Cosmic Queries: GMOs with Bill Nye (Part 2)

Just in case Part 1 wasn’t controversial enough, Bill Nye and Chuck Nice are back to answer new fan questions about Genetically Modified Organisms, unintended consequences, pollinator problems and more.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:22Bill Nye?

  Greetings, greetings, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, kids of all ages. Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I am your guest host, Bill Nye, and with me is my beloved colleague and insightful science commentator, Chuck Nice.

• 0:37Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Bill.

• 0:38Bill Nye?

  And today is some more Cosmic Queries.

• 0:40Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:41Bill Nye?

  Where we attempt to comment and answer your queries from the cosmos. I was going for some alliteration there.

• 0:49Chuck Nice?

  I think you got it.

• 0:50Bill Nye?

  Hey, sounds.

• 0:51Chuck Nice?

  I think you nailed it.

• 0:52Bill Nye?

  Well, let's, uh, let's take our first query.

• 0:55Chuck Nice?

  All right, so, uh, let's just jump right into this. This is, you know what, before we, before we go any further, since we're right.

• 1:01Bill Nye?

  We hardly started, Chuck.

• 1:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. Since we're right at the top of the show, why don't we take a question from our Patreon patron?

• 1:08Bill Nye?

  Oh, a Patreon patron. So if you're a patron of StarTalk.

• 1:12Chuck Nice?

  Right. Through Patreon.

• 1:14Bill Nye?

  Through Patreon, you have a question. Wait, that's not working. A question, a query.

• 1:20Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh. And we're definitely gonna read it because you have proven yourself and your loyalty by giving of your substance to this show.

• 1:28Bill Nye?

  Yes, so if you support the show, we'll get your question on.

• 1:31Chuck Nice?

  Hey, man. Kinda sounds a little quid pro quo to me, but who am I, right? Who am I? I don't judge, you know?

• 1:38Bill Nye?

  Quid pro quo is an excellent way to tie in with Cosmic Query Questions.

• 1:43Chuck Nice?

  Nicely done, Bill Nye!

• 1:45Bill Nye?

  Hit me the ball, Chuck. We gotta keep moving here.

• 1:48Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man! I was impressed with that, I gotta say. This is from Yawa, and she says, "A Queens, New York native, asking, isn't there a fundamental difference between genetically modified foods and the cultivation of foods?"

• 2:04Bill Nye?

  Uh. Is there a fundamental difference? So I think by cultivation, she, I think she means traditional hybridizing. Mm-hmm. Where you would take the pollen from one plant, shake it onto the eggs, the ova of another plant. And see what happens. And you get a hybrid. Yeah. So George Washington is said to have done this. Sounds sexy. It is, literally. That sounds sexy, baby. No, no. This is what happened in nature. We have two sexes. Yeah. Males and females. Okay. But, uh, but in fungi, it is believed certain species have hundreds of sex types. Aha. And that's a whole nother deal out there in the land of fungus. So what happens is... Clearly in the land of fungus.

• 2:47Bill Nye?

  So humans have been hybridizing within species, shaking pollen from one plant onto the eggs of another. Okay. For centuries. Shake it, baby. But we found out that not only in nature, not only do humans now, biotechnologists, have the ability to take genes from one species and insert them into another. For example, the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium gene into the corn. Okay. Or the soybean, making BT soybeans, BT corn. Right. Which the corn boar eats, the protein from the Baron, uh, Bacillus thuringiensis, uh, crystallizes in the corn boar's gut and the corn boar dies. What? So that's where, that's the deal. So that's why the corn boar is not a problem anymore.

• 3:32Bill Nye?

  Instead of fighting these, or these pests. So you let the plant do the fighting for you? Instead of fighting the pests with chemicals of death. We're empowering the plant to do it on its own. That's right. And so you do it as carefully as you can to be sure. But the other thing that was discovered recently, as I mentioned in our recent show, is that, uh, sweet potatoes, in this way of example. Yeah. This happened naturally. A virus got its genes in sweet potatoes, the ones that we know and love. Mm-hmm. And we supported that as cultivators of sweet potatoes and encouraged that in nature. So it happens in nature and now we're doing it. Uh scientifically or biotechnologically and the difference really becomes blurry.

• 4:16Bill Nye?

  Uh whether it's natural or humans are doing it.

• 4:19Chuck Nice?

  Right, because all we're kinda doing is mimicking what nature has already done.

• 4:24Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so the whole thing though, your concern is if you're doing it so fast that you're gonna do something in the ecosystem that nobody anticipated.

• 4:32Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 4:33Bill Nye?

  And you don't want this so-called knock-on or unintended consequences.

• 4:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:37Bill Nye?

  And the classic is.

• 4:38Chuck Nice?

  Like lizard babies or something like, you know.

• 4:40Bill Nye?

  Uh, yes.

• 4:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 4:42Bill Nye?

  Like the Jurassic Park.

• 4:44Chuck Nice?

  That's what I'm saying. Lizard babies or, uh, you know, uh, or an intelligent dinosaur.

• 4:50Bill Nye?

  Yes, named Charlie, who leads us all sorts of trouble with that.

• 4:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:54Bill Nye?

  Uh, that and the unintended consequence that really did happen in nature through humans. We developed this, we, people developed this herbicide called glyphosate. Kills all the weeds, kills all of everything.

• 5:08Chuck Nice?

  Everything.

• 5:09Bill Nye?

  Except the plants that have this cool gene in them that allows them to grow right through it. Uh, we also killed the milkweed and the milkweed, which I now prefer to call milk flower.

• 5:20Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 5:21Bill Nye?

  Is what, yes, is what the monarch butterflies rely on.

• 5:24Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 5:24Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so we accidentally have decimated, uh, the monarch butterfly population, reduced it over the last two decades by ninety percent.

• 5:33Chuck Nice?

  Which is probably a good thing, cause when they flap their wings over here, it causes a pretty bad storm in Japan.

• 5:39Bill Nye?

  Oh, this is the butterfly effect. But seriously.

• 5:43Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 5:43Bill Nye?

  Brilliant, Chuck, really, really good, really brilliant. Uh, so the thing is, you don't want that where you're accidentally wiping out a pollinator, potential pollinator species.

• 5:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:55Bill Nye?

  So I went to the meeting in Minneapolis, the Monarch Venture, where they got the crazy bleeding heart liberal hippies.

• 6:03Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 6:04Bill Nye?

  Like me. Uh, and the corporate pigs like Conagra Monsanto Dowt Pioneer.

• 6:12Chuck Nice?

  Boo.

• 6:13Bill Nye?

  Well, anyway, they all got together. They all want to bring monarchs back and they believe that they can by creating this so-called hopscotch highway of milk flowers.

• 6:23Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 6:24Bill Nye?

  Growing these milkweeds on purpose.

• 6:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:27Bill Nye?

  In certain tracts of land on the flyways that the monarchs exploit getting north and south.

• 6:32Chuck Nice?

  So, and along their migration pla- path, you purposely put this milkflower. They have a monarch filling station from north to south.

• 6:43Bill Nye?

  That's it.

• 6:43Chuck Nice?

  And along the way, they're doing the little butterfly horizontal mambo and we get more and more monarchs.

• 6:51Bill Nye?

  That's right. So they're, the, the prediction of the venture, this group that met in Minneapolis, diverse group, people that you would not think getting along are all in this to, I gotta say, as an observer, they're all in this getting along. They believe that this year, the monarch population will go back up.

• 7:06Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 7:07Bill Nye?

  One test is worth a thousand expert opinions. So stay tuned and let's see if the monarchs come back. Let's take a look.

• 7:13Chuck Nice?

  All right, people. There you have it. That was a great question. Let's move on to Dave Ross from Facebook who says, dearest Mr. Nye. My God, it sounds like the beginning of a civil war letter. Dearest Mr. Nye, the days here have been brutal.

• 7:27Bill Nye?

  Wow, Chuck. Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, come back.

• 7:32Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. Sorry. All right. Okay. Here we go. Okay. Dearest Mr. Nye, uh, what do you find to be the best way to explain to people that GMOs are harmless and can actually be beneficial to humanity? This is a guy who's already on your side here, Bill. Are there any dangers to local ecosystems if GMOs manage to find their way, ooh, outside of farmers' fields? This is a great question because...

• 7:56Bill Nye?

  No, they do. I mean, they do find their way outside of farmers' fields.

• 7:59Chuck Nice?

  You get a little windblown?

• 8:00Bill Nye?

  They get windblown, yeah.

• 8:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. So it's, it's, so, so it... Can that happen? Can we actually decimate unintentionally neighboring crops? Because you're using GMOs, they get caught up in the wind and now somebody's growing them even though they don't want to.

• 8:18Bill Nye?

  Oh, this is a concern of certain organic farmers that they're, these seeds end up in their soil. They get contaminated and they work very hard to sort them out. With that said, I would ask you, how often do soybeans grow in your yard? You know, not that much, but in the, in-

• 8:36Chuck Nice?

  Nothing grows in my yard, Bill.

• 8:38Bill Nye?

  But in agricultural areas- In agricultural areas, if you, people have to be very diligent, but most, most plants that grow as crops-

• 8:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 8:48Bill Nye?

  Are planted on purpose. That's, I guess that's where the word plant is tied in. So if you're not planting them on purpose, there's just not that much contamination. And the infamous cases where when people claim they got canola growing, they grew into their, that flew into their fields accidentally and started growing. But there is substantial evidence that those cultivars were carefully cultivated. This is to say, one guy claimed that these seeds blew into his field, but they really didn't. He really planted them.

• 9:20Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 9:21Bill Nye?

  And so this is where these notorious-

• 9:23Chuck Nice?

  So basically, he's trying to skirt paying for seeds.

• 9:25Bill Nye?

  Well, that's, so by the way, if you watch that movie Food Incorporated and this, you know, guy's in tears about the seeds. It turns out he was reported by his neighbors.

• 9:34Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 9:35Bill Nye?

  Who were resentful of him not paying the licensing fee for these extraordinary or these improved, claimed to be improved seeds. So I get it.

• 9:45Chuck Nice?

  He's a seed hacker.

• 9:47Bill Nye?

  He was a seed hacker, which is understandable, but the neighbor, his neighbors were angry about it.

• 9:53Chuck Nice?

  Snitches. Okay, cool. By the way, Dave brought, that was a great, great answer, Bill.

• 9:58Bill Nye?

  You don't have to sound so surprised, Chuck.

• 10:02Chuck Nice?

  So Dave, actually, I want to read this because he says, "As an aside, I'm proud to say, I'm a relatively new member of the Planetary Society's Discovery Team."

• 10:13Bill Nye?

  I love you, Dave. The Discovery Team's a level of participation we encourage you all to consider. So we just had a big success, you know, we launched our light sail spacecraft.

• 10:23Chuck Nice?

  Yes, you did.

• 10:23Bill Nye?

  First, we qualified the thing, which is takes some vibration and thermal vacuum testing and all this stuff. And then we got it on a rocket, then we got it into space, we deployed the sails, we took a picture. Mission success.

• 10:34Chuck Nice?

  Nice, congratulations.

• 10:36Bill Nye?

  And next year will be bigger and cooler. I mean, the orbit will be bigger and much more, to me, much more exciting.

• 10:43Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 10:44Bill Nye?

  Except, we pulled it off, which was pretty exciting.

• 10:46Chuck Nice?

  That is exciting, and you should be proud.

• 10:48Bill Nye?

  I am.

• 10:49Chuck Nice?

  Excellent. Let's move on to Juan Diego Lopez.

• 10:53Bill Nye?

  Juan Lopez.

• 10:53Chuck Nice?

  I have to say it like that. Juan Diego Lopez.

• 10:56Bill Nye?

  You could say it with a Hispanic, "Juan Lopez."

• 10:59Chuck Nice?

  No, Juan Diego Lopez.

• 11:01Bill Nye?

  Okay.

• 11:02Chuck Nice?

  "You killed my father." Never mind.

• 11:04Bill Nye?

  Are you confusing that trauma with a Kung-Fu movie? Because they have a lot of the same issues, you know, they got...

• 11:13Chuck Nice?

  They do. But that would be "You killed my master."

• 11:15Bill Nye?

  Those are evolutionary ties there, where if your family, and you mess with somebody, a family member, it's like the mafia, you know, there's trouble.

• 11:25Chuck Nice?

  That's always, always. That's right. "You have the right to avenge my death."

• 11:29Bill Nye?

  That's right, yeah.

• 11:30Chuck Nice?

  Okay. This is, hey, Juan says, "Hi from Bogota, Colombia." Phew, okay, let me see if I can get this right now. "Why is that, why is it that the protection of genetic patrimony, literal translation from the Spanish term, I don't know if it's right, is way more strict for GMOs than for actual endemic plants and animals? Both are profitable, but endemic plants often have new chemicals that we can use for medicine. For example, you could take samples of endemic life in Colombia to the US relatively easy. But if you dare to try to bring seeds of alfalfa from the US, it's impossible or even illegal."

• 12:15Chuck Nice?

  So I think what Juan is really wanting to know is, why do we stop? People from bringing flora and fauna from different countries to other countries.

• 12:27Bill Nye?

  Well, shooting from the hip, you don't want to contaminate ecosystems.

• 12:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 12:32Bill Nye?

  But he's asking, it sounds like an agricultural policy question.

• 12:34Chuck Nice?

  Hey, I think he is because he's talking about endemic plants.

• 12:37Bill Nye?

  So I don't, I don't work for Pioneer Seeds or Monsanto Seeds. But I imagine that there's something in Colombia where they don't want these, the man to bring these farm products to their farms so that they can have their own farms. It's like a tariff. It's what it sounds like.

• 12:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 12:54Bill Nye?

  Uh, so I'm not an expert on the farm policy in Colombia.

• 12:58Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 12:59Bill Nye?

  But, uh, I'll tell you this, in India, where there's a lot of subsistence or near subsistence farming. In Africa, where there's a lot of close to the bone farming.

• 13:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:10Bill Nye?

  Everybody embraces genetically modified seeds because they get much higher yield and they do not, are not subject to these pests and these plant diseases that are troublesome for farmers. So that's gotta be part of the thinking, uh, for those of you who are voting and taxpaying with respect to the, uh, commerce associated with agricultural products. Take it Chuck.

• 13:35Chuck Nice?

  All right, um, with that being said, here, let me ask you a question from Chuck Nice. Uh, Chuck Nice comes to us from the Argo Studios, uh, StarTalk Radio.

• 13:44Bill Nye?

  From right across this table.

• 13:45Chuck Nice?

  Chuck Nice comes to us from right across the table.

• 13:49Bill Nye?

  What's the capital of right across the table?

• 13:51Chuck Nice?

  Uh, that would be, um...

• 13:53Bill Nye?

  Right Across the Table City.

• 13:54Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 13:55Bill Nye?

  Right Across the Table Annapolis.

• 13:56Chuck Nice?

  And, uh, Cupville, which is, uh, located right here.

• 13:59Bill Nye?

  It's right, the Cupville is right across the table.

• 14:01Chuck Nice?

  Right where that cut is, Cup is. So here's the thing. Um, as we talk about this, I believe that a lot of this is due to the fact that, uh, there seems to be a great deal of secrecy around GMOs when it comes to these large companies, uh, these multinational, uh, agricultural, agricultural companies. Why is it that they seem to be so proprietary, somewhat secretive? And also, they go out of their way to stop labeling from happening, which elicits suspicion from the general public?

• 14:33Bill Nye?

  Uh, you got me on the labeling thing.

• 14:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:35Bill Nye?

  I, I told those, those people at Monsanto and when I was at the Monarch Butterfly Meeting at, I guess it was Pioneer Dow, Dow Pioneer Seeds, I told them, why don't you just put on there proudly GMO? Go for it.

• 14:48Chuck Nice?

  That would help.

• 14:49Bill Nye?

  Well, would it? Or would it have this huge backlash against the people who, uh, protest these things and they, the guy was singing a song about Monsanto must burn and, uh, I don't know, would, or would it have a backlash?

• 15:03Chuck Nice?

  Well, no, it'd have a backlash initially.

• 15:06Bill Nye?

  In the short term?

• 15:06Chuck Nice?

  In the short term, and then people will actually start looking at it.

• 15:09Bill Nye?

  So Chuck Nice is preaching it, everybody. Bring it on.

• 15:12Chuck Nice?

  Well, no, I'm just saying the natural progression would be you deal with the backlash, which causes people to take note, which causes them to do some research, and then they find out the truth, and if the truth is innocuous, then it's not a big deal anymore.

• 15:25Bill Nye?

  Exactly. So I say let the market sort it out. I say this all the time. If, if they think, if people think they can grow organic food, that's more appealing and cheaper and better and so on, then people will buy that stuff instead of the traditional farm foods. So we'll see. I mean, I say, you got me. Why don't they try it?

• 15:44Chuck Nice?

  Why don't they try it? Alright, here we go. This is Joshua White from Facebook. He wants to know, "Hey Bill, when do you think GMOs will be used to bioremediate contaminated areas? Like plants that are specifically designed to draw up heavy metals out of soil, or bacteria that can clean up underground aquifers contaminated with solvents?"

• 16:02Bill Nye?

  Uh, that's a great idea. And so, the, the place to start with that, making, let's say in this case, bacteria that could metabolize oil in an oil spill.

• 16:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay, now we're talking some serious money here. I love the way you're thinking.

• 16:18Bill Nye?

  So that would be a really cool application. However...

• 16:22Chuck Nice?

  Can we do that? Cause I'd need some money, cause that would be great.

• 16:25Bill Nye?

  So are you in the oil spill cleanup business?

• 16:27Chuck Nice?

  No, but I will be.

• 16:28Bill Nye?

  Not yet. So this is a good example of a place where maybe you could take the organic chemicals and organ, organic chemicals are chemicals that come from organisms which nominally have carbon. That's what organic chemistry is. And you could have some bacteria that could metabolize that, and then leave behind all the other stuff that comes out of oil wells, sulfur and so on, and let it sink to the bottom of the ocean. Or metabolize that too, and make it into some amazing... Plastic or have it all stick together in a big, in a big oil tar sheet that is much easier to lap up with your oil tar sheets lapping up ship.

• 17:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, your oil tar bounty.

• 17:08Bill Nye?

  Yeah, uh, so this would be an example of something that, uh, I mean, a place to start. As far as taking heavy metals out of the soil, that's okay. Then you gotta put, process those plants. That might be a fine thing.

• 17:21Chuck Nice?

  So now.

• 17:22Bill Nye?

  Like at a landfill.

• 17:23Chuck Nice?

  So when you say.

• 17:24Bill Nye?

  Someplace where you want to build a condominium or whatever.

• 17:26Chuck Nice?

  Wouldn't you just, uh, pull the stuff out of the soil and then uproot the trees and then use them for something else?

• 17:32Bill Nye?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 17:33Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 17:34Bill Nye?

  And then build your condos right there without having the children at risk of, uh, being around all these heavy metals.

• 17:38Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 17:39Bill Nye?

  That's a great, I mean, it's a fine idea. I'm not in that business and I got a feeling though, there's somebody who is. Man, those guys at Monsanto, they, I'm not saying it's all about Monsanto, okay, everybody.

• 17:52Chuck Nice?

  Please.

• 17:53Bill Nye?

  But they spend $2 million a day.

• 17:55Chuck Nice?

  On R and D?

• 17:56Bill Nye?

  On research. A day.

• 17:58Chuck Nice?

  See.

• 17:59Bill Nye?

  They spend almost a hundred million dollars a year on research, not on, not on shipping their products, just on research.

• 18:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 18:07Bill Nye?

  And that's, I think they're a victim of their own success. And I know the feeling, look at you and me Chuck.

• 18:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:12Bill Nye?

  We're victims of our own success because we've been so fascinating in this first segment of Star Talk Radio.

• 18:18Chuck Nice?

  That it's over?

• 18:19Bill Nye?

  That we're out of time. So stay tuned. We'll be right back. It's Chuck Nice and Bill Nye. You're listening to Star Talk. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, kids of all ages. Bill Nye here, your host, your guest host of Star Talk Radio. I'm here with my beloved fellow science commentator, Chuck Nice.

• 18:43Chuck Nice?

  Hey.

• 18:44Bill Nye?

  And today is the next segment of your Cosmic Queries where we, uh, work hard to answer your questions that have come into us from the electric internet out there in the cyber ether space that all the, all the kids are using.

• 18:59Chuck Nice?

  All the kids are doing it and we're gonna do it too.

• 19:01Bill Nye?

  So hit me the first question there.

• 19:03Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 19:04Bill Nye?

  Doctor Nice.

• 19:05Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Coming from, uh, Facebook, this is Sylvain, uh, Boutigny.

• 19:12Bill Nye?

  Oh, yes.

• 19:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Facebook wants to know, I would be interested.

• 19:19Chuck Nice?

  Uh, in having your insights about genetically modified animals. And how important they may be for basic research as well as the pharmaceutical industry. Now you are opening up a whole nother can of worms here, buddy. Cause we're talking about animals, plants are insentient, animals have feelings. So where do you stand, Bill?

• 19:40Bill Nye?

  Plants are insentient. Bring it on Chuck. They don't think.

• 19:45Chuck Nice?

  They don't think.

• 19:46Bill Nye?

  As far as we know.

• 19:46Chuck Nice?

  That's right. Well, as far as we know.

• 19:48Bill Nye?

  That's right. Did you ever see the original movie, The Thing? Oh, it's good.

• 19:54Chuck Nice?

  I don't think I did.

• 19:55Bill Nye?

  Imagine no heart, no feelings, the perfect creature. And it's because The Thing is like this vegetable deal. Alright, so. Uh, we do genetically modify animals and this we're talking about lab rats that glow in the dark, the little mice.

• 20:08Chuck Nice?

  Or the mouse with the ear on its forehead, the human ear.

• 20:11Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so these are very important to our research. These are very important to the way humans know, uh, our genes. And on balance, I'm in favor of it and, and I'm not a vegetarian. Maybe one day soon I will become one.

• 20:27Chuck Nice?

  No, no, you won't.

• 20:28Bill Nye?

  Uh, well, maybe, I mean, but.

• 20:30Chuck Nice?

  You love bacon too much.

• 20:31Bill Nye?

  Oh, I mean, maybe, but I understand, you know, we raise animals to kill them and eat them routinely. So we, by analogies, analogy, we raise especially mice for laboratory studies that, uh, that enable wonderful things. With that said, I'm very sympathetic to the idea that there's a, there's a line that you draw.

• 20:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:54Bill Nye?

  And a rhesus monkey is like very similar in, in, to me, in many ways, superior to my old boss. So I can understand where you don't want to do experiments on, on that guy. Or gal.

• 21:09Chuck Nice?

  That.

• 21:11Bill Nye?

  Well, you met him. So you know who I'm talking about. So I kid because I love.

• 21:17Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's hilarious.

• 21:19Bill Nye?

  If you're one of my old bosses out there, just notice that consider yourself an amalgam. You are the old, for Bill and I, the old boss is a, is a mixture of many characteristics of people for whom I worked. And I remind you all.

• 21:32Chuck Nice?

  Composite man.

• 21:33Bill Nye?

  Yes, as a manager myself nowadays, people don't quit jobs. They quit bosses. So with that said, I think it's still very important for humankind to have access to these so-called laboratory models. That's the noun they use to describe these rats and mice.

• 21:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:52Bill Nye?

  That we have, whose genes we have modified to understand our own genes.

• 21:57Chuck Nice?

  So now, uh, with that being said, okay, so you do, you're, you're, you're saying that it is important. Um, should there be a push?

• 22:10Chuck Nice?

  That sounded like a very specific kind of push for a second there. Uh, should there be a push to find a different way? Or now here's my, here's my follow-up. To genetically modify these animals so that as you work on them, they feel no pain or like, do you understand me?

• 22:29Bill Nye?

  I do, absolutely.

• 22:30Chuck Nice?

  Suppose you could genetically modify a mouse so that the pain receptors, a mouse is born with no pain receptors. Therefore it never knows any type of physical suffering because it can never feel that. Should that be the way that we're, we handle it?

• 22:43Bill Nye?

  That's a hard question Chuck, because I don't know that you can prove that a mouse would never do that. Plus, would it really be a mouse and would it be a good model for a human? After you changed it? And so the example I give you.

• 22:54Chuck Nice?

  See, see.

• 22:55Bill Nye?

  Is I know a guy not too well, but I know a guy who's in his 30s who wants to have his head frozen. So that in centuries hence, they can unfreeze his head and connect it to some future unfrozen head machine. And he will then be able to conduct his life and experience life three centuries from now. With that said, after you do that, can you really replicate the brain combined with the central nervous system? Now, we're talking about mice in a laboratory.

• 23:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:28Bill Nye?

  And so I, I believe that like, try to talk without moving your hands, even when we're on the radio. There's something going on between, there's feedback between your distant nerve endings and your brain. And so I think if you were to modify a mouse so that it felt no pain, I'm not sure he would still be a good model for a person. There's people I'm sure who think deep thoughts about this.

• 23:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:51Bill Nye?

  Uh, but I don't know the answer.

• 23:52Chuck Nice?

  Yes, and, uh, those people are heads in a jar. That's what we're looking at. All right, well, listen, that was a really, uh, thought provoking question, Sylvan, uh, or Sylvane, and we appreciate you for that. Let's move on to Brandon.

• 24:09Bill Nye?

  Wow, God. You guys, you can't see Chuck's face, but he's a back he has taken, a back he has been taken.

• 24:17Chuck Nice?

  Brandon.

• 24:18Bill Nye?

  Brandon, this better be good. I got a feeling it is.

• 24:21Chuck Nice?

  Ag Cameran. Brandon Ag Cameran.

• 24:26Bill Nye?

  Ag Cameran.

• 24:27Chuck Nice?

  Ag Cameran. Okay.

• 24:29Bill Nye?

  The Branster.

• 24:30Chuck Nice?

  I think I got it. Brandon says, hey, Bill, considering you've been on both sides of the argument on GMOs, can you, in your opinion, I don't know whose else opinion you would do it in.

• 24:41Bill Nye?

  I'm very good at mine.

• 24:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Uh, list the most beneficial and non beneficial reasons for GMOs. Ooh, nice one, uh, Mr., uh, oh, he spelled it out phonetically here, Ag Cameran, Ag Cameran. So, uh, Mr. Ag Cameran, here's the deal, he wants you. To play your own devil's advocate.

• 25:02Bill Nye?

  Yeah, good and bad.

• 25:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 25:03Bill Nye?

  So as I say, the good thing is-

• 25:04Chuck Nice?

  Ladies and gentlemen, Bill Nye, pro and con.

• 25:08Bill Nye?

  Uh, the good side is we get more yield for per hectare or acre.

• 25:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay, one.

• 25:13Bill Nye?

  So in other words, we have less impactful farming. In other words, we affect the ecosystem less because we'll produce more food on less land. That's the upside of genetically modified-

• 25:23Chuck Nice?

  That's one, four.

• 25:24Bill Nye?

  We're using biology to fight pests and diseases rather than chemistry.

• 25:28Chuck Nice?

  That's two, four.

• 25:29Bill Nye?

  So that's good. The unintended consequence, the classic one, is either the things you don't know. To be, not to go all misguided military principle, uh, policy on you, but the unknowns, the known unknowns.

• 25:44Chuck Nice?

  The known unknowns.

• 25:45Bill Nye?

  Like, well, you don't know what you're gonna do. But the, the one that everybody has observed is the monarch butterflies, where we have reduced their population 90%. Not as a consequence exactly of raising genetically modified food, but by using this extraordinarily effective herbicide that has killed the milk flowers, or milkweeds, which nourish the monarchs.

• 26:07Chuck Nice?

  So an unintended consequence there.

• 26:10Bill Nye?

  And so are there ones that you don't know? Are there other insects and pollinators that you affected accidentally by messing up their food source? And the other unintended consequence, uh, and not a necessary one, is by monoculture farming. Enormous tracts of a single type of plant make it very hard for bee, bees as pollinators to get the job done. They gotta go out there, do that one crop, then there's nothing to do, and somebody puts them back in a box and puts them on a truck and takes them to a different crop, and they just get beaten up. They can't handle it. But this is not necessarily-

• 26:43Chuck Nice?

  Then you get bees coming home stressed out.

• 26:45Bill Nye?

  They do, they are.

• 26:46Chuck Nice?

  Babe, God, what a day, I gotta tell you. You should've seen it. It's stressed on and on forever.

• 26:52Bill Nye?

  It's a girl voice.

• 26:53Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's correct, cause all the bees are female.

• 26:55Bill Nye?

  All the ones that are pollinators, yeah. So go, go ahead, do it again.

• 26:58Chuck Nice?

  Honey, I just can't believe the day I had. I'm telling you, this is just awful. Those fields just seem to stretch forever.

• 27:07Bill Nye?

  Yes, alright. Chuck Nice is a four-winged fly. Alright, so, uh-

• 27:13Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 27:13Bill Nye?

  Uh, the unintended consequences are-

• 27:17Bill Nye?

  Things like the monarch butterflies and this monocultural farming, which affects the pollinators and our whole agriculture system. So, these are things that are avoidable.

• 27:25Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 27:26Bill Nye?

  So, it's good and bad, but it's manageable. And I think it's just a necessary consequence. When you're gonna have 7.2 billion people become 9.2 billion people, you're gonna have to do something to feed them.

• 27:37Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:37Bill Nye?

  And indeed, we all prefer the texture, taste, and nutrients from nominally, uh, hybridized crops over the last 10,000 years.

• 27:46Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:47Bill Nye?

  And this modern biotechnological way of modifying is just the next thing humans are doing.

• 27:52Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha. So, alright, that was great to see you, uh, argue both sides there. And basically, the, the, the biggest problem is the unknowns.

• 28:01Bill Nye?

  Well, that's it. That's what you wanna avoid.

• 28:03Chuck Nice?

  But you can't do it until you do it. You can't know until you do it.

• 28:06Bill Nye?

  But, well, humans have been doing this for centuries. You know, we try this plant, it doesn't work, so we try that plant. And so, the claim is...

• 28:13Chuck Nice?

  Believe me, I've been there.

• 28:14Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so, the claim is that you do it very carefully.

• 28:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:19Bill Nye?

  And so, for those of you tuned into our previous episode, I talked about, these guys are able to ass, these people are able to assay or sequence genes literally 10 million times faster.

• 28:31Chuck Nice?

  I know.

• 28:32Bill Nye?

  Than they could even a decade ago.

• 28:34Chuck Nice?

  Fantastic.

• 28:34Bill Nye?

  It's amazing. 10 million times. And the reason is, people have invested in the technol, people, engineers who've developed the technology worked really hard on it because there's so much, uh, to be, so much gain to be had.

• 28:47Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:47Bill Nye?

  And everybody prefers delicious corn to not delicious corn. Everybody prefers delicious apples or good tasting apples, not to single out a particular flavor. I do like the red delicious.

• 28:59Chuck Nice?

  I'm a Honeycrisp man myself.

• 29:01Bill Nye?

  I'm down with Honeycrisp.

• 29:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 29:03Bill Nye?

  But I, I will remind everybody, there's two things about red delicious that I really like.

• 29:07Chuck Nice?

  Uh, which are?

• 29:08Bill Nye?

  They're red.

• 29:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 29:09Bill Nye?

  And they're...

• 29:10Chuck Nice?

  Delicious?

• 29:10Bill Nye?

  Yes. I like my Galas.

• 29:13Chuck Nice?

  Uh, Galas are okay.

• 29:15Bill Nye?

  Yeah, I like the Braeburn.

• 29:15Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, the Braeburns are right, too.

• 29:17Bill Nye?

  I'm, uh, I'm not a big Granny Smith guy, but I'll choke it down. So, anyways, with that said, uh, when it comes to genetically modified food or crops, we just have to be diligent.

• 29:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay. So, here's the deal.

• 29:29Bill Nye?

  And that requires regulation. Wah!

• 29:31Chuck Nice?

  Now, uh, see, now you lost me, man. I'm a Republican. I'm, I'm all against the regulation of any kind. Sorry. Okay.

• 29:38Bill Nye?

  Okay. So, I'll watch for you when the light's red.

• 29:40Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Uh, here we go.

• 29:46Chuck Nice?

  Dietrich, Diet- Dietrich, oh Jesus.

• 29:48Bill Nye?

  Dietrich?

• 29:49Chuck Nice?

  Dietrich, thank you. Dietrich Inswig wants to know this. Oh, Kaya. Dietrich Inswig Kaya. That's the name, right? Okay.

• 29:59Bill Nye?

  D I Kaya.

• 30:00Chuck Nice?

  D I Kaya. Says-

• 30:02Bill Nye?

  Do it yourself, Kaya.

• 30:03Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 30:04Bill Nye?

  No, that's D Y. I'm sorry, carry on.

• 30:06Chuck Nice?

  There we go. Hello, Mr. Nye. Do you foresee the GMOs will be the sole food source at the grocery stores anytime soon? Meaning, will food be so difficult to come by as the population grows exponentially? That all food will have to be modified in some way so that it can be grown and harvested in widespread locations? In other words, are we headed towards soylent green, but it's not people?

• 30:31Bill Nye?

  Uh, the answer is we're already there.

• 30:33Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 30:33Bill Nye?

  Not to get too weird on you, but everything that you eat, with very few exceptions. I mean, you might wander through the occasional forest and eat a nut. Or I remember there were some wild blackberries that I encountered often as a kid. You'll eat those, but generally, everything you eat is from a farm where people over the last 10,000 years have hybridized, modified, selected artificially, or induced choosing of, uh, the offspring, so that we got these, the foods that we all enjoy today. So the answer is, we're already there. Not to be dismissive, just that taking genes from one organism and putting them in another for farming

• 31:18Bill Nye?

  is what we're doing now, which happens in nature from time to time. These viruses work their way into the genes of the classic, is the sweet potatoes. Uh, this is happening naturally, so we're just doing it carefully and diligently and fast, and that's how we're able to feed so many people.

• 31:35Chuck Nice?

  All right, now here's an addendum to that question.

• 31:37Bill Nye?

  Please.

• 31:38Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna speak on behalf of-

• 31:41Bill Nye?

  Chuck Niceco.

• 31:42Chuck Nice?

  Yes, so is is there a possibility or a danger of centralizing our food source in such a concentrated fashion where we harm ourselves by giving too much power to the people that feed the world? I I think psychologically, there's a real fear amongst people of that being the case.

• 32:03Bill Nye?

  So is it, I think I know what you mean, is it a corporation that you're afraid of?

• 32:07Chuck Nice?

  Yes, that's my point, man.

• 32:08Bill Nye?

  Okay, but you're not exactly afraid of a farmer?

• 32:11Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm not afraid of a farmer because if I don't like my little upstate farmer guy, I'm like, alright, well, screw you, upstate farmer guy, I'm gonna go to downstate farmer guy. But if the upstate farmer guy and the downstate farmer guy are all one guy, well, maybe I'm in a little bit of trouble now.

• 32:26Bill Nye?

  Alright, I get you. So bear in mind, farmers make choices. Now, look, I sound like, farmers make choices, they can buy seeds from this guy or that guy.

• 32:36Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 32:37Bill Nye?

  And like everything else, do you remember Gateway Computers?

• 32:41Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 32:42Bill Nye?

  Like everything else, things have gotten consolidated because of international commerce has made it more efficient. And I understand our fear of corporations, but nevertheless, that is manageable through, dare I say it, regulation. Yeah, where you would make it so that the marketplace is generally fair. So, uh, this is, seems like a very solvable problem, but I I am not worried about the man, uh, taking over the world because farmers make choices and producing seeds with certain characteristics, uh, is very competitive business. And so it'll, and the seed being one example, this will remain, this will be the way it is. You know, Roundup is a famous brand.

• 33:23Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it is. I have some in my basement, I hate to say it, but that too.

• 33:27Bill Nye?

  But there are dozens of country, companies, several of them are in Asia, that manufacture a very similar glyphosate salt that is well suited as an herbicide.

• 33:39Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 33:40Bill Nye?

  So it's a competitive business.

• 33:41Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 33:42Bill Nye?

  Just that the glyphosate thing was so successful. That everybody embraced it. Home gardener and farm, industrial farmer alike.

• 33:50Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha. All right. Good stuff, man. Good question. All right. Biff Handy from Biff Handy.

• 33:58Bill Nye?

  Now, Biff Handy's only got 30 seconds. You want to make this a cliffhanger?

• 34:01Chuck Nice?

  Let's make it a cliffhanger.

• 34:02Bill Nye?

  Oh, man.

• 34:02Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. I'm gonna read it like this. Hey, Bill, because I'm Biff. Uh, why is it that we only?

• 34:07Bill Nye?

  From Back to the Future, is that who you were there?

• 34:09Chuck Nice?

  So, why is it that we only hear about Monsanto when it comes to GMOs? Are there other companies anywhere else competing with them? Uh, that do anything differently that might make it better?

• 34:21Bill Nye?

  Well, they're always trying to do it better. And the big one that Monsanto competes with is Dow. And the seed sign you'll see along the road is Pioneer. They compete with Monsanto head to head.

• 34:32Chuck Nice?

  So that's the Holy Trinity?

• 34:33Bill Nye?

  Are they better? We'll be back after this on StarTalk Radio with Chuck Nice and Bill Nye.

• 34:46Bill Nye?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your guest host, Bill Nye, sitting in for my beloved colleague, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I'm here with another beloved colleague. Of course, I mean Chuck Nice.

• 34:57Chuck Nice?

  Hey.

• 34:58Bill Nye?

  Hilarious science commentator. When we left the last segment.

• 35:02Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 35:03Bill Nye?

  There was questions as to whether a company like Monsanto has a competitor. Yeah, yes. The big one is Dow and their seed company is Pioneer, but there's several others, Conagra and so on. And there's Syngenta, which Monsanto's trying to acquire. And these are seed companies that compete very hard to make better plants, better crops.

• 35:25Chuck Nice?

  Not one of those names made me feel better about GMOs.

• 35:28Bill Nye?

  Well, uh.

• 35:29Chuck Nice?

  I mean, not one of them. You, you went from Monsanto to Dow. Ooh, oh, that got better.

• 35:35Bill Nye?

  In the business.

• 35:35Chuck Nice?

  And then Conagra.

• 35:36Bill Nye?

  What do you want it to be called? Uh, Farmhouse Seed?

• 35:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, see, now that's a company I can get behind.

• 35:42Bill Nye?

  So Farmhouse Seed are really nice.

• 35:45Chuck Nice?

  Uh, yeah, throw.

• 35:46Bill Nye?

  They're friendly.

• 35:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you know, and throw a name in there like Wilford, like Wilford's Farmhouse Seed.

• 35:51Bill Nye?

  Okay, well, that's what they market all that stuff. But I remind you, these farmers, look, I'm not in the farming business myself, except I have a nice garden. Uh, farmers choose what seeds to plant based on the ones that perform the best, not based on gunpoint from a corporation.

• 36:09Chuck Nice?

  Kind of makes sense.

• 36:10Bill Nye?

  So.

• 36:11Chuck Nice?

  What you're saying, there is a market, it is in competition.

• 36:14Bill Nye?

  And it's huge.

• 36:15Chuck Nice?

  It may not be perfect competition, but it's in competition.

• 36:17Bill Nye?

  So, think how many car companies there are.

• 36:20Chuck Nice?

  I'm thinking.

• 36:20Bill Nye?

  Are there thousands?

• 36:21Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 36:22Bill Nye?

  Yeah, there's a handful.

• 36:23Chuck Nice?

  There's a handful.

• 36:24Bill Nye?

  And even, they talk about, uh...

• 36:26Chuck Nice?

  And even those handful are owned by just a few.

• 36:29Bill Nye?

  Because it's a hard thing to make a complicated thing like a car.

• 36:32Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 36:32Bill Nye?

  And it's a hard thing to make a complicated thing like a seed that's resistant to a specific insect. It's a complicated business.

• 36:41Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 36:41Bill Nye?

  People invest a lot of money, so...

• 36:42Chuck Nice?

  So, you're not gonna have a bunch of people in this business. It's basically, just the nature of the business itself.

• 36:46Bill Nye?

  When you say a bunch, there's a handful. And it's very competitive among the handfuls.

• 36:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 36:51Bill Nye?

  The thing where, the idea that there's a, um, a conspiracy to take over the world, I'm very skeptical of because they really are out to get each other.

• 37:01Chuck Nice?

  All right. Okay. Listen, that was actually a very thoughtful answer to...

• 37:06Bill Nye?

  You don't have to sound so surprised, Mr. Nice.

• 37:08Chuck Nice?

  I, I, I, you're right, I shouldn't. You know, that was a thoughtful answer, and I'm not surprised at all, Bill.

• 37:13Bill Nye?

  Thank you, Chuck.

• 37:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. So, let's move on to Joe Gaswa, uh, or Gassior. So, he's coming from Facebook, and he says...

• 37:23Chuck Nice?

  He goes, "Hey, Bill, don't forget the dioxins better address this one, Bill."

• 37:30Bill Nye?

  Uh, yeah, so dioxin was, uh...

• 37:33Chuck Nice?

  I put that tone in there myself, by the way.

• 37:34Bill Nye?

  Thank you, yeah. Uh, but I, I think you're in the spirit of his, uh, in- inquiry, his query. Uh, the, uh, dioxins were another chemical used, I guess, as a pesticide that turned out to have really troubling consequences.

• 37:47Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:48Bill Nye?

  And so, they've been curtailed, stopped. But I've met people in the biotech industry, in the seed business, who think DDT is a, was a great thing, cuz it...

• 37:58Chuck Nice?

  Cuz it's hit the job.

• 37:59Bill Nye?

  Well, suppressed mosquitoes, and that suppressed malaria, but I'm not sure DDT is what we all wanna be drinking. And so, dioxin was even more, uh, aggressive as a medical problem, and so, it's been curtailed, just that these companies used to make... Uh deadly herbicides used in warfare, Agent Orange.

• 38:20Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 38:21Bill Nye?

  Well, they're, they were hired to do that and they're not doing it anymore. I don't know how responsible we should hold them. However, we should learn from the past. Like, don't, don't just make stuff that's amazingly deadly and spread it all over the place on another country and take no responsibility for it.

• 38:38Chuck Nice?

  You know, that sounds like a good policy.

• 38:40Bill Nye?

  But this, once again, Chuck, demands that, that evil word that is troubling to so many people nowadays.

• 38:48Chuck Nice?

  Regulation.

• 38:50Bill Nye?

  Where we'd all get together and decide what's fair and make people stick to it.

• 38:54Chuck Nice?

  Regulators, mount up.

• 38:56Bill Nye?

  Okay. Well, in moderation. So, uh, in general, this is a solvable problem. Far, the seed companies are in business to sell seeds to farmers and farmers want to buy seeds that they want to buy. And so the market takes care of it. However, having companies make pesticides or herbicides, which have bad consequences, you can regulate that.

• 39:19Chuck Nice?

  I think what happens is, in the mind of the consumer, is you have a company like Monsanto, who makes the seeds. They genetically modify the seeds.

• 39:32Bill Nye?

  They modify the plants that create the seeds.

• 39:34Chuck Nice?

  They modify the plants to create the seeds. And then, they plant those seeds, then they make the food, and they also put the food on the shelf. And I think this is where a great deal of suspicion stems from.

• 39:47Bill Nye?

  Vertically integrated.

• 39:48Chuck Nice?

  It's vertically integrated and that makes you, that makes you scary. You know, that, that, that's, that's.

• 39:53Bill Nye?

  Scared.

• 39:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's scared.

• 39:55Bill Nye?

  Well, yes, thank you.

• 39:55Chuck Nice?

  I'm frightened.

• 39:56Bill Nye?

  Sitting here is very troubling. Uh, I know what you meant, though.

• 40:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 40:01Bill Nye?

  It's another adjective related, the same root. I got you. But root, pun intended, when it comes to agriculture. So, the, the deal is, farmers make choices. They can do business with Pioneer or Monsanto or whatever and.

• 40:16Bill Nye?

  Uh, you can buy food from this guy or that guy, but I know what you mean. It's troubling when you feel like you're out of control.

• 40:21Chuck Nice?

  Right, because the whole process from stem to stern seems to be that.

• 40:25Bill Nye?

  This is why, uh, the non-GMO movement has a place.

• 40:29Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 40:30Bill Nye?

  We'll see if that's economically competitive, like, and you can say corporations are squashing them. I don't think so. I think you'll find that organic farming takes more input than, uh, than, uh, farming with genetically modified crops. And so we'll let the marketplace sort that out. I mean, people make jokes about a certain business. And they call it whole paycheck.

• 40:54Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm, right.

• 40:55Bill Nye?

  Because the food is so expensive.

• 40:57Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 40:58Bill Nye?

  Because it's grown in such small quantities with high input. So we'll see what happens in the marketplace.

• 41:04Chuck Nice?

  All right. Okay, so let's move on to Tristan Cooper. Tristan Cooper wants to know, is it possible to genetically modify an animal to receive part of its daily energy requirement from photosynthesis? Now, this guy has gone sci-fi, baby.

• 41:23Bill Nye?

  Well, there is an animal that makes a living that way. Zoazanthelie, the coral.

• 41:29Chuck Nice?

  You are absolute... Oh my God, I never thought of it, because coral is a living animal.

• 41:34Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 41:35Chuck Nice?

  And it also gets its food from the sun.

• 41:38Bill Nye?

  So it has a deal with some photosynthesizing, uh, organisms inside it. And a deal is a symbiotic relationship. So whether we're gonna have green cows, I'm open-minded, but I'm not sure. Because you think how much land, how much grass a cow has to consume to make its living.

• 41:58Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:59Bill Nye?

  In other words, in order to get that much energy, the cow would have to be as big as a field. And so I get it, there could be a compromise of a giant solar panel cow that gets some of its energy from the sun and some of it from the grass. But what has happened through evolution is... We have cows eating grass.

• 42:17Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha. Right.

• 42:18Bill Nye?

  That's an example.

• 42:20Chuck Nice?

  So it could happen. It's just not going to.

• 42:24Bill Nye?

  However, on a much smaller scale at sea, it does happen with the Zoazanteli.

• 42:28Chuck Nice?

  Which is the Carl. Fantastic. Man, that was, that was actually, I, I thought it was gonna be a silly question, but it's actually a very good question.

• 42:36Bill Nye?

  Well, of course, our cosmic queerers, queryists, inquirers, our cosmic inquirers. There we go. Our cosmic inquirers. Are thoughtfully thoughtful. And of course, they're wonderful questions, Chuck. Let's take another.

• 42:49Chuck Nice?

  All right. Okay. Hey, Bill, are there any true non-GMO foods? In other words, vegetables that just grow wild somewhere. No input from us whatsoever. And they have existed for years and years that way. And, and we just pluck them up from the side of the road and eat them or whatever.

• 43:13Bill Nye?

  So, yeah. I, as a Boy Scout, spent some time eating wild carrots.

• 43:18Chuck Nice?

  Wild carrots?

• 43:19Bill Nye?

  Which are also called, they go by the name Queen Anne's Lace because the flower is quite lovely.

• 43:24Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 43:25Bill Nye?

  And you pull them up and they're tiny. They're, yes, they're the cutest little Tonka Truck styled carrots. And they're barely a centimeter and a half. They're barely an inch long. And you pick them up and they really smell like carrots and you boil, you cut them, trim them. They're a root vegetable. And you boil them and you have Queen Anne's Lace soup. It's a thing to do.

• 43:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:47Bill Nye?

  And as far as I know, there's no genetic modification of those organisms.

• 43:51Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 43:52Bill Nye?

  That's by way of one example. And people wander through the woods, they eat the nuts. There are some subsistence tribes. That harvest certain places in the woods. Truffles. But even truffles, my understanding, are cultivated. They're, you like, you leave this area alone, let the truffles happen. Well, I mean, I'm asking. And so then there's, even if you're a subsistence tribe in a rainforest, you move from area to area and let those areas replenish. So it is not a, not a huge step from that style of life, from, from sanctuary to sanctuary, getting the food that comes ripe at the right time.

• 44:34Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 44:34Bill Nye?

  To. Planning the stuff on purpose and managing it.

• 44:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay, and P S, uh, um, Michael actually says, I'm writing you in for president.

• 44:44Bill Nye?

  Oh, that's good. Uh, good to know.

• 44:46Chuck Nice?

  So now it is time.

• 44:47Bill Nye?

  That job. Man, oh, man. Is it time for the lightning round?

• 44:52Chuck Nice?

  It's time.

• 44:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 44:55Bill Nye?

  We love the lightning round. Hit me the ball.

• 44:57Chuck Nice?

  All right, so our lightning round, we're gonna do as a potpourri. Okay, just miscellaneous questions from everywhere. All right. Here we go. This is Joss Squatch Stringer. Serious, that's the name, Joss Squatch Stringer. When can we get a new Bill Nye, the Science Guy show, even a web show, anything, Bill, please?

• 45:17Bill Nye?

  I'm working on it. I'm starting with StarTalk Radio.

• 45:21Chuck Nice?

  Bang. Let's talk about the space station. This comes from Brian. Let's talk about the space station. Do they get blinded by the sun every few minutes if continuously stargazing?

• 45:32Bill Nye?

  I think the windows are tinted.

• 45:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 45:40Bill Nye?

  Chuck, it wasn't that funny. You have the option as an astronaut of not staring at the sun. And the thing is not aimed right at the sun. In fact, a couple of, where everybody hangs out there as an astronaut, looks at the earth because it's so beautiful and fascinating.

• 45:57Chuck Nice?

  Jennifer Holford from Facebook wants to know, when are you two going to discuss nuclear energy? I can suggest several dozen experts who would love to help you out. Why don't we talk more about nuclear energy, Bill?

• 46:08Bill Nye?

  Nuclear energy has great promise, but the nuclear industry in the U.S. has kind of been, how to say, not the most reliable. I used to live in Washington State. Every week, there was a problem at Hanford, some leak, some solvent, some something. And but look at the country of France.

• 46:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 46:24Bill Nye?

  Forty years, they've been running eighty percent of their electricity with nuclear power plants. If we could get them... Figured out, maybe it's an alternative. However, I as a taxpayer and voter would like a little, a little better track record from the nuclear industry. You blow, you have 430 nuclear power, commercial nuclear power plants and three of them have catastrophic failures? Oh, that's not good.

• 46:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay. All right. This is, uh, Jolene Williamson from Facebook. Who wants to know? Uh, Bill, are GMOs affecting the honeybees?

• 47:00Bill Nye?

  Indirectly, yes. Uh, because monocultures, that is to say, our ability to grow enormous tracts of land into one style of plant has made the pollination of those plants troublesome for bees. They gotta show up. They gotta work this enormous field or sets of fields and then they gotta go back to their hive and get on a truck and go somewhere else. It wears them out, but it's an unintended consequence and something we could definitely address with careful farming practice.

• 47:31Chuck Nice?

  All right. Jeff Norbury wants to know, a little time travel here. What do you think the most profound scientific discovery of the 21st century will be? We're in the 21st century right now. What do you think of, where, where are we headed? Where are we headed?

• 47:45Bill Nye?

  Got no idea. However, I predicted in a hundred years, people will know whether or not there was life on Mars, whether or not there was life on the moon of Jupiter, Europa. Let's get it done right now.

• 47:57Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Okay. This is Dave Harrison wants to say, he says, in your opinion, sir, is the difference between a bad GMO and perhaps a good GMO, is there such a difference? Is there good and bad GMOs?

• 48:10Bill Nye?

  Well, sure. It's, uh, some of those tomatoes that were produced were not very, uh, enjoyable to consumers and they don't make much of them anymore.

• 48:20Chuck Nice?

  Wow. There you go. So when they taste like crap, then, uh, that's a bad GMO.

• 48:26Bill Nye?

  Or they're bland, or they're bland.

• 48:28Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha. Would every strain of G, uh, wouldn't every strain of GMO need to be medically tested to be sure it's safe for human constru- consumption and do we do that?

• 48:38Bill Nye?

  Yeah, we do. The Department of Agriculture does that. That's, that's their gig.

• 48:43Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 48:44Bill Nye?

  They are a government agency that works for the good of all. For you anti-regulation people out there, you gotta have some regulation. The, the Department of Agriculture is a classic.

• 48:58Bill Nye?

  Now Chuck, this has been perhaps the most enjoyable Cosma Query of my life. And I'm very happy that you are here. Thank you all for listening to StarTalk Radio. I've been your host, Bill Nye, and I'm here with my guest, science commentator Chuck Nice. Tune into StarTalk and turn it up loud.