Food in Space! With Alton Brown and Guests

How good is food in space? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Jordan Klepper feast on food science and the challenges we face sending food to space with chef Alton Brown, food chemist Dr. Arielle Johnson and NASA food scientist Dr. Grace Douglas.

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.

• 0:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk Live!

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Town hall.

• 0:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The topic is food. Food, the science and technology of food on Earth and in space. I want to first introduce my co-host this evening. You all remember him from Comedy Central, Jordan Klepper. Jordan, come on out!

• 0:54Jordan Klepper?

  Hey, everybody!

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jordan!

• 0:56Jordan Klepper?

  Hey, good to see you. Hello, everybody! Good to be here.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jordan, alright!

• 1:01Jordan Klepper?

  Good to be here.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got you, and you've hosted, uh, Klepper.

• 1:07Jordan Klepper?

  Hosted the well-named Klepper on Comedy Central.

• 1:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that the most creative name you can come up with?

• 1:11Jordan Klepper?

  It's the most creative name, yes.

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's a series of documentaries where you're exploring-

• 1:14Jordan Klepper?

  I explore this-

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  -topics in America.

• 1:16Jordan Klepper?

  Uh, it turns out this is a strange country we live in.

• 1:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, really?

• 1:19Jordan Klepper?

  So I went out there, I talked to people, yeah. You gotta meet these people, Neil, they're very strange. So I've been lucky enough to meet a lot of them.

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent!

• 1:26Jordan Klepper?

  Yes!

• 1:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jordan Klepper, excellent!

• 1:28Jordan Klepper?

  So, there we go.

• 1:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so also joining us, in addition to the inimitable Jordan Klepper, is flavor scientist and food chemist, Dr. Ariel Johnson. Dr. Johnson, come on out!

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Hi. Thanks.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Jordan.

• 1:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have a PhD in viticulture and enology-

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Enology, yeah.

• 1:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  -at UC Davis.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  That's where I went.

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't that just code for wine?

• 2:03Speaker 02

  A lot of wine. We actually did a lot of studies of different beverages. So there was some gin, some tequila, a little bit of, uh-

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beverages, yes, beverages.

• 2:12Jordan Klepper?

  And to be fair, Neil, I have a doctorate in Scotch.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Doctor.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And our feature guest this evening is the one and only-

• 2:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alton Brown. Alton Brown, come on out!

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let me fill in some of this bio. So, you hang tight for a minute. You were like PhD...

• 2:52Speaker 03

  Oh shit, really? Is that what you're talking about?

• 2:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a PhD advisor to the premier restaurant Noma in Denmark.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's like one of the most premier restaurants ever.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  It did win best restaurant in the world a few times, yeah.

• 3:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Under your watch?

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Sometimes.

• 3:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's amazing. So this is a job?

• 3:13Speaker 02

  It is a job that I kind of invented. When I was doing research in grad school, I went over there to see what they were up to and write some papers. And then I was like, hey, I'm available. Why don't you guys hire me? Because we're having such a good time.

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's great.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want that job.

• 3:30Speaker 03

  I'll settle for a reservation.

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So...

• 3:34Speaker 03

  She's also the science officer on a show called Good Eats.

• 3:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I heard about that. I heard about that. That there's a show that even has somebody called a science officer. Good Eats. 14 years on Food Network, Good Eats.

• 3:54Speaker 03

  That was the original run. We actually just crossed 20 this year.

• 3:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh!

• 4:02Speaker 03

  Can I ask her a quick question? Where is Flavorama in juxtaposition to Flavortown?

• 4:10Speaker 03

  Are they close to each other?

• 4:11Speaker 02

  They are close to each other, but Flavorama has much better urban planning and an actual sewer system.

• 4:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  And clean water.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 4:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we have you on this show because you're not just a celebrity chef. You have made it a career to juxtapose, to cross-pollinate the fruits of science and its research into the food you prepare.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  Yes, sir.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is an important place to be as we go forward in this world.

• 4:40Speaker 03

  I believe that it is.

• 4:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But so what intrigues me about the two of you, especially since she's on your staff...

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Consulting Flavor Rama-est.

• 4:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Consulting food detective. Sort of on the staff. Fine. So you come to science from food and she comes to food from science. Could you both share with me how that, what that trajectory was?

• 5:02Speaker 03

  You first.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Oh, for me? Well, I was always super interested in food as a kid. To the point where like my grandmother was a really good cook and I'd go over to her house and she had this like amazing cookbook collection and sometimes I would just like get on the floor and read them for hours. And I'd cook a lot. Then when I was like getting into getting like a bachelor's degree, it turned out you could do food and science together.

• 5:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a bachelor's degree?

• 5:30Speaker 02

  No, I was doing a bachelor's degree in chemistry. So I was super interested in chemistry.

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're fundamentally a chemist.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  I am, yeah. All of my formal training is in chemistry.

• 5:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good, okay.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. It turned out that chefs were interested in science and scientists were interested in working with chefs, so I did some of that here at NYU and then found a graduate program that would let me continue. So UC Davis. UC Davis, ended up out west.

• 5:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Alton, how did you get to science from food?

• 5:56Speaker 03

  I got to science from food by realizing that I wasn't a very good cook.

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how I got into comedy.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's how you got into comedy. I had left.

• 6:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, you have a show on Food Network.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I do.

• 6:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you just said, you're not a good cook.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  Well, I used to, I'm better. It got better. It got better. But when I went off to culinary school, I had changed careers because I wanted to make a food show and I got off to culinary school and realized, holy crap, I'm actually not very good at this. But what I figured out is that if I could understand the science of what was going on in the food, I could be a better cook. And so that was the tact that I took with my show, which is that if we all just understand what it is the food freaking wants, we can make it better. And the answer to that is almost always science.

• 6:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're saying, not to put words in your mouth, but anyone in the kitchen can become a better scientist with a dose of science literacy added to it.

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Yes, but they don't necessarily have to. You can become a better cook through science. You could definitely become a better scientist through cooking.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 7:02Speaker 03

  But I don't think that you have to have science. There are people that are just great cooks. I'm not that.

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's not what I ask. You get a great cook, now you add some science to their great cooking, does their cooking get better?

• 7:14Speaker 03

  It can. I'm not gonna say unilaterally that it will, because some people don't care. Nor should they, because they're cultural cooks maybe. And they're cooking out of traditions, they don't have to understand what's going on. I trained under some really great French chefs, all they had to do was scream really loud.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  And the food was delicious.

• 7:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so...

• 7:32Jordan Klepper?

  For the French, that is a science.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, she's like, idiot!

• 7:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's part of the science.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  It's so goddamn good, science of management.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  But I do think that, at least for me, and I think for American culture, certainly where we are, is that if you are willing to learn some science, it will make you a better cook. Was that answering your question?

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so you advise Noema Restaurant, head of R&D. The idea that a restaurant would have an R&D head, that tickles me. And, but what particularly intrigues me is that this is in Denmark, and that restaurant is committed to local ingredients.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like...

• 8:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So doesn't that greatly limit what you can create?

• 8:16Speaker 02

  It is a huge and sometimes terrifying limitation. I know the first year that they opened, this was before I got there, they were like, "Great, we're gonna use seasonal Nordic produce." And it was November, and their vegetable supplier came to the back door and was like, "Great, here's your seasonal Nordic produce." And it was like three beets and a carrot.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  But in many creative pursuits in the arts, I think that, you know, creative constraints really help you be more creative. And so in that case, the constraint of having to source ingredients from the Nordic region, the Scandinavian region, which is very cold, has a very short growing season, not a lot of sunlight.

• 8:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no citrus there either.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  There's no citrus, no citrus, no olive oil, great dairy, but like, a lot of fruits don't grow there, there's no wine that really grows there.

• 9:05Jordan Klepper?

  Other than that, it's a great restaurant.

• 9:12Jordan Klepper?

  Get me out of play. They have the finest reindeer piss.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  You can actually get the reindeer moss from the inside of the reindeer's.

• 9:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, stop that sentence.

• 9:24Jordan Klepper?

  Where, where?

• 9:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, stop that sentence. Get flavor from the inside of the reindeer's. I don't want to hear the end of that sentence.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  But yeah, so lemons don't grow in Denmark, so like.

• 9:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to be clear, you just affirmed that reindeers do exist.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  Reindeers exist.

• 9:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're a real thing. Okay. Just want to be clear.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  And something comes out of them.

• 9:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Various things come out of them. There's many gastronomic options. I am never going to Denmark. Inside of a reindeer.

• 9:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're saying that you, what you would do is, is substitute what might be familiar flavors with, with something else that approximates it. So any good examples of that?

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Um, well, actually, one thing, so like, cooking tends to be better if you have some acidity. It just like brightens up all the flavors and a lot of chefs like to use lemons for that. If you don't have access to lemons, it turns out that the, well, the native European forest ant, Formica rufa, they're called Formica because they produce a lot of formic acid. So these are actually like tangy ants. So by going into the forest, you know, looking for mushrooms or berries or flower petals, you start tasting these ants, you're like, wow, these are. You start tasting the ants.

• 10:41Jordan Klepper?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait. She just worked at a zoo.

• 10:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, Ariel, you go, you rummage the forest floor for ants, taste them to see if they will work in this world-class restaurant.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  I have done that, yes. Well, so it turns out these ants are very acidic. We have, we have, at Noma, we had friends that were chefs in other places in the world, like Brazil, who were experimenting with ants. Because it's, no, like the native Amazonian cuisine uses ants. So we were like, well, why not try these ants that are swarming all over us? And it turns out, so ants are very acidic, so you can make this like quite acidic and refreshing ant paste that we put on like a juniper and blueberry. It was good, it was really good.

• 11:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jordan, she used the word refreshing, didn't she?

• 11:25Jordan Klepper?

  She did.

• 11:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 11:26Jordan Klepper?

  Yeah, I was gonna tell you about that, but then she used the phrase ant paste.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  You're not gonna vomit, you're ant paste. But also, it turns out that, um, so ants have a lot of pheromones. They use chemicals to signal with each other. So they have like what's called a chemical ecology. Um, and we were, you know, we were tasting these ants and like, yes, I know.

• 11:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're getting turned on by the ants. You're getting turned on by the ants.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  But it turns out a lot of the chemicals that they use to communicate with each other are some of the same volatile flavor molecules that are in herbs and flowers and other tasty plants.

• 12:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is this the foundation of molecular gastronomy? I've heard that term and frankly, I never really understood what it meant.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  I think a lot of people don't understand what it means.

• 12:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's why we have you here.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Um, so some, some people, some like journalists and stuff attach molecular gastronomy to certain styles of cooking. Technically speaking, molecular gastronomy is a field of study. The, basically paying attention to molecularly, the chemistry of everything that happens in food and cuisine. So in cooking and in growing food. So it's related to food science, but.

• 12:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you think about the difference between taste and smell?

• 12:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, all the time.

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So which, can you, and flavor, can you judge, is there one more important than the other? Is there, uh, how much of our DNA gets directed to? What can you tell us about this?

• 12:52Speaker 02

  I can tell you a lot about that, actually. So, uh, although when we like eat something tasty and we experience the flavor, we think, we feel like that's happening in the mouth and is all taste. Actually, a huge amount of flavor comes from smell. There's a process called retro nasal olfaction.

• 13:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Retro nasal olfaction.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  So that's in contrast to ortho nasal olfaction.

• 13:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course. Of course, we all knew that, right, right.

• 13:17Jordan Klepper?

  I think that's a cocktail up on 42. Rectal nasal olfaction? I had one of those. Invasive.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Sounds like college.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Ortho nasal olfaction is sniffing. It's when you smell things.

• 13:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why couldn't you just say? Why, thank you.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Because we have smell guides for them.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Smell has one syllable left, I checked.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  We can't really write on a paper like, today, this paper is about sniffing.

• 13:43Jordan Klepper?

  And there's the problem with academia, right?

• 13:47Jordan Klepper?

  Comic books, it's all we really need.

• 13:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so what happens chemically when we taste something?

• 13:50Speaker 02

  So when we taste or when we smell something, there's molecules in your food. It's full of molecules, it's made of molecules.

• 13:56Jordan Klepper?

  Well, get some fresh stuff.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  No, without molecules, there is no food. Okay, well, let's ask aside. He'll get my back on this. It's molecules all the way down.

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some of my best friends are made of molecules. Okay? Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  That's the bumper sticker right there, buddy.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  So, you eat food. The food has a bunch of molecules. Some of them can bind to receptor proteins. These are proteins expressed on the outside of cells in our tongue and in our nasal cavity. So, like, the tongue.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  And the nasal cavity, which I can't show you, but it's this little patch of...

• 14:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You actually stuck out your tongue to tell us what your tongue is.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But nasal, olfactory, whatever, you just said that and kept moving in the sentence.

• 14:48Speaker 03

  He's got you on that.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I have the tongue demo ready. I would have to crack open your skull and show this little patch, and then you'd be dead, of the olfactory epithelium. So, molecules in the food. We have taste receptors, but we also have... The largest family of genes in our genome is devoted to smell. So, this is approximately 400 different genes. It's about 2% of our genome, so it's a huge amount of genetic information.

• 15:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  It's like roughly the same amount of genetic information that separates humans from our closest primate relatives.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  And is this because it's more important to smell the bear than to taste the bear?

• 15:31Speaker 02

  Well, usually with tastes, you have sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami, and then the sort of deep scientific research is trying to find more. So, anything...

• 15:42Speaker 03

  Cheetos is the Cheeto sensor, yeah.

• 15:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm with you. It's better to smell the bear before you're close enough to taste it.

• 15:48Speaker 03

  Well, yes, that's the point.

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I agree 100% on that one.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  So, the reason I bring up ortho-nasal olfaction and retro-nasal olfaction is because smell plays two roles for us and for a lot of animals. So, there is the sniffing in role, the ortho-nasal role, so that's smelling the bear before we get there. And then, once you, let's say, fight with the bear and conquer the bear and roast the bear...

• 16:16Speaker 02

  If you're eating the bear and I think you have to...

• 16:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What are you doing in Denmark? What's going on there?

• 16:22Jordan Klepper?

  Whatever happened to...

• 16:23Speaker 02

  That's how you get the job. You have to conquer a bear.

• 16:25Jordan Klepper?

  Shouldn't we see the bear, understand the bear, and run away from the bear? Isn't that step one? Nope, it's straight from smelling to killing and roasting.

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, so, area.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  But then, when you have food in your mouth, you're also experiencing smell. So it has this dual role of sniffing things out in the environment, but also giving you this rich sensory experience while you're eating.

• 16:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, given all that you know about receptors, the shapes of molecules as they enter our head, can you imagine either you or a future AI inventing a whole new smell or a whole new flavor? Is that a possible future goal of what you do?

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Well, interestingly, so the human sense of smell is very flexible. So we have about 400 different receptors, but we can smell thousands upon thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of different odor molecules. So through what we call combinatorial coding,

• 17:26Speaker 02

  you're able to kind of, rather than just picking out one particular molecule, you get like a pattern for each type of molecule. So actually, like quite frequently, the flavor industry will synthesize a new molecule that has never existed in nature before, but we are able to smell it.

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you can have a new smell that's a combination of other smells that doesn't exist itself.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, or the pattern that it makes in the brain actually activates different like memory associations. So if like, you know, this part hanging off the molecule kind of reminds me of lavender, and this part of the molecule, this is your brain talking, kind of activates the like leather memory.

• 18:05Jordan Klepper?

  Oh my god, it's my grandmother.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  That's what it smells like. It smells like grandmother.

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Alton, in principle, you don't have to be in her lab to come up with some truly innovative new flavor. You're the guy. You're like, you are food geek in the food universe.

• 18:27Speaker 03

  But I'm not inventing new flavors. I mean, she's talking about actually inventing something that doesn't exist, that you wouldn't be able to...

• 18:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  Only your limbic system would be able to figure that out.

• 18:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You combine other flavors in ways no one had previously dreamt of into a new culinary masterpiece.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  Does he? Has he met me?

• 18:47Speaker 03

  What I try to do is to make something taste more like what you think it ought to taste like. So, everybody knows in their head what mac and cheese ought to be like.

• 18:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  Right? But when you make your own mac and cheese, it very often does not reflect that sense. So what I try to do is to make food taste more like the thing you thought it ought to taste like. And sometimes that involves adding things that you didn't know would go in there. So, very often, that is waking up one flavor by supporting it with another. So I might go into macaroni and cheese, and I might put a little bit of nutmeg in there, because I know how that supports certain cheese aromas. And I do know that as food is coming up...

• 19:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why they sometimes put that in lasagna.

• 19:37Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 19:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They'll put a little...

• 19:38Speaker 03

  In banchamel sauce, because banchamel is one of the binders. But see, as food, and this is something Aaron L. have talked about...

• 19:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You said banchamel. Is that what I would've been making? I didn't know that.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  Well, in lasagna, there's often a white sauce that is what the French would call banchamel.

• 19:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why the French making lasagna?

• 19:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry, I didn't... I didn't mean to blow a gaffe.

• 20:01Speaker 03

  Because when it comes to cooking, the French do whatever they want to do.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  They invent all of it. But the point is, is when you go to eat, very often the aroma gets to your nose long before the food gets. So we eat with our eyes, then we eat with our nose, and then it finally actually gets into our mouth. Well, there's a lot of things that we can do with herbs and spices. There are actually a lot more about making that connection first, because then you're like, "Oh, my God, I'm home," you know? Or, "Oh, my gosh, I'm loved," because some of us grew up associating love with noodles.

• 20:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's okay, that's fine.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  But sometimes it's turning around and saying, and this is something that, because I've read a lot of Ariel's work, is that you all of a sudden realize, okay, this compound in this food would actually taste more like itself if we put this in it, but yet this is not something that you would normally associate.

• 20:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You wouldn't think of.

• 20:58Speaker 03

  Okay, for instance, I can make chicken soup taste hella more like chicken by using miso paste in it. Not enough so that you would recognize that it's there, okay? And there are a lot of ways to play that game in the food world. Back me up on that.

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is you experimenting in the kitchen? Absolutely. But how do you tap Ariel's expertise?

• 21:22Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 21:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you're in the kitchen, you're left alone in the kitchen. How do you grab?

• 21:24Speaker 03

  Well, the number one way that I tap her knowledge is when a word has more than five syllables. I call up Ariel and I say, "What the hell is that?" And then she answers with a bunch of other five syllable words that I still can't understand.

• 21:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you have a lookup chart.

• 21:39Speaker 03

  Which we still have.

• 21:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just have a lookup chart, yeah.

• 21:41Speaker 03

  But a lot of time, it's coming to, when I read really great chemistry, some of it's just understanding how things work, but some of it is then understanding how we can take our knowledge, and especially now in a culture, we have more foodstuffs available to us than any culture ever in the history of mankind. True?

• 22:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Yeah, more than kings and queens of...

• 22:02Jordan Klepper?

  I don't [bleep] know. Sure. Yeah, I guess.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  Look, 10 years ago on TV, there were a whole bunch of things I couldn't do that I can do now because you can simply order things by going like this, okay? So, you know, 10 years ago, we weren't using Aleppo pepper in dishes for home cooks because they couldn't get it, right? Today, we go like this. As we have more and more stuff available to us, we've got to figure out, well, how do we, how do we use this to still make food that we want to eat? Now, she works with people that are actually inventing new foods and new flavors. I just want to make the macaroni and cheese better.

• 22:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, but... Often when we think of sort of food experiments, any normal person would wonder whether you guys in the kitchen are gonna somehow take our palate to the limit. So I just wanna know, is there some limit beyond which you would not try? Some combination of ingredients, short of it being actual poison? I'm just wondering, is there, or is anything fair game?

• 23:05Speaker 03

  Poison's a funny thing, because...

• 23:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's not a funny thing.

• 23:08Jordan Klepper?

  Not very funny. I'm backing up Neil on this one, it's not very funny, it's not.

• 23:12Speaker 03

  We have very strong taste receptors for astringency, do we not?

• 23:16Speaker 02

  And bitterness.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  And bitterness, greatly because it keeps us from eating poison. And yet, we teach ourselves to drink things like coffee and scotch, which oughta be poison, but they're not.

• 23:30Speaker 03

  So some of it's training, some of it's acclimation, cultural acclimation.

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait. If that flavor is associated with things that will kill you,

• 23:38Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  then it's just kinda by accident that you're still alive, if you like this flavor bitter. You just...

• 23:45Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 23:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, okay.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  I mean, at some point, somebody had to eat that first oyster, or somebody had to sniff that first Band-Aid, I don't know.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  I mean, it's a dangerous world out there.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Somebody had to pluck that chicory from the field and be like, "I need, I need a vegetable."

• 24:05Speaker 03

  Or the first rhubarb, where they figured out, "Oh, the last five people who ate this died. I'm gonna cook it."

• 24:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, so I bet Jordan's with me on this. If the last four people died, I'm not cooking it.

• 24:23Jordan Klepper?

  Yeah, I'm like, I'm like, you know what? We don't need to eat rhubarb anymore.

• 24:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At all.

• 24:28Jordan Klepper?

  What's this mac and cheese thing you're talking about?

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, not even in a pie.

• 24:33Jordan Klepper?

  Yeah.

• 24:33Speaker 03

  But we don't, humans don't do that. We do not do that.

• 24:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dead humans.

• 24:37Speaker 03

  We keep going back.

• 24:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dead humans will do that.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  No, we're so curious. We see that stack of bodies and we're like, "No, I can do it."

• 24:45Jordan Klepper?

  The true innovators.

• 24:48Speaker 03

  Eat that, Andy. Somebody! Right.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  What you need is a bunch of archaic frat boys around daring each other to eat things. And so one of them will figure out.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  That didn't kill us.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  Mushrooms would be the perfect example.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Try this mushroom, bro.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  One tasted good, the other made you trip, the other dissolved your liver into a puddle.

• 25:10Speaker 03

  You learn real quick, you know?

• 25:11Jordan Klepper?

  Is this why people go to this restaurant you work at? Is there just a pile of bodies outside and being like, "This is a good restaurant, you gotta try it."

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No reservation. Just dragging the people out.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  We would.

• 25:28Speaker 03

  Don't have the free thing.

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't try the Roomba.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  We would never pick things like mushrooms that we had like not a really good botanical and ethno-botanical idea of what was safe. And we would also never feed anything to a customer that we hadn't eaten ourselves first.

• 25:43Jordan Klepper?

  Good policy, sure.

• 25:45Speaker 03

  So if everybody in the kitchen is dead, shake, check.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  There were episodes of one of my colleagues trying out a new mushroom and, you know, having to run to puke in the dumpster before he had to go into service. And then we never served that mushroom. But... No human has ever... No human customer has ever got...

• 26:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ariel, what, are you saying that your own staff and the occasional customer?

• 26:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are the experimental playground of your culinary exploits?

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Welcome to Flavor Rama, everybody.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Good luck.

• 26:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Should we call you Doctor Flavor?

• 26:24Jordan Klepper?

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  You can, if you want.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  Evil Doctor Flavor.

• 26:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Evil!

• 26:28Speaker 03

  Evil Doctor Flavor.

• 26:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Evil!

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Doctor Evil Flavor.

• 26:31Jordan Klepper?

  You have a server who comes over and then a priest comes over after the meal.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Well, no, I mean, in all seriousness, for any of the like quote-unquote novel things that are happening at these restaurants, you're usually, you're trying out new things, but you're drawing on either validated scientific research or like long histories of safe techniques. So like for some ingredients, there are no safe way to eat them, or you can eat them, but only once.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  And for some things, there's things that we-

• 27:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's called poison. We have a word for that. Yes.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  There's techniques that we know we have to use for them. So, yeah, no, there's a lot of safety and concern over safety.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have one note. I have a note about mushrooms. I think most people don't know that the common ancestor between animals and mushrooms separated in the tree of life later than that common ancestor and that which produced green plants separated. So that humans and mushrooms are more genetically alike than either humans or mushrooms are to green plants.

• 27:41Jordan Klepper?

  So that last pizza you ate, you're an incestuous bastard.

• 27:46Speaker 03

  I think the word you're looking for is cannibalistic.

• 27:48Jordan Klepper?

  Yeah. Cannibalistic, yeah.

• 27:56Jordan Klepper?

  Have I not been having sex this whole time?

• 28:00Speaker 02

  Is that how you do it?

• 28:01Jordan Klepper?

  We've been talking about sex this whole time, right?

• 28:03Speaker 03

  Wait, what's happening here?

• 28:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just, Arrow, because we only have you for a few more minutes. Because we're going to swap you out with yet another person on stage here.

• 28:13Jordan Klepper?

  Much like your restaurant.

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A couple of things. Are there any obvious challenges that you see in this moment for the future of cooking? I want to ask both of you that. If we only had this, or we could only do that, just something that is on the horizon, that's in the lab, that's going to show up soon. What might that be?

• 28:37Speaker 03

  Oh, I would say if we only had governments that understood that global warming's happening, and if we don't do something-

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alton, that's in our third segment today.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  Sorry, I... You provided the segue.

• 28:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get Dr. Turner. Ariel.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  Some of the stuff that I'm most excited about at the intersection of food and science right now has to do with plant breeding and seed breeding. So for a very long time, plants have been, especially in the US, bred for uniformity, for yield, and for shippability. So if you hear your grandmother saying like, "Oh, the tomatoes don't taste like when I was a little girl," like, that's because they don't. They have lost flavor in the process. Turns out, it's actually very simple to breed plants for flavor, just not a lot of people are doing it. So there's some very cool projects, especially out on the West Coast, University of Oregon, University of Washington, the Bread Lab is one of them, where they are growing

• 29:36Speaker 02

  vegetables and grains and things like wheat and barley to be extremely flavorful and cook very well. So that, I think, is one of the most exciting combinations of food and science to be hitting the grocery stores sometime soon.

• 29:52Speaker 03

  But will it be shippable and will it be packageable? Because that's how we got to flavorless tomatoes to pick with, right?

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Sure, but if you-

• 29:58Speaker 03

  And uniformity and beautiful and...

• 30:00Speaker 02

  But if you can breed tomatoes to grow well in specific regions, or-

• 30:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you don't have to ship them.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Then you don't have to ship them.

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Duh.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  If you grow-

• 30:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did I get done that one? Yeah, definitely. Facepalm on that one.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  There's a barley project in Oregon called the Multi-Barley Project, and this is a very biodiverse strain of barley. You can grow it in many places, and each place will express a different sort of phenotype and flavor.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  So terroir, you get a different terroir.

• 30:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very nice. The terroir. Very wine word there. Terroir.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  Terroir.

• 30:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got terroir. Well, we're gonna end this segment, and we're gonna get ready for the next segment, which is gonna be all about food in space, when Startalk continues. Yes. And Dr. Ariel, thank you for coming.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 31:05Speaker 04

  I'm Joel Cherico and I make pottery. You can see my pottery on my website, cosmicmugs.com. Cosmic Mugs, art that lets you taste the universe every day. And I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 31:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk, Segment 2, Welcome Back Town Hall!

• 31:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are live from Town Hall in New York City. I'm with my comedic co-host, Jordan Klepper. Hey, everybody! Special guest, Alton Brown!

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in this segment, we're going to talk about food in space. I need an expert on that, and we got her. Now joining us is NASA food scientist, Dr. Grace Douglas. Grace, come on out!

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grace, thank you.

• 32:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grace is the lead scientist in NASA's Advanced Food Technology Research Effort. Thanks for coming up from Houston to be in New York for this.

• 32:20Speaker 05

  Yes, absolutely.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm a little afraid to ask you what you're holding in your arms there.

• 32:25Speaker 05

  Some snacks for you.

• 32:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Snacks? They look nasty. Nasty. We'll talk a little bit more about those a little later. So, tell us, what is the Advanced Technology Food Project at NASA?

• 32:41Speaker 05

  So, basically, we have a food system that works on the International Space Station, but we know that there are shortfalls and we need to get to long-duration space exploration missions. And so, in Advanced Food Technology, we do research on foods. We do research on how to fit in the very, very small resources that are provided on missions. And we also do research on how we're actually... Promoting crew health and performance, so making sure that the food can actually do that.

• 33:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I'm curious about something. When we think of NASA, we think of rockets and things. Hardly ever do we think that there are people in NASA trying to keep the astronauts alive. And so you're in that division, right? And of course, the astronaut program is based in Houston, so it would make sense that the food research is there as well.

• 33:32Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 33:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you've got, um, the, so specifically, you focus on how food tastes, or just whether it goes bad or not?

• 33:41Speaker 05

  We have to focus on every part of it, which the key components of it are the safety, nutrition, and flavor. Because food for the International Space Station actually needs an 18-year shelf life at a minimum. And it's better if it's longer.

• 33:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  18 years?

• 33:57Speaker 05

  18 months.

• 33:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Months?

• 33:58Speaker 05

  18 months. Sorry, sorry.

• 34:01Jordan Klepper?

  That's still a long amount of time. Let's be clear. Oh, that's my, oh.

• 34:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 34:07Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 34:08Jordan Klepper?

  This turkey sandwich will last, don't worry about it. I thought he said 18 years, is it 18-month turkey sandwich? Fine.

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's true, Jordan, both of those don't sound good.

• 34:18Jordan Klepper?

  They don't sound super tasty.

• 34:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Well, wait, so what is non-safe food?

• 34:24Speaker 05

  Well, that would be food, so we process our foods to make them safe. We have freeze-dried foods, so microorganisms can't grow in there. And we have retort, thermo-stabilized foods, which is basically canned foods, except we use a pouch. So that's the silver-pouched item.

• 34:41Speaker 05

  That one, nope, the other.

• 34:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This one?

• 34:43Speaker 05

  Yes. So, this is, uh, basically it's similar to what the military uses, but it's lightweight, so we can get it up into space. Mass and volume are huge considerations for spaceflight.

• 34:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the pouch is lightweight?

• 34:54Speaker 05

  Yes, the pouch is lightweight. This is a canned food in a pouch, basically. And so we have to process, this is processed to commercial sterility, just like canned foods in the grocery store.

• 35:03Jordan Klepper?

  Mmm, yummy, sterility.

• 35:07Speaker 05

  So we don't-

• 35:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So microorganisms are your enemy?

• 35:10Speaker 05

  For safe food, yes. Over time, when you have to store it for that amount of time and we have no refrigerators, no freezers, and the possibility that we still won't have those going on a Mars mission, where the shelf life will need to be five years at that point.

• 35:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's enough for a return trip?

• 35:25Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. So, so you didn't, you haven't yet talked about flavor.

• 35:32Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 35:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just whether the thing, whether it's bad for you.

• 35:35Speaker 05

  There's three points. The first is safety, the second is nutrition, and the third is acceptability. And that's in total.

• 35:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, how about potato chips?

• 35:47Speaker 05

  Well, so potato chips are interesting. You can send them, but they often have a lot of crumbs, and so-

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Crunchy.

• 35:54Speaker 05

  That causes a problem in microgravity. So-

• 35:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so safety has two meanings, then?

• 36:00Speaker 05

  Yes, it does. That's, that's very true.

• 36:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Will it kill you? Because you, it, it, I don't know, it floats into your nose or something? Or, or whether it's, whether there's some microorganism that'll give you a stomach virus or something, or whatever?

• 36:15Speaker 05

  So, a lot, foods like potato chips are shelf-stable, so they will last. They will tend to go rancid over time. You'll get some off flavors. They won't taste as good, and the food definitely needs to taste good. If it doesn't taste good enough, the crew doesn't want to eat enough of it or choose those foods, and then they can lose weight, they can lose bone mass and muscle mass. And so, we really have to provide food that they choose to eat, that they want to eat. And, so, there, there's a common assumption that high-performing individuals, like astronauts, will eat whatever you tell them to eat, just to get the mission accomplished. Basically, we could give them vitamin pills, we could give them protein shakes, they'll get it done, which actually, those things are not that healthy. But, they will, um-

• 37:01Speaker 05

  They're actually just like us on Earth, and they really want good food, nutritious food, and food becomes very important in isolation and confinement.

• 37:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I hear that astronauts might lose their sense of taste in zero G or in space. Is that true? What is meant by that?

• 37:20Speaker 05

  So some astronauts come back and say the food tasted different, or they didn't taste it as much as they would on Earth.

• 37:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The intensity of flavor.

• 37:28Speaker 05

  Maybe something's going on right. But there are other astronauts who come back and say they didn't notice a difference. And there's several things that could possibly be impacting that. So there's a fluid shift towards their head when they're in microgravity. And so that can give them the sensation like when you have a cold. So you wouldn't taste things as well. Also, everything they're eating is out of a package. And they're not cooking, it's just heat and add water. So they're getting packaged foods in and out without cooking. And then the aroma doesn't rise in microgravity, it just dissipates. And there's also a lot of competing aromas on the International Space Station if you ever live in an enclosed environment with five other people. So...

• 38:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You said the word aroma, but you really mean stank. You said aroma, but you mean like BO.

• 38:16Speaker 03

  Smelly up there.

• 38:17Speaker 05

  There can be bad smells over time if you're in an enclosed environment with a lot of other people.

• 38:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 38:24Jordan Klepper?

  Is there any kind of a food-space race? Like are the Russians developing flavors that are more intense than American flavors? Is there a competition in that? How are we doing? Are we gonna win?

• 38:36Jordan Klepper?

  Who's got jambalaya? Is that on our side?

• 38:38Speaker 03

  I would think that the Chinese would actually have this because of their spice range and because the use of things like Sichuan peppercorns and whatnot. Those would be very opening-of-the-head kind of flavors. Russians...

• 38:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so. Vodka, though, vodka. So Grace, would you one day call up Alton and say, "Help me out here because my astronauts are about to mutiny"? Well.

• 39:02Speaker 03

  They did. Emerald Agassi, BAM, sent food up to... Was that... that was the space station, right?

• 39:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, he helped work on a few formulations. So...

• 39:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, when he says BAM, isn't he always putting garlic into his food?

• 39:15Speaker 03

  No. No. It's anything he wanted.

• 39:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  BAM.

• 39:20Speaker 03

  BAM.

• 39:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Just checking.

• 39:23Speaker 03

  You guys remember BAM, right?

• 39:25Jordan Klepper?

  BAM, formulation.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  The problem is in space, like BAM, what the hell?

• 39:31Speaker 03

  How did... I hear the jambalaya went over well.

• 39:34Speaker 05

  So, actually, I think we might have a... I don't know if I brought that one out, but I think it's out there, the spicy green beans. It's in the white package over there.

• 39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This?

• 39:43Speaker 03

  This is the tomatoes and artichoke.

• 39:44Speaker 05

  That was actually one of those that he helped.

• 39:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is spicy green beans. BAM.

• 39:48Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 39:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm not going... No.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 39:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 39:52Speaker 03

  Neil should eat that right now.

• 39:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 39:55Jordan Klepper?

  Yeah.

• 39:56Speaker 03

  Right now.

• 40:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's just be clear. Let's just be clear. Grace, you brought these because these foods are expired from yourself.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  Says right here, "Good till 5,027."

• 40:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  More than 18 months.

• 40:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How important is variety?

• 40:19Speaker 05

  Variety is actually...

• 40:20Jordan Klepper?

  Don't answer that till he eats those green beans. Look at that. Look at that move on.

• 40:26Speaker 05

  They're actually freeze-dried, so I don't know how easy it would be to eat those.

• 40:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, these here?

• 40:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, this, this...

• 40:39Speaker 03

  Tomato and artichoke. I recognize it from here.

• 40:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You read the packet.

• 40:43Speaker 05

  I did, yes.

• 40:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  It's in Russian.

• 40:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what kind of variety is, is offered? Because I think a lot about, suppose I only could eat one food on a Mars mission, what food would that be? I'll tell you what that food is in a minute, but...

• 40:59Jordan Klepper?

  After you eat the green.

• 41:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no. So, so.

• 41:02Speaker 03

  Green beans.

• 41:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell me about variety.

• 41:07Jordan Klepper?

  You are not gonna do it, are you? You are not gonna do it.

• 41:16Jordan Klepper?

  Come on, Phil. They want you to eat them.

• 41:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fine.

• 41:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fine.

• 41:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fine.

• 41:26Jordan Klepper?

  Look at this art.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  Help, help.

• 41:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, there's another packet inside the packet?

• 41:32Speaker 03

  Oh, none for me. Damn.

• 41:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, how do I put water in?

• 41:37Speaker 03

  Can we force?

• 41:37Speaker 05

  You need a needle to put water in that.

• 41:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't have a needle.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  Where's your kit, man?

• 41:41Jordan Klepper?

  Let me.

• 41:46Jordan Klepper?

  One of my chef friends, they could have one.

• 41:49Speaker 03

  What if I found something to cut the end off? Could we just, you know?

• 41:52Speaker 05

  I probably could.

• 41:52Speaker 03

  I'll go find some scissors. It's gonna be okay. You're gonna get your beans.

• 41:55Jordan Klepper?

  Don't worry.

• 42:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So was this in a opaque packet to prevent light from getting in? Because clearly it's shrink wrapped, or freeze-dried shrink-wrapped. So now air is not gonna get in. That reduces oxygen. But is light also damaging to this?

• 42:13Speaker 05

  For certain vitamins, light can be damaging oxygen and moisture. And that package does not protect from those things. So we do add the aluminum foil layer to get a longer shelf life.

• 42:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I forget. Nutrients, of course.

• 42:25Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Vitamins are not all stable under all situations.

• 42:29Speaker 05

  Right. Especially vitamin C. It's very, very unstable. And that's why scurvy was so prevalent in the history of exploration before a spaceflight.

• 42:42Jordan Klepper?

  How's scurvy doing up there on the International Space Station right now? We've got that thing covered, right?

• 42:50Speaker 05

  For the International Space Station, yes. Not yet for ours, though.

• 42:54Jordan Klepper?

  Are you dealing with... Are you getting a lot of feedback from astronauts? I gotta imagine astronauts aren't the easiest people to work with as far as taste testers go. Is that in and of itself hazardous? Don't... Pay no attention to that. That man's struggling to open a package over there.

• 43:17Jordan Klepper?

  Is this, this is recent?

• 43:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 43:21Speaker 03

  So technically, this is what we call on Earth a corkscrew, but...

• 43:26Speaker 03

  Here. I don't want you to...

• 43:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I need you to open my...

• 43:28Speaker 03

  Okay, alright!

• 43:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bam!

• 43:36Speaker 03

  Should he pour some water in there?

• 43:37Speaker 05

  So it takes like 10 minutes to rehydrate with hot water, so...

• 43:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I think it takes an hour to rehydrate.

• 43:42Speaker 03

  No, it's gonna be fine.

• 43:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's in hot water! And we... Alright, here we go.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  Wait, wait, here.

• 43:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, it doesn't smell too bad. Wait, wait, wait. Wait, Jordan, smell it.

• 43:55Jordan Klepper?

  It doesn't smell too bad?

• 43:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It does smell too bad.

• 43:57Jordan Klepper?

  There's like a nice curry smell to it?

• 43:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes!

• 43:59Jordan Klepper?

  Yes.

• 44:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It smells like a, like a, like a, like a... A Thai... Coconut soup. Okay, that's enough!

• 44:09Speaker 03

  I'm a professional, I know what's in that!

• 44:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, well, let this hydrate.

• 44:14Speaker 03

  10 minutes? How much in cold water?

• 44:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll let this hydrate.

• 44:17Speaker 03

  We'll let, yeah, we'll let that hydrate for a minute. But we're not gonna forget.

• 44:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what, so if I'm a typical astronaut in the American sector of the space station, how many options am I gonna have for dinner?

• 44:32Speaker 05

  Well, we have about 200 different foods and beverages on our standard menu. And then they can supplement that on the International Space Station with some preference foods that we send specially for each crew. And that sounds like a lot, perhaps, but if you were to talk to the people next to you and ask them what they ate for lunch, it's probably very different than what you ate. There's a lot of variety here on Earth, we take that for granted. And it's also important for a crew to get variety. They say they really love getting choice in their food system that helps keep them eating enough so that they don't lose weight, they don't lose body mass and muscle mass and, um, bone mass. So, those things are very, very important to have the variety and... And honestly, as we go towards Mars, it's gonna be much more difficult to provide that,

• 45:15Speaker 05

  both because we don't have a current food system with that shelf life, although we are working on those challenges, and because... We might even preposition food ahead of a crew, which makes it very hard to...

• 45:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On a supply ship?

• 45:30Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 45:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, uh-huh.

• 45:31Speaker 05

  So, I mean Mars is really far away. I mean, you can explain probably why, why we can't send resupply once we go to Mars.

• 45:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because you're not in phase with the position of the planets in orbit.

• 45:40Speaker 03

  So you're better off sending food up first?

• 45:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, in another phasing of where Mars and Earth are in their orbit with respect to each other.

• 45:48Speaker 03

  Then how long would you have to wait between sending food up and sending a crew up?

• 45:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so every 26 months, Mars and Earth are aligned so that you can go there in nine months. But once you get there, you have to wait again until they realign in order to send another supply. So, what you could do is send a supply before it or after it, um, so that they don't have to try to make food while they're there. But, you know, there's a time delay for that to happen.

• 46:08Speaker 03

  Do you mean grow potatoes in poop, Neil?

• 46:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's... We'll get there. Is there, is there one food? Uh, oh, is there one food that is perfectly nutritious? So that if you ate it, you wouldn't have to eat any other kind of food? Why wouldn't that be that new product, Soylent? How about that?

• 46:25Speaker 03

  Well, it might be. It might be Soylent. Any food that's designed, and I'm sure that you guys have tested just about everything. By the way, are M&M's really like cigarettes in prison on the space station? Because I read that M&M's are like, "Where are the M&M's, man? I want my M&M's." Because they float around and you go, "Ah," and it's a great...

• 46:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the space station?

• 46:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. I'm not lying, am I?

• 46:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, M&M's on ISS are the same as cigarettes in prison?

• 46:46Speaker 03

  Yes. Or coffee, because they don't let you have cigarettes in prison anymore. It's true, though, isn't it?

• 46:50Speaker 05

  Well, they actually get coffee that they want on the International Space Station. They can have it with milk and sugar, or, well...

• 46:56Speaker 03

  Kona coffee with cream and sugar.

• 46:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa. That's good. So is there, so other than, uh, Soylent, is there one...

• 47:04Speaker 03

  You know what, there is one. I, for instance, if, if you were to tell me, "You gotta go right now and you're gonna only have one food to live on," I would probably say quinoa.

• 47:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I ain't going into space.

• 47:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I know the perfect food. I, I don't need why I asked you. Because I know the perfect food.

• 47:21Speaker 03

  What is it?

• 47:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  New York pizza.

• 47:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You give me... I, I've thought this through. If you put me on a mission to Mars and I had only one food, it would be New York pizza and like a, a...

• 47:34Speaker 03

  That's one.

• 47:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But wait, hang on, and a strawberry milkshake.

• 47:38Speaker 03

  That's two.

• 47:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, I would, I would, I could eat that every day for five years.

• 47:42Speaker 03

  And in about a month, how do you think you'd feel?

• 47:46Speaker 03

  You'd be like, "Hey, hey, hey."

• 47:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So...

• 47:54Jordan Klepper?

  This hat showed you.

• 47:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait. So, so let me ask you another kind of question. There's food as nutrition, but sometimes you want space to feel like home. You might be homesick, especially on a long mission. You're not just far away from home, you're far away from your planet as it recedes in space. Alton, you, you, don't you specialize in like homey tastes?

• 48:18Speaker 03

  Not only that, I, I, I think that, and you can obviously speak to, to those, those flavors. I think there's actually something to be said for the actual cooking process itself as well.

• 48:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, the ritual?

• 48:31Speaker 03

  The actual ritual.

• 48:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They ritualize the pizza here. That was a whole family affair.

• 48:36Speaker 03

  Let's face it, that was like the most Instagrammable of all moments, you know? Hey, if I had zero gravity, I could do pizza too. But sure, there are flavors of home. There, there, and I'm sure that you guys spend a lot of time trying to hit on what is gonna make people feel like they're still connected without making them blubber like crybabies that mommy's gone. I mean, because there's, there's, homesickness is a weird thing. And it's got, you know, there's so much different emotions tied up in food. And as people get further, further away, say going to Mars, at what point does the power of, of, of what food can do to people's emotional mindsets become something that we've never even thought about? You guys have gotta be studying that. What, how do you even go about studying that? Sorry, I had to ask.

• 49:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You wanna, you wanna roll it, I shut up, yeah.

• 49:22Speaker 03

  I'm just really curious because I know here on this planet.

• 49:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even though I asked you that question, you can pass it on to her. That's fine.

• 49:29Speaker 03

  Because she's gonna have the answer that I want at least. How do you, how do you figure that out?

• 49:33Speaker 05

  Well, that's actually a very complicated question. Because like you just mentioned, you like pizza, everyone wants something different. And there is no perfect food, so you have to eat a wide variety just to get all your nutrients. And we have to be able to provide choice so that people can get all those nutrients. Like fruits and vegetables actually have thousands of phytochemicals. We don't even know what they all are and how they're interacting with our bodies, with our microbiomes, with our gut-brain axis and impacting how we think and how we feel. And all of those things are happening just from what we.

• 50:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to be clear, what you just referenced there in those few sentences, isn't that like newly emergent understanding of the role of the microbiome within our body?

• 50:13Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 50:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We think we just eat food and it comes out, but there's like. Countless microorganisms doing our bidding for us in our digestive tract. What?

• 50:23Jordan Klepper?

  You're making it sound like Game of Thrones just going on outside. I'm doing my bidding.

• 50:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take a knee.

• 50:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but to the point of the question, there's all of this going on, but there's certain foods, certain rituals, that we associate with home

• 50:42Speaker 05

  Right.

• 50:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that could serve our psychological state mightily. So how much thinking do you guys do about this?

• 50:49Speaker 05

  So we think about that whenever we're developing new foods, but the goal really is to provide a variety, because we have to be able to meet the needs of many different people and their captive audience. So once they go into spaceflight, we can't send anything else. So it's not like going to the grocery store and you can pick what you want that day. So they have to be able to find stuff that's there that they want to eat every day, which is its own challenge, and food that does give them comfort. And we have a lot of crew come back and tell us that food became so important in spaceflight, they didn't realize how important it was going to become.

• 51:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What about the ritual part?

• 51:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not only eating together. As Alton describes, because, I mean, almost any movie, the most tense, intricate, or personal part is when everyone is around a table

• 51:33Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 51:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  eating food. Like an alien.

• 51:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wasn't really thinking about that, but sure. Okay. So, so the dinner table, you know, we mock what happens at Thanksgiving when weird uncles come by and aunts with different political views than you have. So we mock that, but in fact, the food is what got everyone together. It didn't even matter that it's a holiday called Thanksgiving. It's a holiday where food is front and center. And as Alton has persistently described, this is a taproot ritual that we have as a species. So in space, are there ways that these other rituals fold into just even the preparation and eating of food?

• 52:21Speaker 05

  Well, we do provide time for them to eat together. And so usually, a lot of crews try, they get to do this at their own discretion. So a lot of crews try to find time every day, or at least every week, to have a meal together for that very reason. And they find it helps build cohesion, it does stimulate conversation, especially when you have international crews. And they can share international foods at that point, too, because the Russians have a Russian food system, and the US side has a US food system. And then when we have a crew from Europe, or Canada, or JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency, they will bring some of their own foods. And so there's a lot of camaraderie around that. And that is incredibly important, and something that we definitely have to consider

• 53:05Speaker 05

  as we go into exploration, how to stabilize those foods, too, so that they can continue.

• 53:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's also water supply, because you can't, unless you last saw a comet, the water you bring has to be recycled.

• 53:15Speaker 05

  Most of the water on ISS is recycled.

• 53:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So should we ask further about that, or just leave it right at that? Should we just, Jordan, should we?

• 53:23Jordan Klepper?

  I'd like to know a little bit. I mean, the first thing, yeah, the first thing you have to get off the table is, do you drink your own pee? Then it's like, are you guys eating together? What are you cooking? Every first question about a space station is like, urine, you drinking it? Okay, now how are you doing? How's your family?

• 53:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your pee is not the only body fluid where you can recover water, just to be clear.

• 53:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, there's your sweat, right? Yeah, and the fact that you can exhale onto a mirror, and it will fog the mirror, it means there's moisture coming out of your breath.

• 53:57Jordan Klepper?

  You're dodging the, are these people drinking their pee question?

• 54:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, no, so... Totally drinking the pee. Totally drinking the pee. So, for StarTalk, just recently, I interviewed two International Space Station astronauts while they were on board. And you may recognize their names, Jessica Mir and Christina Cook. They made headlines for being the first team, female team to spacewalk together. And we chatted about food in space. Let's check it out.

• 54:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For long-term space travel, obviously, there'll be some expectation that you grow your own food. And is there, how close are we to growing all of your own food without requiring sort of supply chains, either to and from the space station or to and from Mars, if that's our ultimate destination?

• 54:50Speaker 06

  Absolutely, great question. I think that right now we're at a place where we're learning the best ways that we can grow things in space. But where we're really looking to go is to develop systems that are, one, closed-loop systems. So a system where we're using waste products from various sources and feeding those in to the actual plant development. And that can include our carbon dioxide cycle, our oxygen cycle, and our water cycle. And we actually have some really neat life support systems onboard right now that are testing some of those technologies. Another aspect of the food system that really has to grow would be incorporating proteins. Right now, we have lettuce as our main crop that we've grown. We've grown different things up here. They've grown flowers. We're looking into, starting into vegetables and fruits. But incorporating protein sources

• 55:35Speaker 06

  like peanuts or maybe legumes, I think, is the next sort of big leap. We're not quite there yet. As Jessica mentioned, we've had salad, and we joke sometimes that the caloric intake that we've used so far in growing it might be a little bit more than what we end up consuming. But obviously, the techniques are what's important in proving out the systems and the operational concept.

• 55:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm guessing that you're not going to any time soon start traveling with farm animals. So likely, all of your protein will come from plant-based sources, which would mean the future of space exploration would be vegetarian. That's what that sounds like.

• 56:12Speaker 06

  Maybe, we're not sure. You know, we also do have some other devices that are pretty exciting up here right now. We have one facility called the biofabrication facility, which is actually, the goal of that is to grow human organs in space. Now, that's, of course, not for food or consumption. That is to contribute to the deficit of organs for transplant operations on the ground.

• 56:35Speaker 07

  By any kinds of efforts on the ground, when you are trying to produce these tissues and make these bioartificial tissues, there are some problems with the support structure for these. And so the theory is that in microgravity, we won't have that problem with the support structure so we can better grow these bioartificial tissues and then turn them into complete organs. Going a little bit along with that with 3D printing, we have other 3D printers up here to make other pieces of hardware. The Russians also recently tested some animal cells, so some animal protein cells, to see whether or not they could 3D print meat. So there are some experiments that are trending in that direction as well.

• 57:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I don't know why I didn't think of that. Of course, if you can lab grow proteins, meat proteins, then you never needed the animal in the first place. And then there's another source of protein for you. Well, excellent, guys. Thanks for taking the time for StarTalk Radio. And we got you on video as well. And so very much appreciated this. Thank you very much.

• 57:30Speaker 07

  Thank you, Neil. It was our pleasure.

• 57:32Speaker 08

  Station, this is Houston ACR. That concludes our event as we count down to 20 continuous years of humans living and working on the International Space Station.

• 57:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotta interject. When the movie Gravity came out, I posted a series of tweets

• 57:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that commented on things they missed, like Sandra Bullock's bangs always pointed downwards.

• 58:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said, "Am I being harsh?" And I said, "Anytime you see anybody in 0G, the hair is going wild." And so I wanted to see wild bangs on Sandra Bullock, and we did not. Everything else was 0G except her hair. I just wanted to let the record show. So Grace, what are the capabilities?

• 58:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get the, what's in your mouth? Spit that out.

• 58:31Speaker 03

  It was pretty good, Neil.

• 58:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I know, I said it smelled good.

• 58:34Speaker 03

  But I tasted it. It's good.

• 58:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It smelled good.

• 58:37Jordan Klepper?

  Just smell the bear, eat the bear, Neil.

• 58:40Speaker 03

  It's really spicy, which you find that most people really do appreciate on station, right?

• 58:47Speaker 05

  There are a lot of crew that like.

• 58:48Speaker 03

  Pepper, chili.

• 58:49Speaker 05

  It's not all crew, but a lot.

• 58:50Speaker 03

  Now, if you're not, if you're not necessarily a proponent of the fluid in the head theory, that everybody up there is like they've got a cold, what do you attribute this, this desire for spicier food?

• 59:01Speaker 05

  Well, so that also is just, I mean, not every crew looks for spicy food.

• 59:06Speaker 03

  Not everybody.

• 59:06Speaker 05

  And some of that might be because they're just eating prepackaged foods the entire time they're up there and they're not cooking and things like that. So that does provide differences in flavor. Condiments is one of the only ways that they have to customize their own foods.

• 59:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So people bring up their own hot sauce bottle.

• 59:21Speaker 03

  They let you do that? Cause it's not like a giant glob of sriracha floating through the cabin would be a problem.

• 59:27Speaker 05

  Well, they do get sriracha.

• 59:28Speaker 03

  Imagine if you're like, my eyes, you know?

• 59:31Speaker 05

  They do get sriracha.

• 59:32Speaker 03

  They do get sriracha, but do they get it in like little bitty packets? They don't get it like a bottle.

• 59:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just don't touch a fingertips to it.

• 59:35Speaker 05

  They do, they get a bottle.

• 59:37Speaker 03

  They get an actual, how do you get it? How, how does that work?

• 59:40Speaker 05

  So, well, they send condiments and they have a little fridge up there now.

• 59:43Speaker 03

  But how do you dispense the sriracha?

• 59:45Speaker 05

  The, um, well, it has a certain surface tension. So that's how they eat as well. So everything has a certain surface tension. And if you put it on your food and it has that surface tension, it stays.

• 59:55Speaker 03

  It stays.

• 59:55Speaker 05

  Just like it'll stay on a spoon or a fork while you're eating it or in the.

• 59:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like pudding has very high surface tension. Yeah.

• 1:00:04Jordan Klepper?

  Also, do, do we need to call out?

• 1:00:05Speaker 03

  Why, yes, I had pudding.

• 1:00:07Jordan Klepper?

  The Russians are 3D printing meat next door?

• 1:00:12Jordan Klepper?

  They, that was just an offhanded comment. Oh, yeah, and also the.

• 1:00:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Grace, what are the actual food capabilities on ISS right now?

• 1:00:19Speaker 05

  For daily food consumption, it's prepackaged food where they add water or they heat it.

• 1:00:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but manufacturing I'm talking about.

• 1:00:25Speaker 05

  And then as far as, so that you saw that they grew some salad and the veggie. And that's it, as far as foods that they're actually eating.

• 1:00:30Speaker 03

  Will 3D printing be something that, I mean, cause a lot of people think that's gonna be an answer.

• 1:00:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we've got an image of them harvesting mustard greens. Let's see if we have what we have up there.

• 1:00:39Speaker 03

  My mustard greens don't look like that.

• 1:00:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Yeah, but if I'm in space, somehow I'm not thinking, gee, I hunger for mustard greens. No, you want pizza.

• 1:00:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so tell me, if, as they said, growing the salad takes more energy than the energy it then provides to you, what hope is there that this would ever work?

• 1:01:02Speaker 05

  Well, they mentioned that this is proving out the systems at this point, and that's true, because if we're ever going to become Earth-independent and move towards those systems, you have to show that they work, and it is very challenging to water crops in space light. So we proved them out with the easiest systems, which are salad crops. And so next they're planning on growing tomatoes in space, and so that requires artificial pollination. So there are a lot of things that you have to prove that you can do and actually get

• 1:01:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  these things to grow. You just bring swarms of bees into the space station. What could go wrong?

• 1:01:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I want both of your opinions about the future of lab-grown meat as a solution to the protein challenge in space. Are you cool with, Alton, are you cool lab-grown meat?

• 1:01:48Speaker 03

  I'm cool with it as a concept. I just don't know why we need it. I don't, I don't crave... I think that we've got to get to a point to where we're like, okay, well, we don't crave meat so much that we're willing to put this much energy into simply making an analog of it. Why not just make something delicious out of the things that we have that are renewable and that makes sense? And, you know, one of the issues now with, with meat analogs is that we're going to get ourselves...

• 1:02:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eighty people agreed with you on that. Yeah, okay.

• 1:02:18Speaker 03

  But they were the cool ones. One of, one of the issues I think we're going to get into with meat replacement is that it's all based on pea protein, essentially. There's a lot of pea protein involved, and, you know, that just means that we're shifting...

• 1:02:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, that's meat substitute, not, not lab-grown.

• 1:02:34Speaker 03

  You're talking about absolutely lab-grown.

• 1:02:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:35Speaker 03

  I am talking about, I was talking about...

• 1:02:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Growing meat proteins.

• 1:02:37Speaker 03

  I don't, growing organs for transplant is one thing. I don't know that we need to grow... Meat. I don't, I guess we've got to find out if we've got to do it, but I don't know that I think it's necessary.

• 1:02:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grace, where are you?

• 1:02:50Speaker 05

  I think that looking at all of these options as, you know, we have a growing population, we have a lot of challenges here on Earth. We have challenges in spaceflight with resources as well. Looking at options and seeing if they can become feasible is definitely worthwhile across the board because we have a lot.

• 1:03:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Looking at all options.

• 1:03:07Speaker 05

  Right, looking at all options. There are still a lot of challenges with lab-grown meat that would need to be solved before that can become a viable option. Plus, you need to do the trade studies to see, is this actually saving you anything? Because there's a lot of processing going into those things. But looking at all the options is necessary because we have a growing population, because we have resource limitations on Earth, and that's very true in spaceflight, too. One of the challenges in spaceflight that's a little bit unique, especially with exploration missions where we only have a few crew, is that they would have to do the process themselves. So any process that we think could be a solution, it would have to be a solution from the beginning of producing it all the way to the point of consumption.

• 1:03:51Speaker 05

  Because if an astronaut has to actually participate in that process, I don't know, maybe some people like to go home and do a science experiment and then eat that science experiment after they worked for a whole day, right? But in general, we like to look at things for exploration especially as, what are you willing to do in your own kitchen? And if some of these solutions can become resource viable for exploration, meaning they use less resources than a prepackaged system, or perhaps you could find in situ resource utilization on a planetary surface.

• 1:04:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So ISRU, very big concept in NASA, right? Where you go there not bringing supplies with you, you go there, look for the supplies that you would then use in situ.

• 1:04:38Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:04:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  While you're there. ISRU, yeah, very big concept in NASA, sorry.

• 1:04:42Speaker 05

  So, yes, and, you know, there's groups that are looking at taking the carbon dioxide and using the carbon in that as a source for so many other things. And if you start using that as a feed source instead of having to take sugar or things like that, once we start overcoming these challenges, there's going to be new things that open up. But it is easier on Earth because those would be somebody's job and we go to the grocery store and we buy a finished product. For the crew... If they have to participate in that product, in that, um, in that production in any way, it has to be incredibly acceptable, something that we would want to do here on Earth. Because-

• 1:05:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or you, one of the astronauts' sole job would be to be the chef.

• 1:05:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so Alton, if we-

• 1:05:26Speaker 03

  It's mushrooms again tonight, kids.

• 1:05:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Alton, it's, there's gotta be some interesting future in lab-grown meat proteins. Because then you could molecularize it and put in one of your own unique sort of flavored, flavored-

• 1:05:40Speaker 03

  I, I'd be more interested, though, in coming up with various pastes that you could print, though. I mean, like, krill, or some other animal that has a huge bio-payoff as far as it's, it's, uh, it feeds to body weight ratio, and then taking that and turning that into, like, okay, I'm gonna take this cup of water, and I'm gonna grow blah blah blah krill in it, sea monkeys, and then I'm gonna grind them up in this machine, and I'm gonna print a hamburger out of it. To me, it's like, if we, if we can take, think of things that already grow, that are already, you know, life forms that we know that we can take advantage of, they don't care that much about gravity, maybe they grow in water, whatever. There are bacterias that produce, for instance, uh, we talk a lot about umami as chefs, you know, there are bacteria that grow glutamates, and glutamic acid can actually come off a bacteria. If

• 1:06:24Speaker 03

  all that could go into your little printer kit, you could just say, "What do you want tonight? Well, I'll have that hot dog."

• 1:06:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's the recent research that shows that a very efficient, uh, um, even sustainable source of protein is rodents.

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:06:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what's the-

• 1:06:38Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:06:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's the-

• 1:06:39Speaker 03

  New York City.

• 1:06:42Speaker 03

  We've got-

• 1:06:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So our rodents eat pizza, by the way, just so you know.

• 1:06:46Speaker 03

  We've all seen the video, Neil.

• 1:06:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, the pizza rat. Um, so, so, so great. Is there any talk at NASA about breeding rodents for protein, for long-term missions?

• 1:06:58Speaker 05

  Well, actually, they can be a good source of vitamin C.

• 1:07:03Jordan Klepper?

  So no scurvy, yay.

• 1:07:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll take the scurvy.

• 1:07:09Speaker 03

  So is it happening? Space rats?

• 1:07:12Speaker 05

  So what I would say about any sort of animals, you'd still be thinking of, you have people-

• 1:07:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not talking about any animals, I'm talking about rodents.

• 1:07:21Speaker 05

  But this is still true for rodents, so it would be true for anything. As soon as you start having a group of explorers who are intended to go out and explore the Martian surface, and then they come back, what are you willing to do in your own kitchen? And if you start having things like rodents, is that really something that we find acceptable? Is it something they would find acceptable? Because we're trying to promote high performance. We want them to be at their top physical peak, at their top cognitive peak. So we want to give them foods that they really want to eat. And then there's also an interesting thought that that could be the only other life form they're interacting with. And, you know, there's cases where if you become really attached to that-

• 1:07:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw that movie, it's called Willard. Yeah.

• 1:08:03Jordan Klepper?

  Have you thought about maybe a mind experiment? Where like, okay, they're going to Mars. They're not gonna want to eat rats, but they don't get any kind of outside information except for the stuff that we give them. So we create some sort of television shows where the reality back on Earth is where suddenly it's very cool to eat rats. And now everybody's eating rats. And Jennifer Aniston loves rats, and she eats rats. And over the time, they're traveling for months and months. And they're like, this seems to be the new cool thing. I don't know, maybe this is something I could try. And then now they're eating the heads off rats, and they're none the wiser.

• 1:08:34Jordan Klepper?

  Has NASA thought of that?

• 1:08:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jordan, where did that come from? Jordan?

• 1:08:37Jordan Klepper?

  It's a propaganda machine, that's what a spaceship is.

• 1:08:42Speaker 03

  So after you've gone out on the surface of Mars, you want to come back and have a big juicy steak, is what you're saying?

• 1:08:48Speaker 05

  Or a really nice salad.

• 1:08:51Speaker 03

  No, nobody comes back from the surface of Mars wanting salad.

• 1:08:56Speaker 03

  It's just not-

• 1:08:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not even the vegetarians.

• 1:08:58Speaker 03

  No, no, they want, they want a steak too.

• 1:09:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta end this segment. Coming up on the next segment, we're gonna actually talk about the sustainability of food on Earth when StarTalk continues at Town Hall Live!

• 1:09:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Live from Town Hall, New York City.

• 1:09:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're talking about food in space and on Earth. I've got Alton Brown in the house.

• 1:09:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 1:10:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's a patron saint of food geeks.

• 1:10:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've...

• 1:10:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We also have Grace Douglas, Dr. Grace Douglas from NASA, Houston.

• 1:10:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jordan Cooper.

• 1:10:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we talked about molecular gastronomy in space, and now let's talk about the future of food on Earth. So, both of you, I want to ask. By the way, when I look to NASA, I look at NASA solving problems we didn't even know needed solved, and then you learn that they actually have application back here on Earth. So when you look at the challenges, Alton, we have overpopulation, that's going to be a thing. If it's not a problem now, it will be soon. We've got climate change, restructuring where things are grown and where they're not grown. Are the honeybees, I want an update on them. I don't know what... It ain't good. And overfishing. So, all of these problems on Earth. So I want to ask you, where's this headed?

• 1:11:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then, Grace, I want to know, can you foresee any of the challenges of the Mars food problem actually having an application back here on Earth? So, Alton, where are we? Overpopulation, are we going to be able to feed 10 billion, 20 billion people? Yes. Eat more people.

• 1:11:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw that movie.

• 1:11:26Speaker 03

  Soil and Green is obviously the answer, but I think it could be done with a more culinary flair.

• 1:11:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:11:37Speaker 03

  We have to diversify our palates. We have to diversify our food supply system. One of the issues that we've run into in the United States is that we went to centralized farming and centralized processing in this country after World War II. And we transport things great distances instead of making things very locally. And the result of that is that we end up having all of a sudden, maybe 70 people in six states get sick from something from lettuce, right? Which really shouldn't be happening. But that's because we've got a food system that is based on giving everybody everything all the time. We're certainly giving people things out of season and things that require massive amounts of resources to grow.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  Massive amounts of water, massive amounts of land is certainly in the case with most cattle and other land-based animals. What we're gonna have to face, the fact is that so far, we have not managed things terribly well. We have not managed things terribly well. The oceans certainly are a case in point. So I think what we're gonna have to do, and this is gonna be very difficult because it does require some international cooperation, is that we've got to reexamine the viability of what local farming looks like. And one of the ways that I feel hopeful about is the idea of vertical farming in the ocean, which is that we can take a patch of sea, maybe a mile offshore of someplace like Northern California, and that we can farm it from the surface all the way to the floor in a

• 1:13:05Speaker 03

  way that is sustainable, in a way that is also beneficial to the surrounding ecosystem. So we're talking about growing filter feeders like mussels that grow on ropes or oysters on the bed, growing a lot of kelp and also harvesting the animals that live inside that kelp in such a way that these kind of microfarms can create a lot of protein and a lot of nutrition while being sustainably managed. And that's a long answer, but I do think that what it's gonna take in the long run is we've got to vary what we eat and we've got to decentralize our food processing system.

• 1:13:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you see any, Grace, do you see anything lined up with what you're doing in Houston that could actually benefit any of this?

• 1:13:46Speaker 05

  I would say that a lot of the goals of NASA are similar to the goals in the world. We need to find things that are going to grow in very harsh environments and not even necessarily, you know, that they're going to be outside, but the fact that you have to limit the water that you're using, that you have to find stuff that's going to be very resilient and crops that can just keep growing in those environments in very small confined spaces as well. So, you know, your idea of vertical farming and having some of the more sensitive crops even be grown in that sort of method so that you can really control it and produce more food and control where it's going is definitely an advantage of those areas and definitely things that we'd have to look about, look at if we're going to solve the world food

• 1:14:30Speaker 05

  problem. I think that there's a lot of other things that are out there that are being developed that might, we might start seeing in the next couple of years too, just in relation to things like the lab-grown meat and things like that. So, we need to be exploring all of the options. And for NASA, the real goal is how do we miniaturize that and how do we reduce the resources so, to such a low level that we could actually put it on a space mission? Because it's very, one of the biggest challenges we always have with food, which weighs so much, is we have to reduce the mass and reduce the volume. So, anything that we send to make food has to have reduced mass and reduced volume. The other thing is, anything we send with food has to have a five-year shelf life if it's

• 1:15:12Speaker 05

  going to Mars. Any of the reagents that you're using with it, seeds would have to have a five-year shelf life in the radiation environment. So, we have a storage concern there too, and that could be something that might also become more interesting on Earth as time goes on. So, I think the idea that our resources are limited and we have to find those solutions, we tend to work with industry and with academia to find those solutions.

• 1:15:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And NASA's not an island in the middle of the country.

• 1:15:38Speaker 05

  Right, exactly.

• 1:15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. So, Alton, are you, have you seen effects of the climate shift? In what your tasks are in the kitchen, the availability of some foods relative to others? Or the cost?

• 1:15:48Speaker 03

  Absolutely. A really great example of something that's going on right now that folks here might not even know about is that sugar prices are about to go up quite a bit. Here in the United States, in this past year or last two years, the sugar beet crop failed in a good bit of the upper Midwest, Midwest due to weather conditions that have been attributed to global warming. This means that we are not going to be able to produce enough sugar and are going to have to now import it. But our governmental systems are set up specifically to place very high tariffs on foreign sugar because we wanted to keep our own sugar prices at a certain level.

• 1:16:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And a lot of foreign crops. It's not just the sugar.

• 1:16:27Speaker 03

  It's not, but the big thing right now, though, is coming into the holidays, major industrial bakers are getting force majeure notices from the growers, basically saying, "Yeah, sorry about that not having any sugar." Because they're... So now we're having to say, "Holy, holy moly, we've been self-supporting since the 30s in sugar, and now we cannot provide enough sugar for our industry."

• 1:16:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But there's a flip side of that. Like, for example, it's a little bit warmer in England now, and last I checked, they're growing wine. There's champagne coming out of England, and they're boasting of it.

• 1:17:02Speaker 03

  Have you had any of it yet?

• 1:17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 1:17:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, well...

• 1:17:08Jordan Klepper?

  My family's from Michigan, and they claim that Michigan will be wine country by 2070. I'm hoping that's the case, because I bought a significant amount of property.

• 1:17:18Speaker 03

  When you start looking at, you know, at major growing areas where something is very special, I mean, you know, you joke, or we're joking about champagne, well...

• 1:17:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I meant sparkling wine, of course, because champagne's only grown in champagne.

• 1:17:30Speaker 03

  But I'm talking about that champagne. When you're talking about those kinds of micro products like in France...

• 1:17:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 1:17:37Speaker 03

  Very, very few degrees of change, or a little bit of change in rainfall, is going to completely knock that out. So I think that...

• 1:17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The microclimate defined the product in the first place.

• 1:17:47Speaker 03

  It did, the terroir, the microclimate, the hill that hit this side of the... Sorry, the sun that hit this side of the hill that had this much chalk in it, so this much radiation was, you know, went back. Yeah, it's all about that micro terroir and those microclimates. Well, those are now changing, whether we want to admit it or not, they are. And so that is going to change the products that are available. So the best cham frickin' pain in the world might be coming out of Detroit any minute.

• 1:18:10Jordan Klepper?

  Get your property now.

• 1:18:11Speaker 03

  It could happen. I mean, it is not, it's not in.

• 1:18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell me about the bees.

• 1:18:15Speaker 03

  Bees are in horrible shape. Bees in space, I actually really like that idea. Because, you know, bees are the major pollinator of food crops in the United States and actually in most of the world. And due to some chemicals that we have used on our crops, the bee population is falling at an alarming rate. And when that drops to a particular level, it will simply be impossible to fertilize certain plants. You know, most, most of the crops in the United States are pollinated by bees. During that season, guys drive around, and girls, flatbed trucks, full of beehives, park in the field, wait a few days, and then drive off. And those bees provide the pollination services.

• 1:18:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so every flower that gets pollinated, some kind of fruit came out of that flower.

• 1:19:03Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:19:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the whole process. So any fruit.

• 1:19:07Speaker 03

  Or just the cross, yeah, the cross pollination of male and female plants, trees, it doesn't matter what it is.

• 1:19:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:19:12Speaker 03

  And we're losing, we're losing colonies at a, at a horrible rate. And I hate to say that there have been some, some, some laws and legal shenanigans, even just this year, that have perhaps made it harder to, to protect them, which is concerning.

• 1:19:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could the future of molecular gastronomy find scientific chemical solutions to some of these problems that global climate change is bringing upon us?

• 1:19:36Speaker 03

  I will tell you that I know for a fact.

• 1:19:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To preserve some of what we cherish.

• 1:19:40Speaker 03

  I don't know about, I don't know about that, but I do know that there is one very, very, very highly respected technical university on the East Coast that is working on robot bees.

• 1:19:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw that episode of Dark Mirror.

• 1:19:54Speaker 03

  I'm telling you though.

• 1:19:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who here saw that episode?

• 1:19:58Speaker 03

  Robot bees are actually happening. We will have micro robotic pollinators for specific plants. And they will be sold to us by Monsanto, just you watch.

• 1:20:09Speaker 03

  But, but talking about their specific. You know, well, I think that if cooks, whether it's molecular gastronomy or whatever, chefs as influencers, cooks as influencers, we do play a very significant role in this because we help figure out things for people to eat and then make them popular. And right now, in the last 20 years, that has really been the globalization of ingredients, which has massively been the result of one thing, the internet, and specifically, Amazon.

• 1:20:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And transportation.

• 1:20:42Speaker 03

  Love it or hate it.

• 1:20:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Transportation.

• 1:20:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. Love it or hate it, makes it possible for anybody to have anything any darn time they want. If I was doing a startup right now, we would be figuring out how to farm out of Amazon boxes.

• 1:20:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 1:20:55Speaker 03

  I want to turn Amazon boxes into a farm. There's gotta be a way of doing that.

• 1:20:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So farming, as we know, large animal farming is hugely consumptive, water and land and resources and the like. So there's the stuff that tastes like meat but is vegetable-based. What's it called?

• 1:21:12Speaker 03

  Well, there's Impossible Burger and Beyond Beef, Beyond Meat.

• 1:21:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beyond Meat, right. So has NASA considered Beyond Meat as a, just to keep the flavor spectrum broad for those in space?

• 1:21:25Speaker 05

  So our foods right now, actually, we do send quite a few meats. So we can send real meats, prepackaged, and they do last for several years to the crew. So right now, that would probably not be a solution because you'd just be replacing the meat with that burger for a few people. And in general, most people in this country even are still omnivores. So there are very, it's a small percentage of the population that's vegan and vegetarian. So we support what the crews generally want to eat so that we can, you know, keep them eating. However, you know, as you go forward in this area and get to a point where we're having colonization and people have specialized jobs, and now you are growing crops, potentially

• 1:22:07Speaker 05

  that would be a solution there, where that's somebody's job is to make that sort of burger that way. So it could potentially happen. We don't really know what the future of space food's going to look like, so it's wide open. And it's really what can the solution be? And can you get the resources down to enable that solution? There's actually a lot of resources that go into making those burgers.

• 1:22:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Outen, did you visit one of those, did you visit one of those plants?

• 1:22:33Speaker 03

  I have, yes.

• 1:22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what was your reaction?

• 1:22:34Speaker 03

  Wow, that's a lot of pea protein.

• 1:22:38Speaker 03

  That's a lot of pea protein.

• 1:22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was your reaction.

• 1:22:40Speaker 03

  That is, that is most of what is going in there.

• 1:22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's got a longer shelf life than meat.

• 1:22:44Speaker 03

  Well, not if it's in one of these, right? I mean, meat.

• 1:22:48Speaker 05

  Can be several years.

• 1:22:48Speaker 03

  It doesn't matter for a package like this.

• 1:22:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if it's radiated so that you kill all the bacteria.

• 1:22:53Speaker 05

  Or just, um, thermo stabilized, like canned food.

• 1:22:56Jordan Klepper?

  Do you get to meet the pea protein? Do you get to pet the pea protein?

• 1:22:59Speaker 03

  I named that.

• 1:23:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you named it?

• 1:23:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, but if, if, if you guys knew that, for instance, okay, we can make a burger out of mushrooms. And we can grow mushrooms in space because mushrooms like it dark, they like it moist, they like, you know, then knowing how to do that would be, would be a benefit, right? Because you can extract protein from them. It's a lot easier than raising a cow in space. Um, or, are you smelling it like that?

• 1:23:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be certainly true.

• 1:23:25Speaker 03

  No, it's like, are you guys doing that? I mean, she's like, like.

• 1:23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anything would be easier than raising a cow in space, is my guess. I'm just, that's, I'm just spitballing here.

• 1:23:35Speaker 03

  I, I think.

• 1:23:35Jordan Klepper?

  Raising a Wolverine? Could you raise a Wolverine?

• 1:23:37Speaker 03

  I think pigs in space, pigs in space would be very, very difficult.

• 1:23:40Jordan Klepper?

  Teenager, yeah.

• 1:23:41Speaker 03

  But, but mushrooms and, and other things that have a considerable amount of glutamates and, and other proteins in them might, might not be. Um, anyway.

• 1:23:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so how do we balance, the two of you, I ask? How do we, how do we think about the relationship between our investment in space colonization? And whatever secondary benefits we might derive from it? And our investments in the Earth environment? Do you see a place, a connection between those two? Or are you gonna have to fight with the environmentalists? Because they want the resources just to fix things on Earth? Is, is there some part of your job that says, no, some of this could really help? On the other side of this, this research chain?

• 1:24:20Speaker 05

  Right, and I think that's true across NASA. Um, a lot of the things that we're doing and the fact that we're trying, everything we make, we have to figure out how to do it with less resources. And so in the end, a lot of that technology, you know, when working with industry and working with academia and working directly at NASA. is going to have ways that it can transfer to the world today. Because we are always pushing to get better at doing that.

• 1:24:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I've said multiple times that I think the world's first trillionaire is the person who figures out how to exploit the resources on asteroids and comets. So is NASA thinking about that creatively as part of the in-situ resource utilization? Space has unlimited resources, basically. You just need access to it. Or are you still just worried about what you bring and what you might be able to grow on the spot?

• 1:25:12Speaker 05

  Those kinds of investigations are going on together. So in the beginning, we probably will have to bring a lot more. But eventually, the goal would be self-sustainability and Earth independence. And to get there, you need to be looking at these other things and proving them out. Because it's a huge jump to go to that. And we need to show on the lunar surface and then on the Mars surface that these things are working and we can depend on them. Because the worst thing that could happen is you're depending on your food growing and then it doesn't grow. So you want to make sure that you have food.

• 1:25:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just add poop and it grows just fine. Yes, we learned that on Mars. The poop potatoes. Yes.

• 1:25:52Jordan Klepper?

  Can we talk about the Martian now? Can we talk about it?

• 1:25:56Speaker 03

  But aren't the things that you're talking about, I mean, that's basically life on Earth in a microcosm. Limited resources, limited space, limited energy.

• 1:26:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what she said.

• 1:26:06Speaker 03

  And we're out in the middle of space, all freaking alone. So it's kind of the same thing. So NASA, save us.

• 1:26:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except, Alton, you can breathe the air here. That's, you know, the air.

• 1:26:18Speaker 03

  Well, now.

• 1:26:20Speaker 03

  Today.

• 1:26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So NASA is famous for how visible its achievements are relative to its budget. You know, and I used to joke that, you know, people say, why are we spending money in space and not on Earth? I say, how much do you think they're getting in space as a fraction of the tax dollar? They'll come up with 10%, 15%. And then I tell them, no, it's four tenths of one cent. And so I keep thinking NASA should get the budget that people think they're getting. That would be amazing, right? So.

• 1:26:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a testament to how visible NASA's achievements are. Because people think its budget is much greater than it is. Given that fact, what are some of the future plans to... For education or... I read something about participation, crowdsourcing, some of the future NASA projects. What can you tell us about that?

• 1:27:18Speaker 05

  So, we are actually in this area, in the food area. We're exploring releasing a challenge to the public, to academia and industry to help us with these food challenges.

• 1:27:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Money!

• 1:27:31Speaker 05

  Right, so they would be incentivized challenges. We're looking at putting out a centennial challenge with cash prizes.

• 1:27:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 1:27:39Speaker 05

  And so, basically, the goal is we need safe, acceptable, and nutritious food that reduces resource use on these long-duration missions. And we don't have a food system that can do that right now. And we are investigating a lot of the technologies that already exist, but we're always looking for new technologies. What is the next cutting-edge gonna be? So, we're looking at releasing this challenge to the public sometime next year and trying to get... to provide those incentives. And these kinds of challenges can also help, you know, create the next generation of scientists and the next generation of engineers and keep NASA and the United States as a leader in science, technology.

• 1:28:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there a hashtag or Twitter? I mean, how is this getting out there?

• 1:28:28Speaker 05

  So, it is... If you watch the website, nasa.gov/solve, then you'll be able to see when this challenge is released.

• 1:28:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:28:38Jordan Klepper?

  It's a smart idea. If there's one thing America's like, it's doing a food contest and getting money.

• 1:28:45Jordan Klepper?

  You might be able to just give them a big t-shirt.

• 1:28:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ultimate baking space challenge!

• 1:28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now! And now! From space!

• 1:28:56Speaker 03

  Well, has NASA ever done that before?

• 1:28:58Speaker 05

  Yes, NASA does these challenges in different areas.

• 1:29:01Speaker 03

  What came out of the last one? Off the top of your head?

• 1:29:04Speaker 05

  They did a 3D printing of houses. And that one had some pretty interesting, you know, looking at 3D printing your habitats. And 3D printing of houses can actually have a lot of applications.

• 1:29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the real value here is, like the X Prize, is if you put up a cash prize for the winner, that, the people who compete are all putting up their own money to compete for that cash prize. So what you're really getting is the sum of everyone's investment as a R&D magnifier on what the final product will become. It's an extraordinary system that actually works. And there are some cases where the people will spend more money than what the prize will be just to win. And then they get the visibility and the fame and the attention. So I wish you luck on this, you and NASA.

• 1:29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not luck, I wish you all the innovation that you deserve and that comes your way.

• 1:30:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we need to land this plane. Sorry, we need to land this rocket. Is there, just, Alton, do you have any sort of parting thoughts for us?

• 1:30:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that...

• 1:30:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, you have a resting grumpy face, I just wanted you to know.

• 1:30:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If no one told you that, I just want to tell you.

• 1:30:35Speaker 03

  It's because I ate those beans.

• 1:30:38Speaker 03

  The beans were very, very good. I think that if I was gonna have anything here to wrap up, it's that everybody needs to pay a heck of a lot of attention to what they put in their pie hole. We need to be very watchful of what we're doing. We need to be more aware of where it's coming from, who's growing it, how far it's being shipped, and what kind of resources go into it. That means we're gonna have to do a lot more work. We have to do more due diligence about what we eat, because it has a very, very specific and direct effect on what kind of resources we're gonna have to work with, to win X prizes with, or to colonize the rest of space with. We do have to maintain home, and we need to be better at it.

• 1:31:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dr. Grace, any parting thoughts for us this evening?

• 1:31:31Speaker 05

  Well, I think it's pretty incredible that we've had crew living in spaceflight consecutively now for almost 20 years. And one of the things that we do know is that they all want to eat something different, and food is incredibly important. So it's definitely something we need to consider as our challenges for resources and our shelf life requirements become longer. We really need to consider how are we going to solve this in a way where we're supporting our crew's health and performance. Because in the end, you know, as humans, we like to explore. And what we're doing at NASA is really what we're doing as a country. So this, you know, this is for all of us. And what comes out of this is going to benefit all of us.

• 1:32:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. Thank you for that.

• 1:32:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jordan, after your rodent-eating recitation moments ago, I'm a little afraid to ask your final thought.

• 1:32:31Jordan Klepper?

  Neil, don't fear me.

• 1:32:35Jordan Klepper?

  You know, I was moved today. I think I will watch the things I put in my mouth. I think that is a good thing to walk away from this with. I've been, part of the reason, some of the things we've talked about in the past is sort of my love of NASA and American ingenuity, and I think here...

• 1:32:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of your documentaries was all about NASA.

• 1:32:54Jordan Klepper?

  We covered NASA and whether or not we're going to go to Mars and like how you can invest in something like that and the byproduct of that can be so good for a culture like us. And so it's good to be a part of conversations like this because it gives me optimism. I think if we could put a man on the moon and if we can call the number one restaurant in the world a restaurant that serves ant paste, then I kind of think we could maybe attack some of these problems we talked about here today.

• 1:33:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's hope, isn't there?

• 1:33:19Jordan Klepper?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:33:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, excellent. Thank you, Jordan.

• 1:33:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jordan, I think I'm a little older than you. So my generation says, "We can pit on man on the moon, we can do anything." You're saying, "If we can make lemon paste out of ants, we can do anything."

• 1:33:40Jordan Klepper?

  I think so, yes.

• 1:33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a lower bar, I think.

• 1:33:43Jordan Klepper?

  Well, I think my generation, that's where we set our bars.

• 1:33:49Jordan Klepper?

  Can I talk about politics now?

• 1:33:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, we're good. We're good. Nope. We're good.

• 1:33:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I can offer some reflections on this evening. First, I was immensely enlightened by all that each of you contributed, as well as Ariel Johnson earlier. And it's interesting, when you look at the history of human conflict, apart from religious wars and political wars, one of the sources of conflict was access to resources. Sometimes those resources are water, sometimes it's food, arable land. And so much of what we discussed regarding food is not food that separates us, it's food that brings us together. The fact that the different countries on the International Space Station,

• 1:34:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that's what the "I" stands for, it's international, will come together and share food. Because we're all human, and we all eat multiple times a day. So that this fact, which we have turned into ritual, and ritual is such a fundamental part of what it is to be human. I'm wondering whether our shared challenge of making sure Earth does not die under our feet, because if Earth dies under our feet, it doesn't affect just one country and not another, it affects everybody. That's why we call it global climate change. We're all in this together.

• 1:35:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'm imagining a future where maybe...

• 1:35:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are no wars because our survival depends on each other. And we being shepherds of the earth to nourish civilization going forward. And in that future, every country is around a table, sharing food prepared from all over the globe. And that would be sort of my vision of eternal peace in this world. Thank you all. Thank you. Jordan Kepler, thank you.

• 1:36:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ariel Johnson in the back. Grace Douglas. Now, where's Ariel? Come on out, Ariel. Alton Brown. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And as always, from StarTalk, we bid you to keep looking up. Thank you. Thank you for the show.