Cosmic Queries: Altered States, with Bill Nye

If you think this episode will be filled with questions about pot and LSD, you’d be right. But Chuck Nice also throws a few other Cosmic Queries at host Bill Nye, from how to get more women into STEM to the potential impact of discovering life on Mars. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/cosmic-queries-altered-states-with-bill-nye/

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.

• 0:21Bill Nye?

  Welcome, welcome to StarTalk. This is StarTalk All-Star Edition. Bill Nye hosting this week, joined by none other than Chuck Nice. Chuck, it's good to see you.

• 0:33Chuck Nice?

  Always good to see you, Bill.

• 0:35Bill Nye?

  And this week, our Cosmic Query topic

• 0:39Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:39Bill Nye?

  is expanding our perspectives.

• 0:42Chuck Nice?

  That's correct. Is that the sound effect that goes along with expanded perspectives?

• 0:47Bill Nye?

  Well, it's just something that says zoom out.

• 0:48Chuck Nice?

  It's gotta be right.

• 0:49Bill Nye?

  We're zooming out, it's iris out. So Chuck, you have the great list of Cosmic Queries which come to us from our listeners.

• 0:56Chuck Nice?

  Yes, they do, from all over the internets.

• 0:59Bill Nye?

  And we're gonna expand our perspective.

• 1:01Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we are. Uh, we've got some great questions from Facebook, Twitter, StarTalkRadio.net, and every other incarnation where we live.

• 1:11Bill Nye?

  These are electronic media.

• 1:13Chuck Nice?

  These are electronic media.

• 1:14Bill Nye?

  That the kids use.

• 1:15Chuck Nice?

  Yes, that's right.

• 1:15Bill Nye?

  With their electric computer machines.

• 1:17Chuck Nice?

  That's right, and I think we're on everything except Snapchat, because, uh, you know...

• 1:21Bill Nye?

  This doesn't last long enough.

• 1:22Chuck Nice?

  It doesn't last long enough, and nobody wants to see us naked, so...

• 1:26Bill Nye?

  That's very troubling, just the image. Yeah, lead on.

• 1:30Chuck Nice?

  Did I disturb you there?

• 1:31Bill Nye?

  Just a little.

• 1:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so listen, let's just jump into it. You haven't seen the questions, that's the way it works, and it's just really, uh, you know, the great thing about expanding your, uh, your perspectives is, a lot of this is science as well as Bill Nye's actual opinion. So we got a little Si-Pinion going on here.

• 1:50Bill Nye?

  Si-Pinion.

• 1:50Chuck Nice?

  Si-Pinion.

• 1:51Bill Nye?

  Quite the coinage.

• 1:52Chuck Nice?

  Yes, alright. So let's go with Nelson Sa, okay, from Facebook. This is a pretty decent question, I like, you know...

• 2:00Bill Nye?

  You have to sound so surprised, our listeners are a very sophisticated bunch.

• 2:06Chuck Nice?

  You know what, I just realized that that I did sound that way.

• 2:09Bill Nye?

  Well. Hey, this was. To let it go, I would have been remiss, so lead on.

• 2:13Chuck Nice?

  Right, okay, so Nelson from Facebook says this. Have NASA's zero-gravity experiments had any useful breakthroughs which better our society? So I, I assume that Nelson means outside of space travel, where of course it is directly applicable. But here on Earth, do those zero-gravity experiments do anything for us down here who are living in gravity?

• 2:38Bill Nye?

  I'd say there's one thing specifically. They have led to research in bone health.

• 2:46Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 2:46Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so these modern bone medicines, uh, wouldn't, probably, they probably wouldn't be the way they are without all these discoveries made in zero or so-called microgravity.

• 2:57Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 2:57Bill Nye?

  Where people have very low gravity, your bones, you know, you look at a skeleton.

• 3:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:01Bill Nye?

  They're in the museum, let's say of American Museum of Natural History, for example.

• 3:05Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 3:05Bill Nye?

  Uh, and, uh, they are solid, they look like rocks, but bones get flexed, they're alive. And if you stop putting a load on them, they get weak. And, uh, this is one of the things they discovered about astronauts in space for a long time, or even a medium amount of time. They lost their bones, their calcium, they would urinate it away.

• 3:25Chuck Nice?

  Because, now, is that because, uh, the body just realizes, well, there's no need. I, I'm not, I'm not using this, I don't need it.

• 3:33Bill Nye?

  Yes, and when you say realizes, uh, reacts as though it realized, yeah.

• 3:39Chuck Nice?

  Yes, that's my non-scientific way of saying the body reacts.

• 3:42Bill Nye?

  Body reacts, yeah, and so, uh, they, now, people take pills to keep their bones going, and so they've speculated, people who are in this world, speculate that you could go to Mars in nearly zero-gravity just by taking the right drugs, you could keep your bones. So this is affecting health on Earth. The other thing. We've learned so much about physics writ large by watching people bounce around in microgravity.

• 4:06Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 4:07Bill Nye?

  No, you just, I mean, you just watch how things happen, you learn about torques and reactions, sort of classical physics, it's a beautiful thing.

• 4:15Chuck Nice?

  It's a beautiful thing. Nice. All right, so, and do, do, do any of those, uh, observations, especially when it comes to watching, uh, objects or people bounce around in zero G, does that do anything in any particular industry, like, I'm thinking, maybe, the automobile industry might be able to, uh, you know, go ahead?

• 4:38Bill Nye?

  Two things people all dreamt of was new alloys.

• 4:42Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 4:43Bill Nye?

  Of metal.

• 4:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:45Bill Nye?

  That would only be fabricable, if I may coin the adjective, in space, or in nearly zero gravity. That hasn't, you know, panned out, or alloyed out, and then the other one was sophisticated drug molecules that you could create more easily in zero gravity than you could create on Earth, and while that sounds reasonable, when you're working at a molecular level, uh, gravity isn't the main thing. It's sort of viscosity, just stickiness of molecules, or overwhelms the gravitational effect. With that said, who knows what lies ahead, what discovery is yet to be made? And they study spy, they, we, people, astronauts, study spiders, who are still able to capture prey, even though there's zero gravity.

• 5:29Chuck Nice?

  Even in zero gravity?

• 5:30Bill Nye?

  They have trouble spinning webs.

• 5:33Chuck Nice?

  They have trouble spinning webs, but they somehow can still...

• 5:37Bill Nye?

  Well, it's a learning curve, or it's a learning process. Spider jumps and misses, spider adjusts, jumps and gets, so there's something going on spider brain-wise.

• 5:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:46Bill Nye?

  Compensating for zero gravity, so what you and I think with our inner ears, and how we roll... Or keep from rolling. You think that, we think that you might project that on spiders and other arthropods, but they got something else going on. There's something else going on. And so you wouldn't really learn that without experiments in zero gravity or, or near zero gravity.

• 6:09Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's great. So zero gravity, there you have it, Nelson, doing great things for us as a society and for spiders as well.

• 6:17Bill Nye?

  For example.

• 6:19Chuck Nice?

  For example.

• 6:20Bill Nye?

  But you know, Spider-Man, one of the things that he can do, he can do whatever a spider can.

• 6:26Chuck Nice?

  This is true.

• 6:28Bill Nye?

  He can spin webs, any size.

• 6:30Chuck Nice?

  Catches thieves just like flies.

• 6:32Bill Nye?

  Look out.

• 6:32Chuck Nice?

  Here comes the Spider-Man.

• 6:35Bill Nye?

  But we've all dreamed of being able to hang upside down without blood going to our brains. Spiders apparently are able to roll.

• 6:42Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 6:43Bill Nye?

  Or hang.

• 6:44Chuck Nice?

  And I have dreamed of hanging upside down and kissing Mary Jane, my girlfriend, who doesn't know that I'm a radioactive superhero. All right, I'm gonna move on now, because that was, that was kinda weird and creepy, and I don't know why.

• 6:56Bill Nye?

  It wasn't really creepy.

• 6:57Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 6:58Bill Nye?

  It's just a digression.

• 6:59Chuck Nice?

  Yes. All right, here we go. This is Chad William Harden. He is coming to us through Facebook from Irvine, California. And he says this, "My question is, can physics explain why time seems to speed up as we get older? Could this have something to do with the entanglement and the more interactions we have with each passing day? Or the expansion of the universe decreasing density and altering time itself?" Chad, I want some of what you are smoking.

• 7:35Bill Nye?

  Well, here's what I say to people like that.

• 7:38Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 7:39Bill Nye?

  Where we start any of these things. Chad, you may be right.

• 7:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 7:44Bill Nye?

  But far more likely, it seems to me, is that each day, as you get older, becomes a smaller fraction of your total number of days.

• 7:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:52Bill Nye?

  And so each day blends in with the others more easily. When you're five years old, a day is one in fifteen hundred.

• 8:00Chuck Nice?

  That's a long time. That's right. That's a long time.

• 8:02Bill Nye?

  When you're fifty-five-year-old, it's a day in, you know, fifty-five thousand. Have we talked about thirty thousand days?

• 8:08Chuck Nice?

  No, we haven't.

• 8:09Bill Nye?

  So if things go really well for you, Chuck.

• 8:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:12Bill Nye?

  And you live to be eighty-two and seven weeks.

• 8:15Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 8:15Bill Nye?

  A month and three quarters.

• 8:16Chuck Nice?

  A month and three quarters.

• 8:17Bill Nye?

  You get thirty thousand days. Thirty thousand days. When you're five years older, maybe Chad's age, thirty thousand, you know, a lot.

• 8:25Chuck Nice?

  That's a big time. That's a long period of time.

• 8:27Bill Nye?

  But when you get up near it, doesn't seem like that many at all.

• 8:30Chuck Nice?

  So the days behind you are bigger than the days in front of you.

• 8:35Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 8:35Chuck Nice?

  As a result, time seems to speed up.

• 8:38Bill Nye?

  Speed up. That's right.

• 8:39Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 8:40Bill Nye?

  It could be dilation of the time space, spacetime continuum, could be. But more likely is just the arithmetic fraction denominator getting bigger than numerator.

• 8:51Chuck Nice?

  But the truth is, it's, it's a perspective at that point. It really is a pers- your perspective. So that the five-year-old has a different perspective of time than you do.

• 9:00Bill Nye?

  You hope so.

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

  At sixty-five. And so, right, you hope so. Unless you're that Benjamin Bratt, uh, oh, no, Benjamin Button.

• 9:10Bill Nye?

  What did we do to, what did he do to tick you off? He kept getting younger. You're just mad at him.

• 9:15Chuck Nice?

  Let me tell you something. I'm so PO'd at that guy. Okay?

• 9:19Bill Nye?

  Take comfort is not real.

• 9:21Chuck Nice?

  He's living my dream, though, real or not. Hey, Chad, thanks for the question. That was, uh, that was pretty cool. Uh, so there you have it.

• 9:28Bill Nye?

  Who was, who was he interacting with in the movie?

• 9:31Chuck Nice?

  Who, Benjamin Button?

• 9:32Bill Nye?

  Kate Blanchett, is that right?

• 9:35Chuck Nice?

  Was it, was it Kate Blanchett?

• 9:37Bill Nye?

  Well, that would be a good dream. That's a solid dream.

• 9:41Bill Nye?

  Lead on.

• 9:42Chuck Nice?

  All right. Let's, uh, let's go to Matt E.

• 9:46Bill Nye?

  We can say interacting on radio?

• 9:48Chuck Nice?

  Yes, you can. Absolutely. Uh, Matt Ellie. No, no, I'm doing this wrong. I'm gonna say it's Matt Eli, even though it's spelled E-L-Y.

• 10:00Bill Nye?

  Matt Eli. Matt, Matt, what's your, what's your, what's on your mind prospectively?

• 10:03Chuck Nice?

  Matt is coming from Facebook and he says, is there a moment that sticks out in your memory, Bill? When you have witnessed someone else's cosmic perspective expand when they weren't seeking it, but it happened anyway? Steve Jobs experimented with hallucinogenics and it aided him greatly. So I think Matt is looking for tacit approval from you for him to do psychotropic drugs.

• 10:28Bill Nye?

  Uh, I don't, I don't recommend those.

• 10:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 10:32Bill Nye?

  Uh, however, I am a host on this show and, you know, when you work with Neil, wine is often.

• 10:38Chuck Nice?

  Yes, flowing, flowing, yes.

• 10:40Bill Nye?

  That's it.

• 10:42Bill Nye?

  Uh, it's happened more than once and it has been with the planet Saturn.

• 10:47Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 10:47Bill Nye?

  I set up a telescope. I have a modest 80 millimeter telescope. It's enough to look at planets.

• 10:53Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it is.

• 10:54Bill Nye?

  And you get a 30 times or better mag- 50 time magnification. Woman looks through the eyepiece and goes, "Whoa, whoa." Sends me postcards the next day, like, just is in romance with Saturn.

• 11:09Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay, sending you postcards of Saturn.

• 11:11Bill Nye?

  No, no.

• 11:12Chuck Nice?

  Just sending you postcards.

• 11:13Bill Nye?

  Some things.

• 11:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 11:14Bill Nye?

  Uh, but it was, uh, it's happened more than once. When people look at the planet Saturn, I claim they have a cosmic moment and your, your perspective is enlarged. People think it's...

• 11:24Chuck Nice?

  Now, why just Saturn? I mean...

• 11:25Bill Nye?

  Well, I think it's because it's inherently, intrinsically so pretty. So, it's such a beautiful object.

• 11:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 11:31Bill Nye?

  And there's this moment, it's happened, I, I can't, I cannot count. More than a handful of times when people say, "Did you put a slide in there? Did you put a slide in the other telescope while I wasn't looking?" No, that's it.

• 11:42Chuck Nice?

  That's actually Saturn. You're looking at it.

• 11:44Bill Nye?

  When the planes of the, plane of the rings is especially favorable, it's especially beautiful.

• 11:49Chuck Nice?

  Well, I am sure Carolyn Porco would be very happy to hear you say that.

• 11:53Bill Nye?

  Uh, I hope so. She's the leader of the Cassini team, if you're scoring along with us. Uh, Cassini was the mathematician who predicted the gaps in the rings mathematically and after whom the spacecraft is named.

• 12:08Chuck Nice?

  Right, the Cassini spacecraft, which took pictures and, you know...

• 12:11Bill Nye?

  Still does.

• 12:12Chuck Nice?

  It's still taking pictures.

• 12:13Bill Nye?

  Your tax dollars at work, people.

• 12:15Chuck Nice?

  And you know what? It's a better, uh, use of tax dollars than most of the stuff that's happening. I'm sorry.

• 12:20Bill Nye?

  Testify, Chuck Nice, testify.

• 12:25Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Matt, Eli, there's the answer, man. So, the cosmic perspective expands.

• 12:29Bill Nye?

  Do not recommend the psychotropic.

• 12:31Chuck Nice?

  Right. Don't do the, don't do the drugs, man. Buy a telescope and look at Saturn. There's your answer, okay?

• 12:36Bill Nye?

  And you know, Steve Jobs, although he brought success to some companies, he also rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. And one cannot help but wonder if he wouldn't have been even more successful.

• 12:48Chuck Nice?

  If he didn't rub those people the wrong way?

• 12:50Bill Nye?

  Yeah, if he'd, uh, if he'd stayed focused.

• 12:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:54Bill Nye?

  But who knows?

• 12:55Chuck Nice?

  Listen, I've had...

• 12:56Bill Nye?

  We're speculating on, on, we can't.

• 12:58Chuck Nice?

  I've had my share of problems for rubbing people the wrong way.

• 13:01Bill Nye?

  I am shocked.

• 13:03Bill Nye?

  Your last name is not Chuck Rub the Wrong Way. You're Chuck Nice. People have expectations, or maybe that's the, that's the

• 13:12Chuck Nice?

  That's the problem.

• 13:13Bill Nye?

  You see?

• 13:14Chuck Nice?

  That is the problem.

• 13:15Bill Nye?

  That's where you go light fingered on them. Expect this and you get that. That's right, okay.

• 13:20Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 13:21Bill Nye?

  Chuck Mean.

• 13:22Chuck Nice?

  Chuck Mean, oh my god. Just as, as I digress for a second, there's a club owner here in New York City who calls me that.

• 13:31Bill Nye?

  Calls you Chuck Mean?

• 13:31Chuck Nice?

  Chuck Mean. He was like, "I'm the one who knows the truth. No one knows the truth."

• 13:36Bill Nye?

  That's not bad.

• 13:37Chuck Nice?

  You're Chuck Mean, so.

• 13:39Bill Nye?

  I still, let the record show, I still have great interest in meeting your wife.

• 13:43Chuck Nice?

  You know, I have to tell you, um...

• 13:46Bill Nye?

  Cause she's gotta be extraordinary.

• 13:47Chuck Nice?

  She is an extraordinary woman. And you know what? I gotta tell you, you and I are in the same brook. I still look very much forward to meeting my wife.

• 13:56Chuck Nice?

  And we've been living together for eighteen years.

• 13:59Bill Nye?

  But you work nights.

• 14:00Chuck Nice?

  That's, there you go.

• 14:01Bill Nye?

  Very clever of you to night.

• 14:04Chuck Nice?

  Alright, here we go.

• 14:07Chuck Nice?

  Alright, this is, uh, Lysandro Gutierrez. Lysandro Gutierrez, uh, must be coming to us from Twitter, although she doesn't say. So, uh, Lysandro wants to know this. "Wow, look at this, man. When you say expanding perspectives, people pretty much go to one place." She says, "Would it be better for marijuana to be available as a prescription drug for those who truly need it, or be available for recreational purposes? What are your thoughts on marijuana?"

• 14:39Bill Nye?

  Well, I'll give you two separate, uh, tines of this fork.

• 14:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay, and, and let me just say before you answer that, that, uh, Lysandro comes to us from Patreon, so, uh, this is, this is a Patreon question, so we must give it special attention, Mr. Nod.

• 14:57Bill Nye?

  Well, uh, there are two tines to this fork, for me. The first one is, in Washington State, in the United States, they claim that their new marijuana laws are working in the following way. They've reduced the number of DUIs driving under the influence. They don't have, policemen don't have to spend as much time pursuing what used to be petty offenders when people have a small amount of marijuana with them.

• 15:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:21Bill Nye?

  And, uh...

• 15:22Chuck Nice?

  Not that it's hard to pursue somebody who's high on marijuana, let me just tell you. Yeah.

• 15:27Bill Nye?

  Dude, and...

• 15:28Chuck Nice?

  I would run right now, but, yeah.

• 15:31Bill Nye?

  So it's an income stream instead of a burden. But I will say that's the first time of the fork. The other one, just for me, I do not like the smell. I'm not a fan of marijuana.

• 15:43Chuck Nice?

  See, I'm just, I don't mind the smell of marijuana. I like the smell of cocaine a lot better.

• 15:49Bill Nye?

  Uh, can't hear you, can't hear you. And so the thing is, if marijuana is taxed and we have an education program, because I, I mean, this is anecdotal, Chuck.

• 16:00Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 16:01Bill Nye?

  Just people I've known who've smoked marijuana for a long time.

• 16:04Chuck Nice?

  Long time.

• 16:05Bill Nye?

  Some of them are completely unaffected, but some of them just seem like they get stupider.

• 16:10Chuck Nice?

  Well, yes.

• 16:11Bill Nye?

  And so I think it's related, or not related, it's a similar pattern to what you see with alcohol.

• 16:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:17Bill Nye?

  Some people are tolerant of it, some people aren't.

• 16:19Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 16:20Bill Nye?

  And so I'm all for legalizing marijuana so long as we include an education program with it. Like, some people are not gonna be able to do it.

• 16:28Chuck Nice?

  You know, and this is, it's, what you just say right there is very important. And I agree with you exactly in that same way, because I myself used to, and when I say used to-

• 16:38Bill Nye?

  And look, he's fine.

• 16:39Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm not. That's the point. I am not fine. I used to smoke marijuana, and it's not that I'm done-

• 16:47Bill Nye?

  That's it, right there.

• 16:48Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 16:49Bill Nye?

  I used to smoke marijuana, and, like, what happened was-

• 16:53Chuck Nice?

  No, so I used to smoke marijuana, but it's, I'm not done with marijuana, it's done with me. So-

• 16:58Bill Nye?

  You lost me.

• 16:59Chuck Nice?

  So what happened-

• 17:00Bill Nye?

  You took a meeting?

• 17:02Chuck Nice?

  No, it just-

• 17:03Bill Nye?

  It fired you?

• 17:04Chuck Nice?

  It stopped working.

• 17:05Bill Nye?

  Oh, I see.

• 17:06Chuck Nice?

  The desired effect that I wanted was no longer available, and it did not produce the desired effect. And so basically, I would smoke it, become very paranoid, and that would be the entire experience. Me sitting alone in a room going, "There's a lot of people in here," and I was by myself. So, you know.

• 17:25Bill Nye?

  So you stopped doing it?

• 17:26Chuck Nice?

  So I stopped, because it just, it wasn't working.

• 17:28Bill Nye?

  What was the effect you were going for before?

• 17:30Chuck Nice?

  Uh, that whole, "I would run right now, officer, but yeah."

• 17:35Bill Nye?

  A sense of well-being?

• 17:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. Like-

• 17:37Bill Nye?

  A sense of well-being.

• 17:37Chuck Nice?

  Like, who cares? Everything is great, you know? Now, I have a friend who told me, "I'm just smoking the wrong marijuana," but that's a whole nother conversation.

• 17:45Bill Nye?

  That sounds like a pushing person. No, it sounds like a guy who's trying to make a sale.

• 17:50Chuck Nice?

  That's my dealer, right?

• 17:54Bill Nye?

  No, I don't mean to.

• 17:54Chuck Nice?

  No, he wasn't. He's not.

• 17:56Bill Nye?

  Oh, no.

• 17:56Chuck Nice?

  No, no, he's just a guy who always had it and I bought it from him.

• 17:59Bill Nye?

  That's all you're saying.

• 18:00Chuck Nice?

  That doesn't make him a drug dealer, right?

• 18:03Bill Nye?

  And so with that thought, uh, these, uh, we've expanded our perspectives somewhat and we're going to expand them further in the coming minutes here on StarTalk. Appreciate everybody who's sending your perspectival questions in and we will join you, Bill Nye and Chuck Nice, right after this.

• 18:25Bill Nye?

  So, uh, everyone, you're watching and listening to StarTalk All-Stars. That's right, Bill Nye here, hosting this week, uh, joined by a man with extraordinary cosmic perspective, none other than Chuck Nice.

• 18:39Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 18:39Bill Nye?

  And we are taking your, uh, input with respect to a cosmic perspective.

• 18:47Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 18:48Bill Nye?

  And we finished the last segment with some mind expansion questions about, uh, smoking marijuana and the role of the pusher person in Chuck's life at one time.

• 19:00Chuck Nice?

  Hey, you know what? Since we're on that, since we're back on that theme, I gotta ask this question. Uh, this is Matt Eli, again, who, who sent in this.

• 19:09Bill Nye?

  He's prolific.

• 19:10Chuck Nice?

  He is.

• 19:10Bill Nye?

  If Matt's a man.

• 19:11Chuck Nice?

  And, uh, we'd never know, cause it could be, uh, could be Matilda. This is what Matt wants to know. Uh, have you, Bill Nye, ever experimented with any perception-altering drugs or aids that have expanded your perspective?

• 19:30Bill Nye?

  No. I mean, I've enjoyed alcoholic beverages. I don't know if that's expanded my perspective. It's definitely reduced my inhibitions.

• 19:43Bill Nye?

  But I don't know if that's the same as expanding perspective.

• 19:46Chuck Nice?

  I am, I am picturing a shirtless Bill Nye up on a bar right now, baby. That's, uh, yes.

• 19:56Bill Nye?

  With that said. I've tried on the glasses. I've tried closing my eyes for extended periods. Trying to turn off all your senses. I've tried meditation with extraordinary input or techniques with words to say, thoughts to think, breaths to feel on your upper lip. I've tried all this stuff. But I never really had my reality expanded, my perception of reality expanded, gotta say.

• 20:23Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 20:25Bill Nye?

  Oh, I've tried. But I haven't tried as hard, like I knew people who take LSD.

• 20:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:29Bill Nye?

  And they've had, they claim, you know, good experiences. But they all come back a little afraid of it.

• 20:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay, yes. I was gonna say, there's a, there are a lot of people who have good experiences with LSD. Or even if it's not LSD, like just any hallucinogenic, like mushrooms or, and they, they tend to like it. And, and then at the same time, they are very leery. Like they don't, they would never say, yo, man, you should do that. Like I, I don't, I don't know too many people who are like, LSD, man, you gotta do that. I don't know too many people like that.

• 21:08Bill Nye?

  They, I know what you mean.

• 21:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, they're like, I've done it.

• 21:11Bill Nye?

  It's not my, it's not my thing. But I'm, you know, people, I am dull and boring. I mean, I have an unexpanded life. Give me a perspective, expand me.

• 21:19Chuck Nice?

  Okay. All right, well, let's move on. Uh, this is from Cosmos Matters. This is the person, that's what they call themselves.

• 21:26Bill Nye?

  It may not be, it could be his real name.

• 21:27Chuck Nice?

  Cosmos Matters. That's true, Cosmos is a real name. Uh, from Facebook. What waste management strategies are they considering when people go to Mars? I sometimes think we need to save Earth before potentially polluting and messing up another planet. So he is assuming that when we go to Mars, we are going to screw it up.

• 21:52Bill Nye?

  Well, he raises a very important point. He raises a very important point, a key point, something to consider. You don't want to contaminate another planet, especially if you're going there as an explorer to look for signs of life.

• 22:06Chuck Nice?

  Prime Directive.

• 22:07Bill Nye?

  The Prime Directive. And the Prime Directive is of course spiritually reasonable. Don't let other people, don't mess up other people's societies. But technically or scientifically.

• 22:19Bill Nye?

  It's a guideline, a very good, strong guideline. If you're gonna try to look for the evidence of some Martian microbe, a Mars probe, you don't want to bring a bunch of microbes from Earth that would contaminate them. You wouldn't be able to tell one from the other. That said, I will just remind everybody, it is my opinion, as you pointed out earlier, Chuck, my opinion, Bill Nye's opinion is so often correct.

• 22:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 22:42Bill Nye?

  That you don't, you don't really want to go live on Mars. You don't want to colonize Mars.

• 22:48Chuck Nice?

  Now, listen, see, you say that, Bill, but you have to understand that you say this in the face of an actual lust for living on Mars. There is a living La Vida Loca Mars movement right now. You got the movie Martian.

• 23:07Bill Nye?

  Loved it.

• 23:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 23:08Bill Nye?

  But he's not colonizing it.

• 23:10Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 23:11Bill Nye?

  He's doing scientific research and he fully intended to come home.

• 23:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:14Bill Nye?

  Right? He's like, oh, I can't wait to live where I can't breathe or drink or eat.

• 23:19Chuck Nice?

  But, but it seems just like-

• 23:21Bill Nye?

  Where it's bitterly cold.

• 23:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 23:23Bill Nye?

  What is wrong with you? But you do want to go find out because everybody, in the next hundred years, humankind will know whether or not there was living, there are living things on Mars or were living things on Mars. Humankind will probably know whether or not there are living things on Europa, the moon of Jupiter with twice as much seawater as the Earth. I want to do it now. I want to do this exploration now. And as far as waste management on Mars, the main thing I would say, Cosmos, is you gotta conserve water. You don't want to waste water. About 90% of human waste is water. So you want to recover all that. When you go to set up your Mars base to do your scientific research, to learn about Mars'

• 24:05Bill Nye?

  past and prepare for our future, to have a safe journey in the joy of discovery, we also hope you keep track of all that water. It's precious on Mars.

• 24:16Chuck Nice?

  You know, it's kind of precious here on Earth, too, if you kind of look around. I mean, do you think that that's something we should be worried about here?

• 24:23Bill Nye?

  Oh, Chuck, I did not cue Chuck up on this, people. Yes, those are one, the water is one of four's, Bill Nye's big four.

• 24:33Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 24:33Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 24:34Chuck Nice?

  I did not know Bill Nye had a big four.

• 24:35Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 24:36Chuck Nice?

  I must hear all four of them now.

• 24:38Bill Nye?

  What we want is electrical storage, a way to store electricity.

• 24:43Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 24:43Bill Nye?

  We need electrical transmission.

• 24:46Chuck Nice?

  All right, so once you

• 24:46Bill Nye?

  Improve transmission.

• 24:48Chuck Nice?

  Get it from place to place.

• 24:49Bill Nye?

  We waste about six per lose about six percent in transmission. That's huge. There's enough to power Montana or Saskatchewan or some exotic place.

• 24:55Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 24:56Bill Nye?

  And then, uh, then we need

• 25:00Bill Nye?

  a, a new policy. We need to penalize or incentivize people to not make carbon dioxide. We need a, a fee on carbon dioxide. This is a big policy. It's a big, heavy thing. Then the fourth thing is clean water for everyone on earth. So if you can come up with a way, Cosmos out there, if you can come up with a way to desalinate seawater.

• 25:21Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 25:22Bill Nye?

  More cheaply than we are able to do. I mean, we do it. But if you could do it more cheaply, and by cheaply, I mean using less energy.

• 25:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:29Bill Nye?

  You could get rich and change the world, improve the quality of life for humans everywhere. Yes. I must pull back.

• 25:38Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 25:39Bill Nye?

  And I cannot help but point out that these big four are described in my book, Unstoppable, Harnessing Science to Change the World. Uh, they're 20 in a carton. They make great gifts.

• 25:51Chuck Nice?

  Pick up a carton today. Pick up some eggs.

• 25:54Bill Nye?

  If you want them autographed, I know a guy.

• 25:56Chuck Nice?

  There you go. All right, Cosmos. Uh, good question there. So there you have it. Uh, let's, uh, save water, uh, on Mars and on.

• 26:05Bill Nye?

  When you go to Mars in waste management, you want to save water.

• 26:08Chuck Nice?

  Water. That's the number one thing. And let's do it here.

• 26:10Bill Nye?

  Number one, it's a thing. It's an important thing. You gotta save air too. Yeah.

• 26:14Chuck Nice?

  That makes sense because I don't, I hear there's not a lot of it.

• 26:17Bill Nye?

  But they want to like, we're gonna institute resource utilization, ISRU. We're gonna make oxygen from the regolith. Okay. It's just, it's just not that easy. Cool.

• 26:29Chuck Nice?

  See, when you say it's not that easy, what I hear is that ain't happening.

• 26:32Bill Nye?

  Well, no, we'll see. We're gonna run tests on the 2020 rover. We're gonna get started on this.

• 26:36Chuck Nice?

  All right, cool. That's cool. That's cool. All right. Um, let us go to, uh, let's go to another Patreon question. Okay. And for those of you who don't know, Patreon is, uh, at patreon.com where you can go. And you can, uh, help StarTalk sustain this wonderful programming that we bring to you and, uh, be a sponsor of the show. And, uh, we space, we pay special attention to you because you have made an investment like, uh,

• 27:04Bill Nye?

  So you're saying people are buying their way on the air.

• 27:07Chuck Nice?

  That's exactly what I'm saying, and I have no problem with it.

• 27:09Bill Nye?

  They're patrons and supporters. Lead on.

• 27:12Chuck Nice?

  That's right. And this is from Joel Cherico, and he's at Cherico Pottery and from St. Joseph, Minnesota. And this is what Joel wants to know, Bill. Smartphones and computers give us amazing access to information, but come with financial burdens. Should powerful new technology be technology be made available to everyone? Or is it fair that only those who can afford new technology are the ones that can use it? Wow. This is really opinion. This is straight up Bill Nye's opinion. Kind of like the art question, the technology question. When art is made, is it for everyone? Or is it just for the rich people who can afford to commission

• 27:53Chuck Nice?

  it? When technology is made, is it for everyone? Or is it just for those yuppies who actually need to do stuff with apps?

• 28:02Bill Nye?

  This. So you're saying that's my opinion?

• 28:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:05Bill Nye?

  She sounded like Chucks to me.

• 28:06Chuck Nice?

  No, that's the question. What's your opinion?

• 28:09Bill Nye?

  I kid because I love. So what you want is for everyone to have access to the internet. You want everyone to have access to the world's information. This is to say, this doesn't mean all the information is free, but you have access to it. For example, if you buy a book online.

• 28:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:28Bill Nye?

  You want the author to be, uh, to be compensated.

• 28:32Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 28:33Bill Nye?

  So you have to buy it, and there's the electronic scheme to do that. But I remind everybody that the, in the example of the post office, the United States Post Office, you can send a letter from Miami to, uh, what's another exotic place? Tampa.

• 28:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 28:51Bill Nye?

  For the same price, you can send a letter from Tampa to Juneau, Alaska. It's the same price. And the reason is not

• 29:01Bill Nye?

  Because our forefathers, the drafters of the Constitution were crazy. It's to enable people to vote, to engage the whole country, or ultimately, the entire planet, in the same means to communicate. The reason the post office was established was to have communication for everyone, in the same way. Now that we have the internet, which is the electronic equivalent of the post office, we want to include everyone. And people have talked quite a bit in my business of science education and education writ large about the digital divide.

• 29:36Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 29:37Bill Nye?

  You don't want to have people excluded from participating in information-based events or information exchanges because of money. And so this is why we want to not have, we want to have a neutral internet where everyone gets access. This is to say, it's not free. And the way it would be paid for is through taxes. In the same way, we expect sewers to work, water in the United States, water out of the tap to be drinkable.

• 30:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:15Bill Nye?

  Or if you want to change that.

• 30:16Chuck Nice?

  Whether you can afford it or not.

• 30:17Bill Nye?

  Yeah, right, it's there. In the same way, everybody has access to electricity, you can control how much you buy. We want everyone to have access to the information. So that's, to leave people out based on money is, information is power. It's really, it sounds cool, but it is not in everybody's best interest.

• 30:38Chuck Nice?

  All right, let me just follow up on Joel's question with this, okay? You're talking about net neutrality. Why, when you say everyone should have access to the information, the question me as a soulless capitalist pig who needs to make money no matter what? Because that's my God-given right as an American.

• 31:01Bill Nye?

  All right, yes.

• 31:02Chuck Nice?

  Why? Why do these people, why should they have access to the internet when they can't afford it? I mean, what is the benefit?

• 31:10Bill Nye?

  Let's make it affordable.

• 31:11Chuck Nice?

  What is the benefit?

• 31:12Bill Nye?

  What's the benefit of, what's the downside of having people not have access to sewers?

• 31:17Chuck Nice?

  Uh, we have poop in the streets.

• 31:19Bill Nye?

  Yeah. So in the same way, if you have people excluded from the goings on in society, you're gonna have people that become a burden rather than contributors.

• 31:28Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 31:29Bill Nye?

  And this is, I'm first to admit, you know, this progressive, bleeding heart liberal, liberal, crazy, thoughtless, two chickens in every pot perspective. But believe me, if you exclude people.

• 31:40Chuck Nice?

  I don't know why, I'm very hungry now.

• 31:41Bill Nye?

  If you exclude people from what goes on in the community electronically, you're, there will become a burden rather than contributors. Just imagine you're trying to hire somebody who, who goes home and cannot receive email from you, or cannot communicate with you, or does not have a phone. That person is much harder to employ.

• 32:01Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 32:01Bill Nye?

  And so, uh, that person then will ultimately pay less taxes.

• 32:06Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 32:06Bill Nye?

  Or none.

• 32:07Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 32:08Bill Nye?

  And will become a burden on you.

• 32:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:09Bill Nye?

  And so this is, uh, while this is obvious to me and not other people, is charming.

• 32:15Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so.

• 32:16Bill Nye?

  But who do we hate more than the cable company? I mean, there's very few things. And so you want to, you wanna straighten that out and make it competitive.

• 32:25Chuck Nice?

  You are so, boy, you touched the nerve there, that's what you're doing.

• 32:28Bill Nye?

  So we wanna straighten that out and make it reasonably priced and competitive. And this gets into, as we say, just like a machine should have all the parts it needs and no more, we want our government regulations, our government rather, to enact and enforce all the regulations it needs, but no more.

• 32:46Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha. Alright, hey Joe, what a great.

• 32:49Bill Nye?

  That's why we have governments and legislatures and we argue about stuff.

• 32:52Chuck Nice?

  No, all that stuff should go away, I'm sorry. As a libertarian, I'm just saying, there should be no regulation. People should do whatever they wanna do.

• 32:59Bill Nye?

  So they build their own telephone lines.

• 33:01Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 33:01Bill Nye?

  Their own routers.

• 33:03Chuck Nice?

  Can and a string, Bill. Can and string.

• 33:06Bill Nye?

  Who paves the road out front of your place?

• 33:09Chuck Nice?

  Uh, gravel.

• 33:10Bill Nye?

  You hire people.

• 33:11Chuck Nice?

  Gravel. Get yourself, get yourself some gravel, you got yourself a road.

• 33:14Bill Nye?

  Where do you get gravel? From gravel co?

• 33:18Bill Nye?

  Your other libertarian buddy who sells gravel.

• 33:22Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 33:23Bill Nye?

  Okay, well, does he get his gravel from glacial till? Or does he get it by stealing it from the other libertarian gravel.com? Or WeBe gravel?

• 33:33Chuck Nice?

  I don't know. I think you're, I think you're just patronizing me to, uh, blow holes in my argument here.

• 33:37Bill Nye?

  Well, I'm just reminding us all that we live in communities and it's, communities are where you're, where you're productive. Communities are where you have radio shows. Communities are where people work together to create wonderful things like StarTalk Radio with Chuck Nice and your host, Bill Nye, and we will be back right after this.

• 34:02Bill Nye?

  Welcome back. Welcome back to StarTalk. Bill Nye hosting this week. I'm joined today by none other than Chuck Nice.

• 34:09Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 34:10Bill Nye?

  And we are doing your questions. We are answering your questions from an expanding of perspective point of view. Now, this fall, uh, I guess earlier this month that we had Comic-Con in New York.

• 34:25Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we did.

• 34:25Bill Nye?

  Which is, you know, sort of Halloween on the Hudson. And, uh,

• 34:30Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 34:31Bill Nye?

  So, we have some, uh, expanding of our perspective queries in Cosmic Query Sense from Comic-Con.

• 34:39Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 34:40Bill Nye?

  Is that true, Chuck?

• 34:41Chuck Nice?

  That is correct. So, we were, uh, we were out at Comic-Con and we, you know, we, uh, took a microphone and got some people who were fans of the show to ask us, uh, you know, some questions.

• 34:51Bill Nye?

  So, we could say, roll that digital recording.

• 34:54Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. That's all we have to do is roll the tape and, uh, let's see, uh, who it is and what they want to know.

• 35:01Speaker 03

  Leora from New York. Hey, Bill. How much of humanity's trash is currently on Mars?

• 35:08Bill Nye?

  How much of humanity's trash is currently on? Well, they're very valuable scientific instruments. Do you want to call the parachute that landed the Spirit and the Opportunity Rovers, are those trash? Are those glorious artifacts of humankind dedicated to exploring the solar system so that we would know the cosmos and our place within it? Or are those refuse? I would say there's no human trash on Mars.

• 35:35Chuck Nice?

  No human trash on Mars?

• 35:36Bill Nye?

  Not yet.

• 35:36Chuck Nice?

  And that's because you are not a Martian. If you walked out of your front door on Mars and you saw a big parachute laying on your lawn, you'd be like, who put that trash there?

• 35:46Bill Nye?

  Or you'd say, wow, how do I take advantage of this wonderful alien material?

• 35:51Chuck Nice?

  That's true too. Yes.

• 35:52Bill Nye?

  Wow, this is a gift from the sky.

• 35:56Bill Nye?

  Cool.

• 35:57Chuck Nice?

  The gods must be crazy. Okay. All right, well, there you have it.

• 36:00Bill Nye?

  Exactly. Instead of a Coke bottle.

• 36:02Chuck Nice?

  Instead of a Coke bottle, it's a big giant parachute. That's pretty cool.

• 36:06Bill Nye?

  Or sky crane.

• 36:09Chuck Nice?

  All right, excellent, excellent. No trash on Mars, no human trash on Mars as of yet.

• 36:13Bill Nye?

  Here to four.

• 36:14Chuck Nice?

  Here to four. All right, I, uh, let's go with this name here. Okay.

• 36:23Bill Nye?

  That's an unusual name. How do I spell that?

• 36:30Chuck Nice?

  All right. Dietrich Iswig Chaya or Chaya.

• 36:37Bill Nye?

  All right, Dietrich Chaya.

• 36:39Chuck Nice?

  Dietrich Chaya, okay, from Facebook. I am from Alaska. My question for you, Bill, is what do you believe our next step in space exploration is or should be? We've been to the moon, but we haven't gone in a little while. Is our next step another trip to the moon? Is it perhaps an asteroid, Mars, Europa? Where do you think it is? And where do you think it should be?

• 37:09Bill Nye?

  I'm listening to the nature of your question. I think you mean what's the next place for people? Because in 2020, we're going to land another rover on Mars.

• 37:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:18Bill Nye?

  Shortly after that, we hope by 2023, we'll have a mission orbiting, a spacecraft orbiting Europa, the very thing you brought up. What we at the Planetary Society propose is that NASA get its self organized.

• 37:34Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:34Bill Nye?

  So that we send humans in orbit around Mars in the year 2033. This is an especially favorable orbital opportunity. I mean, it's not magical, but it's favorable. And we would have enough time to build the architecture, and architecture is space words for a bunch of rockets and spacecraft ship things that you would use to get humans all the way to Mars in orbit around Mars, and then probably four years later, you would land on Mars. In 2033, that orbital mission might land on Phobos. And the word land, Phobos is a moon of Mars. It has so little gravity. How little does it have? It's more like lasso Phobos more than land on it. And so this would be an extraordinary thing. And the claim of the Planetary Society, we

• 38:19Bill Nye?

  sponsored a workshop. We brought in 70 of the world's experts, people expert on what it costs to explore space, and experts on NASA's budget. And we could do this only adjusting for inflation. The key thing would be to agree that we've actually agreed to actually agree actually to actually not support the International Space Station with NASA money after 2024.

• 38:45Chuck Nice?

  So, wait a minute, is that the condition under which we would be able to go to Mars? Is that we no longer support the?

• 38:53Bill Nye?

  Well, without an increase in the budget.

• 38:55Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay. Without an increase in the budget.

• 38:56Bill Nye?

  If you just leave the budget just the way, adjusting only for inflation, which is an increase, but an expected one.

• 39:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:02Bill Nye?

  You could do it. We could do it. And this would be an extraordinary thing. And as Neil deGrasse Tyson often remarks, if we were really people going to Mars, there would be a line around the block of people who wanted to go. And what we would do is go there to look for signs of life. If we were to discover life on this other world, it would change this world. It would change the way everyone feels about his or her place in space.

• 39:28Chuck Nice?

  Would it now?

• 39:30Bill Nye?

  I'm not saying we'd start driving on the left.

• 39:31Chuck Nice?

  I know, but I'd.

• 39:33Bill Nye?

  I'm saying it would be, it would just get to you in the same way Copernicus showed the earth goes around the sun. It changed everything, not in a weekend.

• 39:41Chuck Nice?

  No, you're right, because it took quite some time for that to happen. So what would be in your estimation when you talk about expanding perspectives?

• 39:49Bill Nye?

  Which is what we're talking about here on Cosmic Courier and Star Talk Radio.

• 39:52Chuck Nice?

  Right. What would be the number one perspective or change in people's perspective? Okay, what would the delta be for that perspective in humankind? Because you found some microbes on Mars, and we're not talking about, you know, the, the, just the microbes that you don't have on earth. What does that do to the perspective?

• 40:16Bill Nye?

  Life is more likely than you thought. So there's gotta be something else out there. And it's once again, this humbling nature of astronomy. You think you're the center of the universe? No, first of all, you think your territory, the map that you draw is the whole thing. Then you go over some mountains and there's some other people whose skin's slightly different color and their faces are a little different shape and you go, dude.

• 40:38Chuck Nice?

  We're in Detroit.

• 40:41Bill Nye?

  For example. Then you find out, you expect the sun to go around your flat place. But then it turns out, no, you go around the sun. And wait, the sun isn't the only star. Wait, there's billions of stars. Wait, there are things that look like stars that are actually groups of billions of stars. And you're in one of them. And you suck because you are nothing. You are smaller than you could even at first imagine. But then you find out, not only do you suck that way, you suck because there's life on another planet right down the solar systemic street. And somehow it's your fault. No, wait, then the question would be, are those things on Mars like us, to wit? Do they have DNA?

• 41:26Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 41:27Bill Nye?

  If they have DNA, what would that mean to medicine? It would mean DNA's always there? DNAs, or does it mean, obviously, when Mars was hit with an impactor, SFX coming?

• 41:40Chuck Nice?

  Bang. Right? That's Mars getting a bitch slapped from the cosmos.

• 41:48Bill Nye?

  Then, uh, whoo, whoo, whoo, rock went into outer space, but you're in space, there's no sound, just whoo. And then landed on Earth.

• 41:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:56Bill Nye?

  Fiery entry, shhh. And then you and I are descendant of Mark Martian microbes.

• 42:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:03Bill Nye?

  That is extraordinary.

• 42:04Chuck Nice?

  See now.

• 42:05Bill Nye?

  That is wild and that would change, I hope, the way you feel about it, what it means to be a living thing, and I hope it gives you just that much more reverence.

• 42:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:13Bill Nye?

  For the cosmos and our place within it. It is worth exploring. This, the NASA budget now is point four percent of the federal budget, less than half a percent. And you could keep it right there, just adjusting for inflation, and you could change the world. Then then you engage international partners, Canadian Space Agency, European Space Agency.

• 42:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:37Bill Nye?

  Uh, Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, ISRO, Indian Space Research Organization, Chinese Space, um, Administration, and here we are, changing the world together.

• 42:49Chuck Nice?

  Nice, nice.

• 42:50Bill Nye?

  I'm okay, I'm okay.

• 42:51Chuck Nice?

  Wow, you know, that was, that was real.

• 42:53Bill Nye?

  I'm okay Chuck, I'm okay.

• 42:53Chuck Nice?

  Do you need some water? Cause that was fantastic.

• 42:55Bill Nye?

  I'm all right, I'm all right, let's, let's get another.

• 42:56Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's.

• 42:57Bill Nye?

  Another question from Comic Con.

• 42:58Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's do a Comic Con question, shall we? Uh, let's hear it.

• 43:02Speaker 04

  Hey Bill, this is Sam Eifling, I live in Brooklyn, met Comic Con, had this thought, and I wanna know what you think about it. There must be a finite number of possible molecules that we could catalog and understand in the same way that we've done with human genes. Is there any chance we will ever have a full catalog of all the possible, let's say, organic molecules available to us on planet Earth?

• 43:31Bill Nye?

  Hmm, that's a great question, and I'll say people are pursuing this in plants. There are people at the Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell that are working hard to assay or assay all the different molecules in plants that people didn't realize were there. I have to say, from a practical standpoint, you probably never get every molecular combination because, because we just can't think of them. And when you start talking about polymers, do you count ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene, like Tupperware? And then do you count plastic wrap, food film?

• 44:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:10Bill Nye?

  Which is a different, like, then it gets to be a question. You know, Chuck, that question is sort of overwhelming.

• 44:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 44:17Bill Nye?

  And I, but nevertheless, I feel a jolt, and by that, I mean, I think it's time for the lightning round.

• 44:23Chuck Nice?

  There you have it. It is time for the lightning round. Shall we?

• 44:28Bill Nye?

  Yes, this is where you hit me with a question, answer really quickly, then I hit the bell. Take it, Chuck.

• 44:32Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. This is Bethany DiCaprio, columning from Facebook. Here she says, "What do you think it would take to unite the human beings on this planet?" Big question.

• 44:45Bill Nye?

  Working together over the next century and a half to resolve climate change.

• 44:50Chuck Nice?

  Wow, good one. Kelly Elizabeth Claus from Facebook wants to know, "What are your thoughts on toys and games such as Goldie Box that are recently being developed and marketed towards young girls to help foster an early interest in engineering?" Which you are, Bill, you're an engineer. What, what do you think about that?

• 45:08Bill Nye?

  Oh, it's terrible. No, wait, it's great. Come on, it's great. The more the merrier. Let's go. We'll get, we'll double the number of brains applied to engineering problems, and we will improve the quality of life for humans everywhere. What's not to love?

• 45:21Chuck Nice?

  Okay, and follow-up question, uh, do you think that those games work?

• 45:24Bill Nye?

  Uh, time will tell. It's hard to say right away, but intuitively, if the parents are excited about it, then the kid will get excited about it because kids watch what the parents do and emulate them, for better or for worse, that's the way it is. And full disclosure, everybody, Chuck Nice has three kids.

• 45:45Chuck Nice?

  But I'm not a role model. Okay, this one comes from, this one comes from Gabe Dominguez on Facebook. How can we get more women into STEM careers? At what point in life do you think the little girls stop believing that they can become astronauts or inventors?

• 45:59Bill Nye?

  The key may be algebra. By engaging people, students in school, when, in letters representing numbers much sooner than we do now, so that when you take, uh, formal algebra in 7th grade, let's say, in the United States, the stakes aren't as high. Apparently, algebra not only enables you to think abstractly about numbers, it enables you to think abstractly about all sorts of things. And so, but in a formal fashion. And that's what, uh, so we could just up the algebra budget just a little bit. And see what happens. Keep in mind, it takes years for these things. Uh, now, the European Space Agency is largely run by women, but it took many years or decades

• 46:39Bill Nye?

  for those people to work their way up through the brittle glass ceilings.

• 46:46Chuck Nice?

  There you have it. Okay, Bradley Dean Summerfield from Facebook wants to know this. Is there a room in our current understanding of the universe for the possibility that our consciousness may in fact reside somewhere in space and not necessarily within the brains of our bodies? Wow.

• 47:03Bill Nye?

  In a word, no. No, because if you hang around people who grow old and die, it certainly seems like, as they lose their faculties, which many of us do, it certainly seems like it's a chemical thing going on in your brain. But when I watch science fiction, when I read my science fiction, it would be great to put your consciousness in some receptacle, as long as I still could feel the whole thing.

• 47:29Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that was oddly sexual. I don't know why.

• 47:33Bill Nye?

  Talk on right. That's exactly what we're talking about, people. What did you think I was talking about?

• 47:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go.

• 47:38Bill Nye?

  And he's the guy with three kids. Are you down with cause and effect, Chuck? We've got time for one more question. Hit it.

• 47:43Chuck Nice?

  Kayla Len-Yetman on Facebook wants to know this. As we explore the universe more and more in search of life and answers, if we did encounter new life, microbial or intelligent or ascension, how do you think the world proceeds from that point forward?

• 47:58Bill Nye?

  We would think differently about what it means to be alive in the universe, in the cosmos, and we would have more respect for it, and that would improve the quality of life, quality of life for humans everywhere. Let's work together and change the world. This has been StarTalk with me, Bill Nye, your host, joined by Chuck Nice. That's right. Together, keep looking.

• 48:20Bill Nye?

  Oh God, it's so fun, man.