StarTalk Live! Citizen Science from San Francisco (Part 2)

Bill Nye, co-host Eugene Mirman, space activist Ariel Waldman, SF Sketchfest co-founder Janet Varney, and comedian Claudia O’Doherty are back to finish their chat on citizen science, space exploration, Science Hack Days, and more, recorded live at SF Sketchfest 2017. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:22Bill Nye?

  Welcome back. Welcome back to StarTalk. I'm here with Eugene Mirman, Claudia Doherty, Janet Varney, who started Sketch Fest. We're in San Francisco for the 16th Annual Sketch Fest. And our science activist, this week is Ariel Waldman. And so, she's talking about how we are gonna hack our way into the future. We're gonna hack our way into space exploration.

• 0:59Bill Nye?

  And you think that people who show up at Science Hack Day, for example, are gonna do this. It's gonna be like citizen science.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So, through Science Hack Day, we have people who are artists and technologists and scientists coming together to see what they can rapidly prototype over the weekend.

• 1:21Bill Nye?

  How do I find out about Science Hack Day?

• 1:23Speaker 02

  ScienceHackDay.org.

• 1:25Bill Nye?

  Whoa!

• 1:26Speaker 02

  Whoa! Yeah, anyone can create a Science Hack Day in their city. And we are now in 25 countries. I'm the global director for Science Hack Day, and so I happily help people create them in their cities.

• 1:38Bill Nye?

  Global director, alright people?

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. 25 countries. And, yeah, it's just awesome, because it's really about budding science enthusiast communities, but also getting scientists to learn new things as well. Getting them to prototype with Arduinos and design and a lot of things that maybe they don't have experience with.

• 1:58Bill Nye?

  So what do people do? They bring stuff to Science Hack Day. They bring an Arduino. Bring your own copper.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it all takes place over a weekend. And people bring their own materials. They organically form teams. You know, you get biologists teaming up with rocket scientists, teaming up with marketers, teaming up with artists to create weird, you know, things. And sometimes they don't know, you know, what exactly they're creating until after it's been created. My favorite story, all-time story with Science Hack Day is someone who wanted to create a device that would detect when he needed to shave.

• 2:34Speaker 03

  A mirror?

• 2:35Speaker 02

  A device that would detect when this guy needed to shave. So it was like a beard detector.

• 2:42Eugene Mirman?

  And like a mirror was out of the question.

• 2:44Speaker 05

  What about the back of your hand?

• 2:47Speaker 02

  It was a mirror. This is what I love about it. It's like, I have no idea what this had to do with science, but this guy took this USB microscope and he held it up to his face and he wrote some basic, you know, code and used an Open Computer Vision library. So it could see the stubble on his face and draw lines around the stubble on his face and tell him when he needed to shave. And I was like, well, this is amusing, but I'm not really sure where this is going. But sitting in the audience and seeing this hack was a particle physicist. And when the particle physicist saw this hack, he said to himself, wow, it's actually a genius way for how to detect cosmic rays in a cloud chamber. Which, you know, I'm sure you can all relate to. But, you know, following Science Hack Day, this particle physicist ended up creating

• 3:32Speaker 02

  this multi-year research program around detecting cosmic rays in a cloud chamber based on the original code someone used to detect whether or not he needed to shave.

• 3:40Speaker 03

  That's amazing.

• 3:41Speaker 05

  That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  That's like, that's like the scene in a movie that you get mad at where you're like, he didn't solve the mer- just because he saw the person doing the thing and then oh, somehow that reminded him of his thing that he had to solve? That's what, that's a real thing.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  That really happened in life. I feel really bad about being critical of all those movies.

• 4:03Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. A lot of movies are much more realistic now.

• 4:07Speaker 03

  Right?

• 4:09Bill Nye?

  So, then I'm seeing here, we have the strawberry DNA cocktail.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  The de-anacery, yeah.

• 4:17Bill Nye?

  De-anacery.

• 4:20Bill Nye?

  This is where you extract strawberry DNA?

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, so extracting DNA is surprisingly simple, but sometimes it requires using materials that aren't entirely edible. So someone wanted to create an entirely edible way of extracting strawberry DNA, and so they created literally a de-anacery. And so you can actually see in this cocktail, the long polymers of DNA clumping together as it extracts it, and you can drink it. And the recipe is up on Instructables, but it tastes absolutely disgusting, so I don't actually recommend it.

• 4:51Bill Nye?

  No, because that's traditionally done in science education. We use soap, dish soap.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:56Bill Nye?

  And then, I don't know how much time you spent with that. You don't normally drink that, yeah, so...

• 5:03Eugene Mirman?

  What can you do with dish soap, other than drink it?

• 5:07Bill Nye?

  You can mash strawberries with it, and then mix some... It works better with cold alcohol. I don't have to tell you. And then, then you... This white... These white strands will form this little pool, and you can twist up your strawberry DNA.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Why strawberries? Like, did they try?

• 5:30Bill Nye?

  It's just that it's just accessible. It works, is what I would say.

• 5:33Eugene Mirman?

  And when you do that, you're like, now I have strawberry DNAers. Then you're like, now I have the...

• 5:39Bill Nye?

  Strawberry DNA.

• 5:40Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 5:41Bill Nye?

  And then you go, that's cool!

• 5:42Eugene Mirman?

  Yes. Agreed.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:44Bill Nye?

  But somebody must have found a way to substitute something for the soap.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Yes, so, so, yeah, the... I haven't looked at the recipe, actually, for a few years now, but it's still up in Instructables. The important thing is it still tastes bad. It's still... yeah, yeah.

• 6:00Eugene Mirman?

  Worse than soap?

• 6:00Speaker 02

  It... oh, it's highly alcoholic. Highly alcoholic.

• 6:07Bill Nye?

  This is a lot of supporters.

• 6:09Speaker 06

  You can find other ways to hook up than this Hack Day.

• 6:16Bill Nye?

  So you run around, you set up the Hack Days. How much of that, how much of your time does that take?

• 6:21Speaker 02

  So I work on Science Hack Day year-round, but I work on a lot of different projects throughout the year as well, so there's never really, not a time that I'm working on Science Hack Day, but I am always bouncing around between a lot of different, interesting things.

• 6:36Bill Nye?

  When's the next one?

• 6:38Speaker 02

  So the next Science Hack Day in San Francisco is going to be in September or October, but about 20 events or so happen around the world every year, so on the Science Hack Day website, you can go and see when the next one in your city is, and if there isn't one, you can go create one.

• 6:53Eugene Mirman?

  And can you just go and attend?

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's my question.

• 6:55Eugene Mirman?

  Like, I don't know that I'd be able to hack something, but I'd love to go.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  No, so you don't need any experience in science or hacking to attend a Science Hack Day.

• 7:02Speaker 06

  Do you have to look like a hacker?

• 7:03Speaker 02

  No.

• 7:03Speaker 06

  Like, do you need like a long leather coat, or maybe dreadlocks even though you're white, or, for example?

• 7:10Speaker 02

  No, no, it's for all ages, all backgrounds, you don't need any experience, you know, I'm a perfect example, you know, I'm not a programmer, I'm not a scientist, but I participate in these Science Hack Days and I create awesome stuff. It's really just about collaborating and prototyping things to whatever fidelity level you can, even if it's cardboard.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  Is there a sort of, you said that people organically kind of form teams, is there a sort of good-natured competitiveness that also arises, that it may be a healthy competitiveness, like, or is it just everybody's sort of celebrating, even if they're off doing their own thing, and then bringing it back together to show what they've done?

• 7:46Speaker 02

  I think that's one of the things that makes Science Hack Day really unique, is that it is actually highly collaborative, and, you know, a lot of hackathons, I think, are very intimidating for people because it's seen as you need to have certain skills, and, yeah, it's about competing for a cash prize, and Science Hack Day, you know, we don't have cash prizes, it's really just about celebrating and working on things. A lot of people join multiple teams, so you might have people who are working on three or four teams throughout the weekend, so that's one of the things that definitely sets it apart from, I guess, a lot of the typical hackathons. It's really about all backgrounds and collaboration.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 8:21Bill Nye?

  Do you pay a fee?

• 8:22Speaker 02

  No, it's all free. And all the food is provided for free. Thanks to sponsors.

• 8:27Bill Nye?

  How do you fund this? You write grants, kind of thing?

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Occasionally, I get grants. Sponsors. Each city has to look for their own sponsors. And...

• 8:37Eugene Mirman?

  What's the worst company you've ever gotten?

• 8:41Speaker 02

  No, I mean, we look for sponsors, you know, from the design and technology and science industries. And really, the majority of the sponsorship money goes to all of the food, because these are all volunteer-run. So it's volunteer-run, a free event to attend. Food is provided for free, so you don't have to worry about going and getting food. Is it mainly like copper and wood for the food? You don't have to check the toilets, I guess, but... I will.

• 9:10Bill Nye?

  And there's algae in bags.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Yes, algae in bags. These crackers are too fast to eat! We're throwing glitter on everything, and yeah.

• 9:20Bill Nye?

  All right, all right. Now, hang on now. You are a space activist, right? And you have written a book. "What's It Like in Space?" by Ariel Waldman.

• 9:32Bill Nye?

  And what you did is interview a bunch of people who've flown in space, yeah?

• 9:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:38Bill Nye?

  And what did you learn about it?

• 9:41Speaker 02

  You know, the thing that I loved the most... So I interviewed a dozen astronauts for the book, and then I also researched historical interviews with astronauts. And the thing that I loved is that, you know, space exploration is very slowly becoming more accessible, but extremely slowly. And there's often this sort of emphasis on the early astronauts and what astronauts are typically like, and what they look like, and what they sound like.

• 10:06Bill Nye?

  I mean, hard dudes.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:09Eugene Mirman?

  They're a bunch of cads.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the thing I loved the most was just getting to hear that not everyone has the same sort of experience in space. Not everyone is, you know, saying, "Oh, it was the best thing ever." Some people are talking about how, you know, they have to work on managing their mood a lot day to day and...

• 10:26Bill Nye?

  Managing their mood?

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you're on a long-duration flight.

• 10:29Bill Nye?

  You're saying they're angry and miserable.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  I'm saying that, you know, I talked to people who said, you know, "When you're in space for a long time, that's really when you're at home and you're relaxed and it's great." And then I talked to other people who said, "You know, long-duration spaceflight, I have to worry about, you know, really focusing on not letting my mood drop and not, you know, getting down and not getting frustrated and I really prefer shorter-duration spaceflights." And this is what I sort of loved, is that there's no one-size-fits-all to space exploration. And I think the more we can do that, the more we can really show how space exploration is for everyone and you don't have to fit into a certain mold.

• 11:03Speaker 03

  I love that, because I do feel like most of us are like, "I'm not the kind of person who could ever do that," you know? And I love the idea of making that not...

• 11:12Eugene Mirman?

  But three days in space sounds nice.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:14Eugene Mirman?

  Three weeks sounds like, "No, I get it."

• 11:17Bill Nye?

  Second prize, six days in space, yeah. Older reference.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 11:24Bill Nye?

  So, did you...Ariel, did you ever want to go in space?

• 11:27Speaker 02

  You know, I get asked that question all the time.

• 11:29Bill Nye?

  Well, here's another time.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's...honestly, for me, only speaking for myself, it's something that, as I learn more about it, I'm not so sure. I might be okay with, you know, doing a suborbital flight or something like that, but spending a lot of time in space often just sounds like a camping trip from hell.

• 11:46Bill Nye?

  What's hellish about it?

• 11:49Speaker 02

  It's, you know, you're up there with a set number of people and, you know, you're dealing with toilet systems that aren't really that elegant and, you know, you're dealing with a lot of health issues also that aren't very elegant, you're throwing up.

• 12:02Bill Nye?

  What's a health issue...oh, throwing up?

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, throwing up and, you know, and...

• 12:05Eugene Mirman?

  Meaning it's just a bunch of people in space pooping on each other and throwing up? Because that has been left out for many of the...

• 12:11Speaker 02

  Maybe not...well, so maybe not on each other, but maybe even on yourself, because, for instance, when you go to, like, throw up in space, if you just throw up into a bag, guess what? That barf is going to bounce back into your face, because you're in space. So you always need to carry a towel around with you so that you don't barf on yourself by accident while it's...

• 12:30Eugene Mirman?

  Should we get longer bags?

• 12:33Eugene Mirman?

  Should we give a little more time to close?

• 12:38Speaker 02

  You just had space.

• 12:39Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, you're welcome, Mike Massimino.

• 12:43Eugene Mirman?

  That's just the kind of question that has to be figured out.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  And those are some of the stories that I explore in this book.

• 12:48Eugene Mirman?

  I can't wait to invent the longest space barf bag.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  I feel like I was in, when I went to the, like, Cape Canaveral and that, and that part of the museum is this whole exhibit that sort of explains that they're really still hoping someone will come up with this great space hack for the toilet.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Eugene did it.

• 13:09Speaker 03

  Right? Like, we're still looking. Where are you, person who's gonna solve all our problems? Eugene Mirman, you've been right here the whole time.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  I mean, a longer toilet.

• 13:18Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  I mean, it's better than the early days, because one of the stories that I cataloged in the book that always just makes me laugh is that in the early days, you know, you didn't have space toilets, that, you know, it was all men, and all they had were, you know, these condom catheters to pee into in their spacesuits, and all of their spacesuits were leaking, so they were spending all this time looking into, like, what's wrong with the spacesuits.

• 13:44Eugene Mirman?

  When a spacesuit leaks, why doesn't the person die?

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Because, well, because it's...

• 13:50Eugene Mirman?

  They're inside the...

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Well, it's not, like, going up into their face, but it's in their, sort of, body, I guess, cavity.

• 13:57Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, it's internally leaking.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Inside the spacesuit.

• 13:59Eugene Mirman?

  Not externally.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's not externally. It's, like, inside the spacesuit, it was, like, leaking urine, and so they were trying to figure out... I think Trump would love space.

• 14:12Eugene Mirman?

  NASA is safe. Wow.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  But, you know, they were trying to figure out in these spacesuits, you know, what was wrong with the design, and it was the early days of space exploration with these, like, men, and what happened, they discovered, was when the guys were going to their doctors and trying to get sized for everything, the doctor would say, "Well, what size condom catheter do you need?", and they all said, "Large."

• 14:40Speaker 02

  That is awesome.

• 14:41Speaker 03

  That is a true story.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  That is an awesome piece of information.

• 14:44Eugene Mirman?

  If they were just a little more honest, they wouldn't have floated around in their own piece.

• 14:51Eugene Mirman?

  I told you they were CADs.

• 14:56Bill Nye?

  That seems like a solvable problem, though.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it was once they discovered what the problem was, you know. They didn't have as much, I guess, double-checking on what the astronauts were telling the doctors, is one of the issues.

• 15:09Bill Nye?

  You get the impression the doctors were checking everything, wink, wink.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Well, except for the wink, wink, so.

• 15:15Bill Nye?

  They were all, they were a bunch of guys, you know, it's locker room talk. A bunch of guys.

• 15:23Bill Nye?

  What? You people, I am just shocked.

• 15:28Bill Nye?

  So what else you had in the book? You're sneezing in space, difficult.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, you've got to aim down while you're in a spacewalk when you sneeze, because if you don't, you could end up accidentally blinding yourself from obscuring your helmet. And if it gets in your eyes, your hands are in a suit. You can't, you know, just open your helmet and clear out your eyes.

• 15:49Eugene Mirman?

  There's no windshield wiper on the inside?

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Well, so they're trained, if you feel a sneeze coming on, like, aim down, so that you sneeze into essentially your chest and not, you know, actually blind yourself.

• 16:02Bill Nye?

  Advisor, yeah. No, I've worn a spacesuit on the TV, and they have a nose, they have a nose scratcher inside the helmet. And it is, it's tricky, you know. And by the way, for those of you who are just all hot to go to Mars, well, I'm gonna go outside. You're gonna be in a spacesuit. You're gonna be in another dome just outside of the dome that you're in. And apparently, you can't even sneeze properly. So it's gonna be...

• 16:32Eugene Mirman?

  Inconvenient?

• 16:33Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 16:34Speaker 06

  But will you be soaked in your own urine?

• 16:36Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, there's gravity on Mars, so it'll all be in your ankles.

• 16:40Eugene Mirman?

  Can I change my, I'd spend three days in the space, to like, one or two?

• 16:44Speaker 02

  There's diapers nowadays, there's diapers.

• 16:46Speaker 06

  Oh, cool.

• 16:49Eugene Mirman?

  Alright, back to three.

• 16:54Speaker 03

  Dignity intact diapers.

• 16:58Bill Nye?

  So, the whole thing sounds... you looked into it, were you surprised by these troubling stories, or were you just saw it coming?

• 17:07Speaker 02

  I, well, I mean, I love these stories, and I mean, it's one of the reasons why I created the book, is because, you know, it's meant to document, I guess, the stories that astronauts tell you over a cup of coffee, or a glass of beer, or something, you know, it's the stories that are kind of more embarrassing, and awkward, and silly, and fun, but, you know, sometimes also awe-inspiring as well, and to me, I wanted to sort of cut past both the romanticism of space, and the mundane side of space, and go into sort of more the silly stories that you tell when you get back from space, and, you know, or just hanging out with friends.

• 17:47Bill Nye?

  So, what are the mundane stories from space? You didn't include any.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  I mean, you know, I think the mundane stories are just kind of, I mean, those stories about how astronauts give each other privacy, and, you know, you don't have doorknobs in space, you have, you know, or anything like that, so you can't really put like a sock over a doorknob to say, you know, "Give me some privacy, you know, I'm getting dressed", none of that other business, but, you know...

• 18:17Eugene Mirman?

  Do they just turn around constantly?

• 18:20Speaker 02

  Well, it's, so, you know, some space crews have been able to devise, like, okay, when there's a towel over the airlock, that means, you know, "Give me some privacy", you know, there's stories like that, which are, you know...

• 18:32Bill Nye?

  Do they take ties, like, you know, from their college, or something?

• 18:36Eugene Mirman?

  Are we just sending space perverts?

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Well, you know, sometimes you're in situations where, or often on the- They need to jerk off. No. No, and the International Space Station, a lot of times, because, you know, because diversity isn't what it should be on the International Space Station just yet, a lot of times, there will be only one woman crew member when there's a bunch of guys. And so, you know, they want to be able to figure out how to give each other privacy and not to be a creep.

• 19:08Bill Nye?

  Give each other what?

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Privacy.

• 19:09Bill Nye?

  Privacy, yeah.

• 19:11Eugene Mirman?

  And not to be a creep.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  Not to be a creep. Underline, underline. Yeah.

• 19:16Eugene Mirman?

  That seems very reasonable.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:17Eugene Mirman?

  And they do it by all turning around or putting towels on each other?

• 19:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, one crew said, "Okay, whenever you see a towel over the airlock, that's, you know, that means like, you know, don't go into this section, you know, someone's changing or something."

• 19:30Bill Nye?

  It's a big thing, though, right? But I guess that they're all end up in the same places at the same times, maybe.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's just, this is what I meant by the mundane stories. It's just like figuring out socially how to, you know, interact with one another, to sort of respect each other's space and respect each other's boundaries as needed.

• 19:48Bill Nye?

  But you would go on suborbital, you said, right?

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I think it's just because-

• 19:53Bill Nye?

  This would be not going in orbit, just up and down.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, you go up, you go into space, you're up there for six minutes or so, you come back down, you don't have to deal with a lot of the health issues that some of the astronauts face with, you know, ocular issues or-

• 20:04Bill Nye?

  Their eyeballs change shape, right?

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:06Eugene Mirman?

  Go on.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  Muscles.

• 20:09Eugene Mirman?

  Your eyes?

• 20:10Bill Nye?

  Change shape with enough zero gravity.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:14Eugene Mirman?

  How long?

• 20:14Speaker 02

  To what shape? So, a lot of astronauts who go into space for a long duration will come back-

• 20:21Eugene Mirman?

  Come back with rumba eyes?

• 20:22Speaker 02

  They'll come back and they'll- Shin rocks! They'll need a prescription, and they'll need glasses for the rest of their lives, and they went up with perfect vision. And so, they're still trying to figure out why that happens and why it only happens to some people and not others. And it's something that people take very seriously, because it can affect some people in a more extreme way than others. But, you know, there's that, and then there's losing muscle, and there's losing bone density, and, you know, it's a big, you know, health consideration to go into space for a long duration.

• 20:51Bill Nye?

  Let me ask you this. Is it really like a young person's game, space exploration?

• 20:55Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 20:57Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, tell it to space cowboys.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  Well, you know, well, yeah.

• 21:01Bill Nye?

  The movie.

• 21:02Eugene Mirman?

  Yes. The movie where they...

• 21:04Speaker 02

  Some of this is actually supported by science. You know, people who have less of a, I guess, radiation cancer risk are people who are older. So, men over 55 have some of the lowest cancer radiation risk when you're thinking about sending people into space for a long time. So, if you were to only look at, you know, the data, then you would say, "Okay, we want to send people over 55 into space."

• 21:30Bill Nye?

  I got a shot again.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:33Bill Nye?

  No, I applied. I applied four times. But what, when NASA started, what was the average age of people who worked there?

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Twenty-six.

• 21:42Bill Nye?

  Twenty-six. And then what's the average age of people who work at SpaceX?

• 21:46Speaker 02

  I think it was late twenties, maybe?

• 21:49Bill Nye?

  Yeah, I think it's 27, yeah. And I've been there, and the people are quite young, and they are enthusiastic, man, because just space just gets people excited. People just love it. And you guys love space, right? That's why you're at StarTalk. That's why we're having the times of our lives. And who knows what will happen in the coming decades? You know, we're gonna have more Science Hack Days? We're at over two dozen now?

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Uh, we're over 60 events, and yeah, in 25 countries.

• 22:26Eugene Mirman?

  Can I guess which countries?

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 22:28Bill Nye?

  So if people in the audience want to go to a Science Hack Day, they go to your website?

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, go to sciencehackday.org. And, you know, also with NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, anyone can actually submit a concept to NASA. That opens up yearly around August. You can go to nyackfellows.org.

• 22:47Bill Nye?

  Nyackfellows.org, and somebody will read it?

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, so nyackfellows.org, you can go learn how to submit a concept, and yeah, it's a three-page white paper due in August each year. And I think the thing that's really exciting is you can come from, you know, biology, or neuroscience, or, you know, design, or sort of any background.

• 23:07Eugene Mirman?

  Could you come from comedy?

• 23:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:09Eugene Mirman?

  Can anyone submit?

• 23:11Speaker 02

  Anyone can submit. So garage hackers, to scientists, to people from all different disciplines. To longer barf bag enthusiasts. Yeah. Anyone can do it. Exactly, you've got a concept already.

• 23:21Eugene Mirman?

  I can't wait to write a three-page whitepaper about the longest barf bag in the world.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  One word per page. You absolutely can. You know, this is what I love is, you know, NIAC and the NIACFellows.org website. It's really about getting different ideas into the mix at NASA. And so this both helps people outside of NASA actually potentially influence the future direction of NASA, as well as getting people within NASA. They can submit if they've had their work overlooked by the larger bureaucracy. So it's really helping make concepts that should be more accessible to NASA.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  Also, I'm just fast-forwarding to you submitting your three-page barf bag idea. Middle page somewhere in the like, "It's so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so long," etc. But then someone calls you and is like, "Eugene Mirman, your horrible idea about the long barf bag gave me the information I needed to realize how to use a wormhole to travel us through time."

• 24:21Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  And space.

• 24:23Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 24:24Bill Nye?

  That's what StarTalk brings to the party, people. That sort of innovative thinking.

• 24:31Eugene Mirman?

  It won't be a barf bag, but I will definitely submit something.

• 24:42Bill Nye?

  Fabios. Fabios, thank you all so much. This is the part of our show when we come to the microphones.

• 24:52Bill Nye?

  And so, please, and ask a question of anyone up here. Preferably to do with... With space and activity and inventions and space hacking.

• 25:05Bill Nye?

  So Eugene, you go ahead and call on people. Well, we can start right over here.

• 25:11Speaker 07

  Yes, my question was for Ariel. So the shaving device thing was an accident, but what was the thing you saw at a hack fest that really impressed you or struck you as particularly unique? What was your favorite?

• 25:26Speaker 02

  I think a lot of times, they are things like the beard detector where I don't really know what they're good for until other people sort of join in. So one of the weirdest hacks we had was a mask called Synesthesia that tried to simulate a type of synesthesia. And it was just a really creepy looking mask. And what it did was as you navigated different parts of the room with this mask on, different parts of your face would start vibrating depending on how light and dark the room was. So you could sort of navigate the room through vibration. And the team who did it, did it for fun. It was a molecular biologist and a journalist and a few other people teaming up.

• 26:07Bill Nye?

  Well, sure.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, this is what I mean. All different people from backgrounds get together. But following the event, a group of researchers reached out because they were developing a suit for toddlers who had experienced extreme brain damage and trying to use bodysuits to help these toddlers learn how to crawl in unique ways. And so they actually wanted to then collaborate with that team as a way of figuring out how to encourage toddlers to learn how to crawl who otherwise might not be able to. So I have less stories of someone having an exact idea and it coming to fruition and

• 26:47Speaker 02

  more stories of people developing things just to see what they can create and someone using that as a really divine inspiration for something else.

• 26:58Speaker 07

  Excellent, thank you.

• 26:59Bill Nye?

  Are you going to go to the Science Hack Day?

• 27:02Speaker 07

  I plan on it. And I was going to tell you that your socks are dope.

• 27:06Bill Nye?

  Thank you, they were a gift.

• 27:09Bill Nye?

  These socks are dope.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Thank you. If you or anyone else wants an early invite to Science Hack Day when we announce, just email me. I'm very findable on the interwebs, so I will give you an early invite. Nice.

• 27:25Speaker 08

  Hey, guys. My name's Nick. It's not necessarily a science question.

• 27:30Bill Nye?

  A little closer to the microphone.

• 27:32Speaker 08

  Okay, here we are. Are we here? Alright, cool. So, like, we're having this kind of convergence with, like, pop culture and science where we're both exploring AI. Like, we have, like, Westworld this year that explores AI in, like, a pleasure sense and other ways that I won't spoil the show for you.

• 27:50Bill Nye?

  Thank you.

• 27:50Speaker 08

  And then we have, like, Google, like, with, like, driverless cars, and, like, Uber's kind of doing the same thing. My question for you guys is, what are the applications of AI that you feel like these things are not questioning, or the questions they're not asking?

• 28:07Bill Nye?

  Uh, just some more about me. There's gonna be a Netflix show coming out called "Bill Nye Saves the World."

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 28:22Bill Nye?

  Netflix, does anybody work for Netflix? They're very secretive.

• 28:28Bill Nye?

  They're very secretive. They don't tell you who watches, or how many people, or stuff. So, all they're saying is "spring." That's the date. Spring, and we've shot 13 of them, and one of them's about artificial intelligence. So, we had these, what you would call, panel of experts. And the big thing is that artificial intelligence is, anytime you have a device or a system that takes the past and then makes decisions for you in the future, that's what people are calling artificial intelligence. So, driving a car, for example, but I think it'll be... Almost everything will have this anticipatory quality. Does anybody here have a Nest brand thermostat?

• 29:12Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so this is where it uses the past to change what it does in the future. I'm not saying it's all about thermostats, but I think that'll become more and more... Well, it's kind of an obvious idea where people will look back, "You mean you had to get up and build a fire to keep warm?"

• 29:27Eugene Mirman?

  A bunch of assholes.

• 29:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:31Bill Nye?

  So, I think it'll be fine, but what we want, you know, from the science education world is to have people who are comfortable with computers and computer code and keeping track of things. What's your business, sir?

• 29:44Speaker 08

  My business?

• 29:46Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 29:47Speaker 08

  I don't necessarily have a business.

• 29:48Bill Nye?

  Uh-huh.

• 29:49Speaker 08

  Well, good luck.

• 29:50Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 29:54Speaker 09

  Just for the good old days, I want to start with this. Bill Nye the Science Guy.

• 30:00Bill Nye?

  Well, we love that.

• 30:01Speaker 09

  Bill Nye the Science Guy. Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill.

• 30:06Bill Nye?

  Thank you, yes.

• 30:07Speaker 09

  Oh, man, that show, holy cow, it inspired me so much.

• 30:11Bill Nye?

  Well, I love you, man.

• 30:12Speaker 09

  I'm sure I love you guys.

• 30:13Bill Nye?

  Right on.

• 30:14Speaker 09

  Uh, so you guys are basically doing one of the coolest things possible right now, which is science communication, all of you, and, you know, putting on the festival itself is, again, art and bringing in science communication here. I'm sure that's why we're all here. But I also do, I host a science comedy show myself called Eureka, but I really wanted to ask you guys this question. It's part of Sketch Fest, but this question is about science communication. How do we bring more science communication and experiential learning, hands-on learning, to the world?

• 30:48Bill Nye?

  Can't do it.

• 30:49Speaker 03

  Huh.

• 30:52Bill Nye?

  You go to Science Hack Day, man.

• 30:54Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 30:55Bill Nye?

  That's what you do. You join the Planetary Society at planetary.org. That's what you do. So, you know, what we say all the time is we want science every day in every grade. So, there's a big emphasis, for example, in Science Hack Day, where people want hands-on learning outside of the classroom. But what I think we still need, especially in the United States, is hands-on learning in the classroom. Like, in many US school systems, you don't get any science till you're in middle school. And that's inappropriate. Everybody who works at NASA... Got interested in science before they were 10, right? When they were in elementary school. I mean, pretty much.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  A lot.

• 31:38Bill Nye?

  Yeah, you're not gonna, for example, you will not meet a professional baseball player who just turned 18 and thought, "I think I'll try this." No, I mean-- Maybe you turned 12. Could be hard. So, anyway, what we want to do is get, in the formal school curriculum, have science incorporated, since you asked. And what I used to say, until a couple of months ago, I used to say, "The most important thing you can do about something like that is vote."

• 32:07Speaker 02

  It's still important.

• 32:09Bill Nye?

  But now, I'm not so sure.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  It's still important.

• 32:13Bill Nye?

  So, uh, vote. Encourage your school systems to have science every day, in every grade.

• 32:27Speaker 09

  Thank you, keep inspiring.

• 32:29Bill Nye?

  It's changed the world, people.

• 32:32Speaker 10

  Hello, so, um, two things. You talked about the laser wafer propulsion system to Alpha Centauri.

• 32:43Speaker 10

  Trying to--

• 32:43Bill Nye?

  What's so weird about that?

• 32:44Speaker 10

  Uh, no, no, nothing weird. Can you, do you know anything more about the electromagnetic warp drive? That's been being tested, not tested, hypothesized.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  I'll take this one. Thank you, Ariel. No, no, thank you. No, you go ahead. It's all you.

• 33:01Bill Nye?

  No, I don't know anything about it, but I'll just tell you, when you, soon as you say warp drive--

• 33:06Speaker 10

  Yeah, I know, I know.

• 33:07Bill Nye?

  It's this whole idea, when you got a science fiction show, they're gonna show up on planets and everybody's gonna speak English. And they're gonna have a thing that allows you to dissociate your molecules and go down to the planet. But that's not the same as actually having a warp drive. Yeah. And so, I saw it, I know, but it's, there's more to it than that. So, I don't know anything about that. But for many years, people have talked about nuclear drive, you know, where you explode nuclear weapons behind your spacecraft and push them along.

• 33:37Speaker 10

  That sounds bad.

• 33:38Bill Nye?

  And it would work, I guess, but, you know, you can't even get--

• 33:41Speaker 02

  I mean, one of the things with the warp drive thing to understand is that it is, in a sense, asking to sort of break physics as we know it through an application. And, you know, this is sort of the difference with the NIAC stuff and the Breakthrough Starshot using lasers as propulsion systems is they're not actually trying to say that physics is broken, they're actually using physics as we know it. And with NIAC projects in particular, the two really important things are, don't propose something that asks to change the laws of physics as we know them, and then don't submit something that requires a budget that's unrealistic. So like, as long as I have $2 trillion, I can totally build this awesome spacecraft that gets us to Mars in two days, you know, so things like that.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  So the warp drive, I think, you know, I'm always skeptical of things that ask for the laws of physics to be broken in order for an application to work.

• 34:35Bill Nye?

  Why?

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Because I think we need to work on the fundamental research first before we think about the applications.

• 34:42Bill Nye?

  Before we go, and by the way, where would the laser be?

• 34:45Speaker 02

  I think that's something they're actually prototyping and testing out, so I think they're looking at sort of both what happens when you use space-based and ground-based lasers and whether the present wants to that.

• 34:54Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so you put one on the moon, maybe, and shoot it at the spacecraft, and, yeah. So we'll keep you posted on the warp drive.

• 35:01Speaker 10

  Okay, and then the second piece, you mentioned astronauts, that's the word I'm looking for, astronauts controlling their mood on long flights. I'm a psychology major, is there any hope for me being on a mission to Mars as a therapist to keep?

• 35:16Speaker 02

  I mean, I hope so. I hope so. I think that's great. Yeah.

• 35:20Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  Why not?

• 35:22Bill Nye?

  Stick with it.

• 35:32Bill Nye?

  So on this upcoming Bill Nye Saves the World show, we have artificial intelligence where the robot coffee maker wants to kill all humans. And it's, the voice is Neil deGrasse Tyson, so turn it up loud. It's funny, it's funny.

• 35:54Speaker 11

  Bill, you actually preempted my question a little bit. I have been...

• 35:59Bill Nye?

  A coffee maker.

• 36:00Speaker 11

  Yes.

• 36:01Bill Nye?

  Terrible coffee.

• 36:03Speaker 11

  Quite rude, quite rude. I have, I read a lot of speculative science fiction and one of the trilogies that I read this year was, or last year, was The Three-Body Problem.

• 36:17Bill Nye?

  The Three-Body Problem.

• 36:19Speaker 11

  I also like it.

• 36:20Bill Nye?

  So, everybody, The Three-Body Problem is complicated, where you have the sun and the earth, and then you're a spacecraft. How do you keep track of the gravity of all three objects, or the moon? And they're all going around each other. It gets, there's a lot of math.

• 36:38Speaker 11

  It's complicated.

• 36:39Bill Nye?

  It was Legrange, right? Who worked the Three-Body Problem.

• 36:42Speaker 11

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:43Bill Nye?

  In the Hamiltonian. But, yes, go on, please, sorry.

• 36:46Speaker 11

  This question is specifically about a type of propulsion that they proposed in The Three-Body Problem, which was using all of the earth's nuclear missiles to...

• 36:59Bill Nye?

  You know.

• 37:00Speaker 11

  ...explode behind, explode behind a solar sail, or not a solar sail, but a sail, to propel a very small package at near-light speed.

• 37:12Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 37:13Speaker 11

  Now, my question is, do you think that that would work, both in getting us to near-light speed and also in convincing us to do nuclear disarmament?

• 37:23Bill Nye?

  So, I would say, it doesn't sound like it would work, because those missiles were made to fall on other countries. You know this expression, ballistic missile? You shoot it up and it falls. Ballast, weight. It falls on your enemy. So, they're not really made to go into deep space. And then, in getting everybody to shoot his nuclear missile and trusting that it's really gonna go into space, it's just probably, I think the political issues might be troublesome. And then, making a spacecraft durable enough to withstand nuclear explosions behind it is probably true.

• 38:04Eugene Mirman?

  Of all our missiles.

• 38:05Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah. And now, for those of you who don't know, the Department of Energy in the United States controls much of the nuclear material.

• 38:17Bill Nye?

  Yeah, exactly. And so, uh...

• 38:19Speaker 05

  He has glasses.

• 38:21Bill Nye?

  I don't know what's gonna happen with the Department of Energy. Uh, I just don't know, uh... So, no, I would say, no. But, when it comes to nuclear material to do almost anything, the political problems are generally much harder than the technical ones. I mean, nobody... This is what's... Why don't we have nuclear power plants everywhere? Because there's all these problems with them. And, uh, for example... And, you know, if you s... If you start just even a small nuclear war, it's really bad.

• 38:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:54Bill Nye?

  So, uh, lead on. Lead on. Yes, guy in Dallas, Cal person.

• 39:01Speaker 12

  Hello, yes. Um, yes. Um, first, I just wanna say that you and Dr. Tyson are two of my heroes.

• 39:08Bill Nye?

  I love you, man!

• 39:09Speaker 12

  Um, you guys are both brilliant, but much more important than that. You do great and very valuable things with your smarts, so thank you for that.

• 39:16Bill Nye?

  I love you, man!

• 39:17Speaker 12

  Um, I am studying to teach, and you've been very vocal in, um, for lack of a better term, the curriculum of creationism in classrooms.

• 39:27Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 39:28Speaker 12

  And, uh, I just wanted to know, is that... Is that still a growing movement?

• 39:33Bill Nye?

  Oh, heck, yes!

• 39:34Speaker 12

  Yeah, and, um, is it as difficult as I hope it would be to be adding that into our classrooms and history books?

• 39:41Bill Nye?

  What, adding what? Creationism?

• 39:44Speaker 12

  Creationism, yeah.

• 39:45Bill Nye?

  No, you mean, people try to put creationism in classrooms.

• 39:47Speaker 12

  Right.

• 39:48Bill Nye?

  So, speaking of the guy that's been hired to run the Department of Energy, former Governor Rick Perry, he also, if you recall, wanted to, uh, abandon the Department of Education. And in general, and this is being recorded, and this will end my career, and so it goes, but the reason people wanna do that is they wanna teach... They don't wanna teach evolution in schools. That's sort of what starts that whole thing. That's the whole deal. That's the fundamental idea in all of life science and all biology. They don't wanna teach it in schools. And Claudia, we're so happy that you sent Ken Ham from, uh, Australia. You're welcome. Yeah. To, uh...

• 40:31Bill Nye?

  Is anybody from Kentucky, the Commonwealth of Kentucky? Nobody, really?

• 40:37Bill Nye?

  No, I'm sorry. No, no, it's really an extraordinary thing this guy was able to do. You know, he's got the, he got what's called a tax increment funding scheme, tax increment financing, TIF. So everybody in the Commonwealth of Kentucky pays for his replica of Noah's Ark, which is this huge thing. I've been there. It's just, wow. And so if you're a kid brought up in that culture where people believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old. It's more like 7,000, right? Yeah, you're right. It's twice that.

• 41:10Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 41:14Bill Nye?

  It's really hard to overcome, if you're a kid brought up in that, it's really hard to get over it. So this is a fight we gotta fight.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. I would say to also be sure to support school districts on the local level. So I grew up in Kansas, which is always like every, I don't know, five years or so in headlines for being the most backward state about, you know, wanting to teach creationism in schools. And I would go to high school in a suburb of Kansas City where it's kind of like a liberal oasis, but, you know, I remember back to school night and the teachers all wrote on the blackboards like, "We teach evolution." It's sort of like, you know, it is ridiculous that it has to come to that, that, you know, teachers on a local level have to stand up and say, "No matter what the Kansas Board of Education says, we're not going to teach that, we're going to teach evolution."

• 42:02Speaker 02

  But, you know, you know, put pressure on the federal level, but also, you know, support your local school districts that are against whatever, you know, the statewide committees try to say, because I think you'd be surprised on the local level that there are a lot of schools in these states that often get bad headlines where they are trying to actively fight it, but they need support.

• 42:23Bill Nye?

  So you pick, Eugene. I can't, Claudia, you pick. Claudia, you pick.

• 42:27Speaker 06

  I think it's this lion's turn.

• 42:29Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 13

  It is. Flat all bad. Better question. That's okay. Okay. First of all, thank you guys very much for this show and for Sketch Fest. My question's really for Bill and Ariel, and it's kind of nerdy, sorry. That has no place here.

• 42:43Bill Nye?

  Yeah. StarTalk, you're a StarTalk audience member and you're nerdy?

• 42:49Speaker 13

  It happens, I guess.

• 42:50Bill Nye?

  Yeah, it's so weird.

• 42:51Speaker 13

  So, I wonder why we don't use electromagnetic propulsion regularly in launches, spacecraft launches?

• 42:58Bill Nye?

  On launches?

• 43:00Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 43:01Bill Nye?

  We use electromagnetic propulsion for station keeping, you know, these... You guys, you can use these big, long tethers in deep or high orbits to hold spacecraft up. It's very cool, but you're talking about like a railgun?

• 43:15Speaker 13

  Basically, like a railgun. And I know launches have actually been conducted with that tech, but I wonder why we don't use it in conjunction with chemical propulsion?

• 43:25Bill Nye?

  People talk about it all the time. And then, so anyway, this is where you guys, you have two railroad tracks, railroad rails, I guess a single track, and you run the... And then your spacecraft sits on slides on this track, and you run the right current through it, and it's inherently repelled. It's a fabulous physics thing. And so you could shoot it really fast, but it's gotta go straight up, and it needs a lot of electricity from electricity co. So, I mean, I guess it's... People fooled it. And then the other just wacky thing is to have the fuel on the spacecraft and then shoot beam microwaves into it to boost it. Whoa.

• 44:08Bill Nye?

  And so, people talk about that all the time. And if you want to solve a problem, getting to low Earth orbit would be a great one. So, get her done. I think it's just a lot harder than it looks. All right, you guys, this has been a great show. Thank you so much. Give it up for Eugene Mirman himself, Claudio Doherty from Netflix's Love, Janet Varney from FX's You're the Worst, and IFC's Stand Against Evil, and of course, our heroine for this episode, Ariel Waldman, space activist. I've been your host, Bill Nye. This has been StarTalk. Keep looking up.

• 44:52Bill Nye?

  Let's change the world, people.