speaker 04 I can start with this, but it's just because I have an anecdote, because I don't know the real answer to that. But about two years ago, I decided I wanted to learn to swim. And I am not coordinated. I am the least coordinated person you can imagine. And my husband watched me struggle for about a year and a half straight to try to learn to swim. I would actually try to learn just to kick my feet and go straight in the pool. And I would go backwards and people would say, "What were you doing? Was that some kind of a drill?" And I would say, "No, I'm just that bad at swimming." And my husband told me, "Honey, you were made to be an astronaut.
28:52 Speaker 04 You were not made to swim."
28:56 Speaker 04 And I feel like one person believes in me that I'm
28:59 Oprah Winfrey? Made to be an astronaut.
29:01 Speaker 04 Made to be an astronaut.
29:01 Oprah Winfrey? Okay, okay, I like that anecdote.
29:04 Speaker 03 If I could just see one common thread is like Christine often says what she would recommend to young folks is to do things that scare you, like do things out of your comfort zone. And when I look at the four of us in our astronaut office as a whole, we are fairly comfortable doing things that that are you just kind of threw yourself into it. There's, there's, if, if there was a helicopter sitting over there, I would want to just go get in it and figure it out. There's just, we just have that kind of natural curiosity. I almost think it's a curiosity. Just put me in an unknown position and let me see if I can work my way through it. And I think when I look at the four of us, we, we, we just like that. That is something we just enjoy doing. Jeremy, you, you really, I love it when you talk about every, every human has a gift. Oh, yes.
29:48 Speaker 03 Well, that was a something that was shared with me from an indigenous elder at the Turtle Lodge that created this mission patch for the cane aspect of the mission. And, and each of these, there's like seven animals that represent the seven sacred laws. But there's one teaching that I really love, and it's the teaching of the beaver. And it's that the beaver has a special gift. Of course, it can chew down trees. No one else can, nothing else can chew down trees, but it has the wisdom to know how to use its gift to change its environment in a manner that supports others and bringing their gifts to the world.
30:18 Oprah Winfrey? I heard that you were grappling with this question of how could you possibly be happy when people are dying and suffering through, throughout the world?
30:27 Speaker 03 You know, that question I really answered when I, I went on the vision quest with this elder. And that was the question I was really struggling with at that time. And the sort of the epiphany I had was that, you know, Jeremy, you don't carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. Your job every day is to wake up, to try to leave the world better than you found it, to try to contribute your energy in a way that lifts others up. And that is where you source your joy. And if everybody just tries to do that simple thing, it's just not as hard as we make it. If you try to do that simple thing, you can.
30:59 Oprah Winfrey? Have joy. After the break. How did you all talk to your families about the risks involved? Do you actually say the words, if I don't come back? Stay with us.
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31:39 Oprah Winfrey? Welcome back to the Oprah Podcast with the crew of Artemis 2. Okay, now I want to talk about that liftoff and traveling through Earth's atmosphere. What's going through your minds in that moment?
31:51 Speaker 05 We're at 39 times the speed of sound. We're at six miles every, not six miles a minute, second. Six miles a second.
31:59 Speaker 04 No.
31:59 Speaker 05 25,000 miles per hour.
32:01 Speaker 04 25,000 miles.
32:02 Oprah Winfrey? You're 25,000 miles per hour.
32:07 Speaker 05 A lot. Maybe all of the things are going.
32:10 Speaker 04 Yep.
32:12 Speaker 04 Teamwork, trust in your team. We had an amazing relationship with the folks that designed the one piece of equipment that does all of the work or most of the work on reentry, which is the heat shield.
32:26 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
32:26 Speaker 04 And we had an incredible relationship with them. And we really came together as a team. And I was thinking about them and I was thinking about this team. And I was thinking about the team I was coming home to.
32:37 Oprah Winfrey? You're thinking about all that went into making that liftoff possible. And you just mentioned the space stations. So you were out there longer than any female has ever been there. How many days, 328 days?
32:48 Speaker 04 328.
32:49 Oprah Winfrey? And you did like 5,000, over 5,000 orbits?
32:54 Speaker 04 If someone counted, that's probably right. I don't, I'm not sure.
32:58 Oprah Winfrey? Yes. And so how is that experience compared to what you just experienced?
33:05 Speaker 04 Yeah.
33:07 Speaker 04 Wow. You know, I think that the thing that struck me and my takeaway on perspective that was different was how far away we were from our home planet.
33:18 Oprah Winfrey? Because it doesn't, it's not that far away when you're at the space station.
33:20 Speaker 04 When you're at the space station, you're about 250 miles up. So we were about 1,000 times farther. And you can see a horizon.
33:29 Oprah Winfrey? That gives perspective, that's why, yeah, yeah.
33:31 Speaker 04 And all of the things.
33:34 Oprah Winfrey? So the Earth doesn't look like tiny Earth, it looks like big Earth, right?
33:36 Speaker 04 It's gorgeous, big, beautiful Earth. And there are so many things that come with that, with being able to identify places on Earth. And maybe you could say, though, that the more important difference is where we went. We went to the moon. We have a relationship with the moon, which is something that's meant something to all of us. It's meant something to civilization since the beginning of time. And we left part of ourselves there. We miss it. And having that, this destination that we got to go explore is another aspect that we have to internalize, different from the space station.
34:17 Oprah Winfrey? And still internalizing it.
34:18 Speaker 04 And still internalizing it.
34:19 Speaker 03 Probably for the rest of our lives.
34:20 Speaker 04 But the space station enabled our mission. The 25 years of continuous people living onboard. Everything we've learned there about how to operate, about teamwork, we brought that with us.
34:30 Oprah Winfrey? And you learned how to be in a tiny little space and, yeah. Does it ever get to the point where you're like, you can't be claustrophobic and they must know you're not claustrophobic, right? Does it ever get to the point where?
34:43 Speaker 03 Surprisingly, I mean, we joked before we went. I mean, I would often say, I'm sure when they open that hatch on day 10 that we will be ready to get out. But I was not ready to get out.
34:52 Speaker 04 Not at all.
34:52 Speaker 03 If they had said we could have stayed in space longer, I would have been like, I'm fine with that.
34:56 Oprah Winfrey? Really?
34:57 Speaker 05 He kept joking on the mission that we're going to do a perigee raise burn, which would mean we would go by the Earth and do it all over again. We're going to keep going, a victory lap.
35:06 Speaker 04 We were ready.
35:07 Oprah Winfrey? Let's look at this photo. This photo, we found this photo, my team did, from 19, this is a control room, 1969. Apollo 11 launch. Joanne Morgan is the only woman. And she's an instrumentation controller. And, you know, if you're looking at the wide shot of the picture, you have to squint to actually see her in that photograph. And now 30%, I hear, of the Artemis launch team on the ground were women. Yes.
35:37 Speaker 03 I think about how hard that must have been for her.
35:39 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
35:40 Speaker 03 First and foremost. And then when you say 30%, I wonder why it's not 50. But it is great to have the team that we have.
35:49 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah. So what do you want to say to young women?
35:52 Speaker 04 I think what I would really want to say to them right now, in this moment, is you are enough. And I say that because... So in my high school, someone donated a statue of me. And it made me uneasy. Something about it just didn't sit perfectly well with me. And it wasn't just my humility or something like that. And I finally put my finger on it. I was worried that the people that would walk through the door and see it would think that they weren't enough. Because that statue was too perfect of a representation. And at the little speech-making that I did when it opened, I made sure to talk about the person I was in high school
36:36 Speaker 04 and how unsure I was of myself, how many mistakes I made, how many people I hurt, people that hurt me. And I just wanted them to know that they don't have to be as perfect as a statue. And sometimes, right now, I feel like this crew is a little bit like that statue. We, in being here and talking about the superlatives, it doesn't tell the whole story. Because we have a long story. A lot of people behind us, a lot of missteps, a couple victories. But all that came together to make us these people that very humanly carried everyone's dreams around the far side of the moon.
37:19 Speaker 04 But, you know, before we did that, we were enough. And I would say to them, you are too.
37:25 Oprah Winfrey? Well, you know what's so interesting is that from everything that we have seen of you, you know, going off into space, coming back, and now this, you know, world press tour, you all seem still so humble and still, you know, have your feet on the ground about all of this. What keeps you not leaning into the, you know, the egoness of all of this?
37:56 Speaker 05 Four daughters.
37:58 Oprah Winfrey? Four daughters.
38:00 Speaker 05 No, I love it. It just happened, my first mission, I landed and my oldest daughter graduated from high school three weeks later. In this mission, it was about a month, my youngest daughter graduates from high school. And that is actually very helpful to be able to come back and try to just reintegrate back into my life. And I think that's-
38:21 Oprah Winfrey? Is it hard reintegrating? I mean, it's hard. It's hard when you go on a business trip. So I'm sure it's really challenging.
38:27 Speaker 05 It requires intentionality. You know, and I think it depends on where your life was when you launched. And, you know, my first time I launched, it was six months later. And this time it was 10 days. And I hope I didn't leave the garage door open. And so it's different, but it requires intentionality. And I knew that because I got to practice it before in the military and on my first mission, but it's still different. My kids are five years, they're all adults now. They're five years older than the last time. And so that has been a very helpful perspective for me. But also, the trust-
39:00 Oprah Winfrey? What do you have to do entering the space? I remember, you know, a friend who was an actor who was saying, if he's gone away on a six-month trip and you come back, the space is different. It's changed. Yeah.
39:10 Speaker 05 It's changed.
39:11 Oprah Winfrey? And so you have to enter that space, not as a person who left, but you have to enter the new space. So what changes for you when you're re-entering?
39:20 Speaker 05 At the end of that very long comment, I'm also gonna say that to not be, to not fill the room. My kids have personalities. My wife has a personality. They want to share. They want to be listened to. And America trusted us to do this. The world trusted us to do this. Canada trusted us to do this. And it's not just for us to tell the story. It's to listen to people. My church asked me to talk about the mission. And in listening to people talk at church, I was like, OK, I agree to do it if it can be a community discussion. If we can all... I've heard things from each of them that I had not heard before. And I was gone, just like watching the video. So it's to not fill a room. It's easy not to lean into it because there's so much that everybody else has...
40:02 Oprah Winfrey? And also, everybody wants to hear from you. Yes, everybody wants to hear.
40:06 Speaker 05 But that's just one piece.
40:07 Oprah Winfrey? That's just one piece. Jeremy, how would you answer that question? Reentering the space with your wife and family?
40:14 Speaker 03 Very warmly. I really supported. I felt really supported leading up to the launch because that's a very stressful time. And I just thought maybe the cracks would start to show in the family unit. But we really leaned in together. I really... We had two conferences with our families when we were in space. And those just felt so warm and positive. And so coming back, yes, things have changed. But the things that I'm craving are the ones that stayed the same. And I feel like they have a sense of that. And when we're together, it's just the way it always was.
40:49 Oprah Winfrey? How did you all talk to your families about the risks involved? Because, you know, as you all were reentering, all of us are holding our breaths and we're watching that fire rocket ship come down. And we're all having a collective, universal prayer that it's going to be OK. And I can imagine what that is like for your families, taking off and landing. So did you have the discussion before? Have the discussion with your daughters?
41:18 Speaker 03 Hundred percent. And you have... They don't want to hear the discussion. At least that was my perception. But you have to have it. You have to hit it head on.
41:26 Oprah Winfrey? Do you actually say the words, "If I don't come back," or if something happens?
41:30 Speaker 03 We read through the will. We read through the trust. If I don't come back, here's where you're going to go. Here's where your guardians will be. Here's where you'll spend your Christmas, your holidays. Here's where you'll spend your summers. And what I found in that, although it's difficult, there's probably two things I want to say. The first I want to say is I felt like it was liberating for them. I felt like it gave them space to just accept that this is a possibility. And then not many people have these conversations with their families, period. But life is risky, even if you're not climbing on an eight million pound rocket and going around the moon. And I think these conversations are very healthy. And another thing that this conversation helped me with, but then also my crew has helped me with is there are a lot of things that you want to shy away from. And you, those build up in your soul.
42:15 Speaker 03 You can feel them building up when you shy away from a conversation that you should be having. And I'm not perfect. I shy away from, they know, I shy away from just about every tough conversation because it's hard for me. But I have found every time you have those conversations, even if they don't go well, you come out the other side. Just your soul is a little bit freer. That's something I'm still, that's part of my journey at 50 years old is to still work my way through that. But don't avoid, you have to, you have to talk about those things.
42:40 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah. Did you, Christina?
42:42 Speaker 04 I did. I had those conversations with my husband and I, he knew I was working on a will. He was aware of the risks. And we, I sort of waited, I would say, till the mission was very salient, till we were in quarantine. And I knew that he knew that I was going on a journey that I understood the risks of and that it was the fulfillment of my life's work and all of my dreams. And that that would bring him peace if I didn't come back.
43:13 Speaker 04 But what I realized I needed him to know was that none of that was what meant the most to me and why he should actually have peace. It was because he loved me and I loved him. And that's why it would be okay.
43:30 Speaker 05 I'm struggling with a short answer to this because it is such a profound thing to try to walk through. I think the characteristic that stands out the most is I had this conversation the very first time at about 28 years old, getting ready to go into combat. And so five deployments and a space mission. My kid, my life and my family, my wife, we've all changed. And this last time,
43:56 Speaker 05 my kids were all adults. And so this was a very different, the most different conversation. And I felt like I needed to respect their adulthood. And it just was an honest conversation. And at the end of it, I felt it was very heavy. I mean, not everybody is having these types of conversations, but it's important. And I-
44:16 Oprah Winfrey? Did you do it one-on-one or did you do it as a group?
44:18 Speaker 05 A little bit of both. I've got four very different daughters and, you know, different needs there. And so I, a little bit of both. And then at the end, I just, I had to send them a poem. I need, I was like, I don't know, I don't know how I ended that. And so I sent them this poem and Chief Tecumseh, it's a, it's a really just well-written, very dense. I love it. It's a way to live your life. But in the end, it talks about if you go out, you know, sing your song and go out in the blaze of glory. And it's a very rich poem. And so I sent that to them and they all appreciated it, I think. And so it helped to end it a little, on a little more positive note.
44:56 Speaker 03 And you sent that to us before we launched too?
44:58 Speaker 05 Yes. I sent, I also sent it to the-
45:00 Oprah Winfrey? You sent them the poem?
45:01 Speaker 05 I sent it to the crew.
45:02 Speaker 03 About two days or one day before launch?
45:04 Speaker 05 I guess it was, I should have sent it a little earlier.
45:07 Speaker 03 It's a great poem.
45:08 Speaker 04 It was perfect.
45:09 Speaker 03 We were having a discussion of, as a crew about like, what if we end up in that situation where we are still alive, but we don't think we're coming back? How are we going to, how are we going to show up for each other? How are we going to handle it? And it was on the heels of that-
45:22 Oprah Winfrey? You all had that conversation?
45:23 Speaker 04 We did.
45:24 Speaker 05 His suggestion.
45:25 Speaker 04 We did.
45:26 Speaker 05 Great conversation.
45:26 Speaker 03 So on the heels of that conversation, he sent us that poem. And I'm like, yep, that's-
45:30 Oprah Winfrey? Okay, so how'd you bring that up? Jeremy.
45:33 Speaker 03 Just like you bring up things here, just.
45:37 Speaker 04 I will say, that conversation I remember so well, because he did. He brought it up in the perfect Jeremy way of just. And what we had established as a crew is that if we knew we were in that situation, we would handle it with grace and honor and almost a solemnness. But I will say, that is beautiful. There was a moment on the mission where it did not serve me because on reentry, I was misunderstanding some of Victor's calls. And I thought he was calling our G loads way higher than they should have been. And I thought, well, he's not freaking out, so we're probably fine. And then I thought, but wait, we said we wouldn't freak out. So I don't actually know.
46:20 Speaker 03 No way.
46:23 Oprah Winfrey? And wasn't there a time where you woke up in the middle of the night? And there was some alarm going off, wasn't there?
46:28 Speaker 03 Every night of the mission.
46:29 Speaker 04 Every night except one.
46:30 Speaker 05 Most nights.
46:31 Oprah Winfrey? Really?
46:31 Speaker 03 Yes. It's disorienting.
46:33 Oprah Winfrey? And when that alarm goes off, there was something with the fuel.
46:37 Speaker 03 We had an alarm. It's called a run box, a run box caution. And what that could potentially mean is that you're leaking your fuel out of the spacecraft. And that's not a great situation for us. And we did, we had a run box alarm at 2:00 in the morning, very disor. Time is weird up there, so it was, because we run off of a different clock. But it was in the middle of sleep and I woke up very disoriented. I slept underneath the displays. Victor was right to my left and.
47:01 Oprah Winfrey? You just.
47:01 Speaker 03 I woke up and looked, I was like, I think that's a run box. And Jeremy actually comes around, because he was like, oh, run box. We have to, we have to shut down the fuel system. So Jeremy came around the side of the display and started, maybe you weren't sleeping there yet.
47:12 Oprah Winfrey? It was Jeremy that day.
47:13 Speaker 03 And Jeremy came around very, and we were all very disoriented, because it's the middle of the night. And Jeremy started executing the procedures. And then we just, we have a rule in our, in our crew, no fast hands. Like, don't go fast if you can stand it. And so I was looking at the displays and looking at the fuel system. And we were waiting for ground to call. And Jeremy was starting to configure and I just said, hey, let's stop.
47:34 Speaker 03 At least in my mind, that's how it went. And let's just pause for a second because these indications I see are not, they're not aligning with this, the level, the extreme level of this caution. And that created some tension in the crew for a moment because we have very explicit instructions. You save the fuel system there because you could be leaking your fuel under the vacuum of space, and that is deadly. And, but we did, we did stop and we all talked about it for a few seconds and we worked our way out of that. And we did have a very small leak which caused that caution, but it was not a great situation and we just needed to monitor it for a little while.
48:05 Oprah Winfrey? So you all are trained to stay calm, right?
48:08 Speaker 03 Well, we like to think so.
48:09 Oprah Winfrey? You like to think so. I don't wake up to an alarm and haven't, even in the days of the open show where I had to get up at 5:30 every morning, because the alarm alarms me. And I don't want to start my day being alarmed. So if I were to hear an alarm in the middle of the night, it's just like, you know, when people had real phones and the phone rings in the middle of the night, 3:00 a.m., you know it's a problem and you're alarmed. So when you heard the alarms, does that, does your heart immediately start palpitating? Are you like, "Mmmmm."
48:39 Speaker 03 Probably individual. There's some of these crew members have ice in their veins, but yes, it gets your attention quick.
48:45 Oprah Winfrey? Let's talk about some, again, some of the logistics because I hear that those orange suits are built to keep you alive for six days.
48:54 Speaker 03 Oh.
48:55 Oprah Winfrey? For six days. And so what's in those suits? That you can poop in the suits, you can do everything you need to do, and then you can poop in the suits. You can do whatever you need to do in the suits.
49:06 Speaker 04 Yes, absolutely.
49:07 Oprah Winfrey? Eat and drink and everything is in the suits.
49:09 Speaker 04 Yes, they have a, they have a plan for that. And we practiced with those systems, both on the ground, and we did what's called a flight test objective to test them out in space to see how they worked in microgravity. And it would not be a fun six days, but the idea is it would be survivable if you use the equipment that's provided. For eating and drinking, there's a port actually in the side of the helmet, and you can put a straw in and we have these very special nutrition drinks.
49:41 Speaker 03 I think it's this actual straw.
49:43 Speaker 04 Turns out it is.
49:45 Speaker 03 Exactly. When I picked up this glass, I was like, "Oh, this is the oxygen."
49:48 Oprah Winfrey? I wanted you to feel familiar here. So there's no running water in space, obviously, in the capsule. And so you can't take a shower or you can't bathe in space. So how does that work?
50:00 Speaker 05 You have towels that have soap already in them. And, you know, we don't have hot water. Our water's ambient, so depending on the attitude of the spacecraft.
50:13 Oprah Winfrey? Is that called a chamois bath?
50:14 Speaker 05 Yes, yes. And I didn't know that this was being broadcast, but I'm glad it is because I think, you know, seeing the process, seeing the daily things, I mean, hey, I gotta wash the toes.
50:24 Oprah Winfrey? You're getting in between those toes.
50:26 Speaker 05 You got to, that's the most important part.
50:28 Speaker 03 I think they broke the internet, so.
50:29 Speaker 05 And that's an important part of it. The other thing you see in this, my favorite thing about this is something we've been trying to share, everything is a group activity. I mean, you know, Jeremy's eating and cleaning his spoon, and I'm cleaning my body, right there. You probably wouldn't do those two things in the same room.
50:43 Oprah Winfrey? Yes.
50:44 Speaker 05 Let alone that close to each other at home, but we only had one room. And so you use that towel, and what we were able to do is put it in the food warmer. We'd put it in the food warmer to warm it up so he could do, you know, a hot bath.
50:56 Oprah Winfrey? Oh, a hot chamois.
50:57 Speaker 05 Yes.
50:57 Oprah Winfrey? A hot chamois. And I understand that you were the space plumber, Christina.
51:01 Speaker 05 Yes.
51:02 Oprah Winfrey? How did you get that job?
51:03 Speaker 04 Well, actually, it's just my seat. My seat, I was in charge of two main things, and it was just because of where I was sitting. I was sitting next to the hatch, and I was sitting next to the toilet, so I got to set up the toilet as soon as we got to orbit.
51:16 Oprah Winfrey? After the break. There's something about the four of you that is connected and, I'm gonna try not to cry, that is connected in such a way that is, you went all the way out there, farther than any human beings have ever traveled before, to remind us of who we are. Stay with us.
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51:59 Oprah Winfrey? Welcome back to the Oprah Podcast with The Cruel of Artemis 2. So I was talking earlier about in the preparation, you train not to panic. How do you train not to panic?
52:12 Speaker 05 Maybe actually.
52:13 Oprah Winfrey? So do they put you in situations that you normally, your body normally would panic? You know, I was doing some hiking this past summer, and I got onto a cliff that I shouldn't have been on. My body automatically started to shake. I thought I was calm, but my knees started knocking together, and my body started to shake. And I couldn't stop myself from shaking. So how do you stop yourself from panicking when everything in your body says, "I should be scared right now"?
52:43 Speaker 05 You know, Reed was being very complimentary, saying, you know, "Some of us may have ice in our veins, but I don't think any of us do. We're all humans, and we all have, we're the people that came into this." But one of the benefits of training is you get a chance to practice doing things when the alarms go off. And I love this idea. I borrowed it from someone. And doing the next right thing. You may have 100 things to do, but you need to just be good enough to do the next right thing. And I specifically say this a lot about public speaking. That's something that kind of universally makes people nervous.
53:14 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
53:14 Speaker 05 And I like to get up on stage and tell people to look closely at my hand. It's shaking, but I've learned to work through that. I can give a speech while nervous. It actually helps me speak better now. But it's not that we don't get nervous. We just know how to work through or with that to still do the right thing.
53:30 Speaker 03 I want to add one thing to that. The day before we launched, you get to see some of your extended family through this quarantine facility. So you can actually talk to me just on the phone. And my dad and my brother were there. And I inadvertently made my dad tear up. And it was because I said, you know, Dad, my dad was very worried about the risk of the mission. And I said, Dad, look, I got two amazing kids. I'm 50 years old. I got an amazing life. I am so at peace right now. When we launched, I have never felt peace in my life like that, never. And I think that played a huge factor. And I was going into space. With three great people and I just felt we were all at peace. We were all so comfortable with where we were and it helped. I was much more frightened on my first
54:16 Speaker 03 mission to the International Space Station 10 years earlier because my life wasn't in that state of peace. And now I was there and I think that had a hugely foundational.
54:26 Oprah Winfrey? Would you all say the same thing?
54:28 Speaker 03 Definitely, yeah.
54:29 Oprah Winfrey? You were at peace?
54:30 Speaker 04 100%.
54:31 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah, I think that's what we're all feeling. There's something about the four of you that has connected and I'm gonna try not to cry, that is connected in such a way that is you went all the way out there, farther than any human beings have ever traveled before, to remind us of who we are. And so what you brought back to us was not just what was out there, but you brought back to us a sense of ourselves. And you can only do that when you have that together yourself.
55:05 Speaker 03 So true.
55:06 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
55:06 Speaker 04 Thank you.
55:07 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
55:08 Speaker 04 What you just said is the best gift you could ever give us because that is all we ever wanted.
55:13 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
55:14 Speaker 04 And you all did that. We didn't do that.
55:17 Oprah Winfrey? No, I think you all actually played a part. It's the synergy. It's like the symbiotic relationship here. But it feels like something really genuine and it's so genuine that that's why we move by it. At that point where you all had absolutely zero contact with Mission Control.
55:40 Speaker 06 Houston copies, we'll see you on the other side.
55:43 Oprah Winfrey? Was that scary? Or was that calming for 40 minutes?
55:47 Speaker 03 Jeremy, what do you think? It was not scary for us because we trust in science. We knew we were gonna come out the other side and to be out of contact was not a big deal.
55:56 Oprah Winfrey? Was there not one second where you're saying, I hope this works? Yeah.
55:59 Speaker 03 Not really scary, but the one thing, it was significant. Like it was significant to be in that spot with these three people. And it was obvious to me that we all looked at each other in that moment and we thought, wow, this is a really unique human experience. And one of the other things. I didn't say earlier that I should have added to the diorama comment about like just seeing the juxtaposition. But it made me feel really tiny and insignificant. And so did being on the far side of the moon with you guys. But it also at the same time made me feel extremely powerful that we were there as a human species, like powerful as a collective. And that that's kind of sums up that feeling of being in the far side of the moon.
56:39 Oprah Winfrey? I think that's interesting, representing the human species, not just Canada, not just the United States, but representing the human species. And I read that you said this, Victor, you said this, "I took a brief moment to say a short prayer of gratitude for being sent on this mission. And I was really hoping that while we were waiting to get back into contact, that people could just feel that sense of togetherness, that we were all a crew on Spaceship Earth."
57:05 Speaker 05 You know, you asked about, was it a scary moment? Not for our physical well-being or getting back in contact. The gravity assist around was going to work and we had seen that. The thing I would say I was the most worried about was that we might miss the opportunity to just be connected for a moment and to have a human moment. A moment, you know, when we have, when we have, when we lose someone, we have a moment of silence out of respect.
57:32 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
57:32 Speaker 05 Well, we were going into radio silence, and so I love this idea of a moment of togetherness. It just seemed like we had a chance to be together, do the same thing as humans for this same moment. And I was worried that that wouldn't, you know, break through the noise floor of all the things going on online and on TV. And that was my biggest concern. But we didn't have time to be worried because we were busy doing, we were closest to the moon and farthest from the earth right around that time. And so we had, Christine and I were making observations, looking out of the windows and recording them on our computers. And I actually meant to say my prayer and then go to the recording, but I was in the middle of a science recording when I said my prayer.
58:15 Speaker 05 And so, you know, the science team gets to listen to this, this recording in the middle of, of that observation. Sorry, I'm a little distracted in this moment. I'm just gonna do it on the recording. To our Heavenly Father, thank you for this opportunity, all glory to you. I just ask you to continue to be with us. We have a lot of mission ahead of us. God bless us. In Jesus' name, amen.
58:39 Speaker 05 It was also very busy. You know, we were working and we took a minute to have a human moment. And we went right back to work and we picked up communications a little over 40 minutes later.
58:49 Oprah Winfrey? Let's talk about Jeremy, that re-entry. What's it like, you know, feeling like you're buckled in and you're falling back to earth? Are you just praying that all those parachutes are gonna work? I know we were.
59:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think it's a, I feel like it's a lot easier to be in the capsule than to be on the ground watching it. You're just, it's like Reed was talking about, like I, I think we had all made peace with what we were going to experience on this journey. And we, I believed, I think we all did, like I was optimistic. I believed we were gonna come back, most likely. I wasn't sure of it, but I was pretty confident we would most likely come back. And so I was just trying to enjoy the experience. And it's really quite an incredible experience, like all the things and feels of that. Like the first thing you see is this red plasma building out the window. And then it became like this green and blue and it was flashing like somebody was out there welding. It was so bright, it hurt to look at it, put my dark visor down. The G-forces are just squeezing you into the seat. You haven't been in gravity in a while.
59:47 Speaker 03 And then eventually the drugs come out and it's shaking you around. It's all violence and then it drops you again as they detach. And then the mains come out and then Christine and I were sitting beside each other. So when the mains came out, we were like, yes.
59:59 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah, yeah. And is that the moment that you feel relieved?
1:00:03 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
1:00:03 Oprah Winfrey? When the, when the chutes?
1:00:04 Speaker 03 Really was, because from that moment on, there's still things that can happen. You can still have like dangerous gases come in the vehicle and all these things we trained for. But we had a plan for all of them. That was the first time where I felt like whatever the capsule throws at us right now, I think we can survive it.
1:00:18 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
1:00:18 Speaker 03 Prior to that, you're like, there are some things I know we just can't.
1:00:21 Oprah Winfrey? You can't, you can't. So who opened the hatch?
1:00:25 Speaker 04 Our Navy dive team.
1:00:27 Speaker 03 United States Navy.
1:00:28 Speaker 04 That's right.
1:00:34 Oprah Winfrey? You were in that water a long time. Guys, I'm like, we're just sitting there waiting. We're like, what are they doing in there? Will they open the hatch?
1:00:45 Speaker 05 We were having a great time.
1:00:46 Oprah Winfrey? What were you doing in there?
1:00:48 Speaker 04 Being happy to be alive.
1:00:49 Speaker 05 Yes.
1:00:51 Oprah Winfrey? Yes.
1:00:51 Speaker 04 Just enjoying our last few minutes in integrity with each other.
1:00:55 Speaker 03 We had all gotten out of our seats. We were still in the orange suits. But we were all out of our seats, kind of leaning back against side of spacecraft and waiting for the teams to get there. Christina had some peanut M&M's in her pocket that contraband from the moon. And we ate that. And it was just like a really nice crew moment. And you could tell, like, looking back at some of the videos of us in there, we all had adrenaline. We were chatty. We were really, really chatty, waiting for the rescue team to come get us.
1:01:21 Oprah Winfrey? Yes. And by that time, are you anxious? Or is it just the feeling of relief?
1:01:29 Speaker 03 Total peace.
1:01:30 Oprah Winfrey? Total peace.
1:01:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, and I would say more gratitude. Like, a little bit of disbelief and just gratitude. Not relief. I don't remember feeling relief, but just like, wow. We just flew around the moon. And we're back in the Pacific Ocean. And all these people are actually here. We're in the right spot.
1:01:44 Speaker 04 Yeah, exactly. They were waiting for us. And that planet that we were looking at three days ago, we're now on it.
1:01:53 Speaker 05 Tiny Earth ain't so tiny anymore.
1:01:54 Oprah Winfrey? Tiny Earth ain't so tiny anymore. So, Reed, your daughter Katie posted a beautiful, I mentioned earlier, this welcome home message on Instagram. And I'm going to read part of it. She says, "Watching the Artemis 2 rocket lift off the pad was a feeling I will never be able to describe to a single soul on this planet. Watching my own dad risking it all for the benefit of humanity was such a beautiful, yet achingly painful. To have a crater named after my mother was completely unreal. She was the funniest, most kind and beautiful mom on this earth and will now not just be part of history, but etched into the moon itself for all of eternity. To look up at the sky every night and see her is the most beautiful thing I've ever been given."
1:02:40 Speaker 03 How does a 17-year-old come up with that? I mean, that was, that was absolutely amazing. One of the, I was going to talk about this a little while ago, but I'll just talk about it right now. We have talked a lot about shared experience, but we all had unique experiences. If you crack us open, we all feel a little differently about this and we all have moments that were very, very special to us. And I think a couple of those moments, when you first talked to Bob and you were like, "Guys, it's pretty crazy down there. Like, a lot of people are paying attention." And we're all like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, whatever." But on Flight Day 7, I got to talk to my kids and that was when I saw in them
1:03:22 Speaker 03 that they understood why I put them through this.
1:03:28 Oprah Winfrey? On Day 7?
1:03:29 Speaker 03 On Day 7, I could hear and see that they now understood why this was important and why this was worth it and why I needed to go do this. They got it.
1:03:39 Oprah Winfrey? They fully got it.
1:03:40 Speaker 03 And that, if you could ever get your daughter to write something like that about you, it's pretty...
1:03:44 Oprah Winfrey? You're doing OK.
1:03:45 Speaker 03 It's pretty powerful.
1:03:46 Speaker 04 It absolves you in a lot of ways.
1:03:48 Speaker 03 So, oh, my gosh, you just summed up every feeling in one word.
1:03:53 Speaker 04 There's guilt that comes with putting a lot of risk to chase your dreams, even if you are doing it for the right reasons.
1:04:00 Speaker 03 Selfishness.
1:04:01 Speaker 04 Yep.
1:04:03 Oprah Winfrey? And so, your daughters, their reaction?
1:04:05 Speaker 05 You asked us earlier if there's one thing that, you know, is a moment or has changed your perspective. My favorite thing about doing these types of things is what it does to our family members. You know, we work at NASA and the Canadian Space Agency and with all of our partners and we're so close to it that it's easy to think that everybody is as interested in space exploration as we are. But when your family responds in a way that surprises you, when your child writes something like that or, you know, the things that I... I listened to one of Jeremy's kids talk about, you know, parents want to see their kids accomplish their dreams, but saying your parent accomplished their...
1:04:51 Speaker 05 And I was just like, wow. He's got a gift in speaking, first of all. But that is just a beautiful thing to chew on. And I just love what my parents, listening to my parents reflect on. The people at my church reflect on this experience. You know, I don't want to talk about it. I want to sit and listen to their experiences of the mission as well. And so, you know, listening to my kids celebrate this and my wife celebrate it has also been an amazing part of this journey.
1:05:19 Oprah Winfrey? Well, I know you didn't have kids, but you came home to a Sadie. I have a Sadie too.
1:05:23 Speaker 04 Oh, my goodness.
1:05:24 Oprah Winfrey? The Sadie was 17.
1:05:25 Speaker 04 I think Sadie really got it.
1:05:26 Oprah Winfrey? Sadie got it?
1:05:27 Speaker 04 She really understood.
1:05:29 Oprah Winfrey? Sadie would have gotten it if you'd just gone to the grocery store, though.
1:05:31 Speaker 04 That is true, and or if that was you at the door. That would be exactly what she does. And she was extra spazzy this day. Yeah, I wanted some kisses, but she wasn't having it.
1:05:42 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Change Forever, Change Forever. And what do you want to say to the world now that you've come back? You're settling in?
1:05:53 Speaker 05 I would just say, choose joy. It's just we have a deliberate choice every day in what we decide to use our energy for and what we decide to focus on. Just choose joy.
1:06:03 Oprah Winfrey? Choose joy.
1:06:05 Speaker 05 Trust, togetherness, gratitude. Thank you to the world for trusting us to do what we did, our role in this mission. And, you know, thinking about that, just the overriding responses, how much gratitude that that creates. And the one common theme through all of this in each other, in our heat shield engineering team, the flight control, the launch control team, our agencies and our partnership is trust. It takes trust to go to space, more than it takes rockets and rocket engines and parachutes. It takes trust. And so I just wish we would think about those things, trust, togetherness, and gratitude.
1:06:43 Oprah Winfrey? Trust, togetherness, and gratitude. Christina?
1:06:47 Speaker 04 Well, I hoped I would come up with something while you guys were talking. There's just so much.
1:06:52 Oprah Winfrey? What you said about a crew, that is everlasting.
1:06:55 Speaker 04 That was something that meant a lot to me that day. And I could definitely say that looking back at Earth and seeing that it's not guaranteed. What we have is not given. It's not an absolute. It's a lifeboat that we share. And if you, like Jeremy says, if you saw something in us, it can be emulated because just like we were a spaceship out in the universe, this planet is a spaceship out in the universe. And that means we are a crew.
1:07:27 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah. We gotta figure it out. When you all were out there saying those beautiful words, I was saying, "We all gotta figure it out." We've got to, what you were saying earlier, Victor, we've got to figure out a way to bring that perspective that you all saw to other people so that we figure it out. We stop fighting over the things that don't matter and figure out the things that do and bring ourselves together. You get the final words, sir.
1:07:57 Speaker 03 First, on figuring it out and being together, I just don't want it to be lost that differences are absolutely okay.
1:08:06 Oprah Winfrey? Yeah.
1:08:06 Speaker 03 And they're very powerful. It's being able to just accept differences and come and discuss them and just pull a little from each difference. Being just open to the fact that we can have different viewpoints. And that doesn't mean you're right and I'm wrong, or I'm right and you're wrong. Like, let's talk about these things. Let's learn from each other. I think that's the first thing I would say. And then, listening to Oprah, everything you've said and what Christina, Victor, and Jeremy have said, the only thing that I can possibly add is, I've listened to these birds chirp the whole time we've been out here. I've felt a little bit of wind just coming from the left to right of my face. And I do think sometimes when you leave Earth and come back to it, you can take a minute to appreciate the beauty of nature. It's very special and...
1:08:54 Speaker 03 It should be appreciated every day.
1:08:57 Oprah Winfrey? Thank you. Thank you for reminding us of ourselves. Thank you, Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialists Christina Cook and Jeremy Hansen, and everybody at NASA for making this interview in my backyard. Such an honor, such an honor, such an honor. Go well, everybody.
1:09:16 Speaker 03 Wow. Thank you.
1:09:17 Oprah Winfrey? Right from my own backyard. You can subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.
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