our brains are wired for linear thinking in an exponential world and it’s causing us a great deal of strife this linear thinking prevents you from realizing a possible future that awaits you this is a rich country we can do whatever we want if we all agree to it so it’s really not a matter of a budget it’s a matter of what is motivating us 1908 the quote man will never fly from New York to Paris 1908 you know who said that Orville right that’s my favorite request on stage can you give us a prediction for 2050 we will have designer drugs they’ll analyze your genome find drugs that will have no side effects for you all cars on the road will be self-driving electric the entire solar system becomes our backyard and the only thing we know about these predictions are they’re going to be wrong yes
[00:01:00] before we get started I want to share with you the fact that there are incredible breakthroughs coming on the health span and Longevity front these Technologies are enabling us to extend how long we live how long we’re healthy the truth is a lot of the approaches are in fact cheap or even free and I want to share this with you I just wrote a book called Longevity guide book that outlines what I’ve been doing to reverse my biological age what I’ve been doing to increase my health my strength my energy and I want to make this available to my community at cost so longevity guidebook.com you can get information or check out the link below all right let’s jump into this episode this is going to be a a joint Star Talk and moonshots here at X prise visioneering and I need to do an introduction if you don’t mind I I just I just you know I know everybody knows you I mean who doesn’t but it’s do they
[00:02:00] know enough about you so Dr Neil degrass Tyson an esteemed astrophysicist celebrated science Communicator passionate educator with a mission to ignite curiosity in Minds worldwide a graduate of Harvard University in physics Dr Tyson earned his Masters at Princeton as PhD in astrophysics from Colombia and now serves as director of the Hayden planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History through his wildly popular show Star Talk which reaches over a million listeners per episode his reboot of Carl San yeah wow uh his reboot of Carl Sean’s uh Cosmos series reached over 135 million viewers in 180 countries I don’t know which countries we’re not watching but they should have been Neil has published over 15 books including the New York Times best-selling book which I love the title astrophysicist for people in a hurry or astrophysics for people in a hurry which alone sold over a million copies today
[00:03:02] we are honored to have Dr Tyson here to talk about Humanity’s future and Innovation and Discovery thank you thank [Applause] you there there was only some exaggeration in that intro just want to want to say was by the numbers but am I the only one wearing a tie in this room yes okay apologies I just thought Van Go Star night that I thought i’ get away with that is that right okay we good we are good um you know I you and I have met a couple of times and I want to go back to our ex prise history but first I know you were a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science yes yeah oh yet one graduate over there maybe okay actually actually our VI our vice chairman Robert K Weiss who’s watching on our live stream was also a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and I was born in the Bronx at MIS Hospital Bor in the Bronx the
[00:04:01] Bronx High School of Science uh counts eight Nobel laurates among its graduates which is as many as the country of Spain just to put some context that’s good that’s very good yeah so uh that’s all I get that’s good oh they said that’s very good like you got something better than that that you going to put on the on the list this is excellent but that’s just very good eight Nobel prizes thank you awesome there you go yeah I I want to go back to our first meeting and so uh we talked yesterday about the origin of the ex prise foundation and so I read this book The Spirit of St Louis which Greg Marinette gives me and come up with this crazy hairbrain idea about uh about this space flight competition and of course the very first thing that any entrepreneur has to do when you come up with your great idea is raise money and so I have on my bookshelves the these these penguin pocketbook science
[00:05:02] fiction books and I’m reading them and in the back there’s this onepage tear out that says if you’d like to fly on a future flight to the Moon Mars you know Jupiter Neptune Pluto you know without disregard to gravitational issues or so please fill out this form and send it in and send it in where well to the Hayden Planetarium and so it hits me oh my God the Hayden planetarium must have you know millions of these forms of people interested in private space flight and so I’m going to go track them down and so I end up on your doorstep just to be clear that solicitation wasn’t just a few years ago it was many many many decades ago I think it dated back to the 1950s and I and I’m pretty sure it was just a stunt that the hand plan there was not going to launch people to Pluto all right so but you were right in thinking
[00:06:01] that if you were going to have a core group of people if they’re still alive a core group of people who are thinking this way then you want to link up with them in some in any way you can so I show up um Dr Tyson pleasure to meet you my name is Peter I’ve got this you know idea for the space flight prize and by the way would you be willing to share the names and addresses of all the individuals who have signed up cuz I want to hit them up for money I’m thinking crazy man alert right okay let me just humor him maybe he’ll go away okay I never told you that right no but I think what you do don’t I in all fairness to those thoughts that I had to do what you’re doing requires a little bit of crazy yeah you can’t just be normal and do any of this so that’s a compliment [Applause] [00:07:02] yeah I res I resemble those remarks um so uh you bring out this shoe box wow and um and there are these tear out and I’m amazed you had these shoe boxes and you then go on to explain to me that the probability these people actually still live there and are still alive is like diminishingly low yeah these are addresses that predate zip codes okay so that’s how you know well um so at least by the way just because as an educator who here is under 40 okay don’t clap yet uh you have no idea that the word zip is an acronym what I told you see okay zip stands for Zone Improvement plan whoa to help male get to its destination faster so now you 40 40y olds and younger can like we get zip uh
[00:08:02] I think it was it was it had to get rolled in so it was like late 60s I think early 70 even even early 60s because you are 100 years old sir I was the first zip code uh so that began that began our our friendship and relationship and uh and grateful to have you here but let’s fast forward um there is a book you wrote uh called Star Messenger a cosmic perspective on civilization and when you and I you know met on one of your previous recordings of Star Talk uh I mentioned to you that this is the 30th anniversary of the xprize and you said wow 30 years has a very special meaning in a recent book I wrote you want to uh sort of Riff Off that uh sure sure I can do that uh so the the more precisely uttered title is
[00:09:01] Star Messenger Cosmic perspectives on civilization Star Messenger is the name of Galileo’s first book on the universe uh siderius nunus in Latin of course and it’s where he reported his first observations telescope observations of the night sky and in there were Revelations that conflicted with what people were thinking of the day he noticed that Venus went through phases as the moon does he noticed the Moon is not a smooth surface it’s pitted and cratered he notice that the sun has spots on it this this this idea of a perfect smooth set of heavenly bodies was shattered by that and this is information that would ultimately show that Earth is not the center of the known universe these are the starry messages this is the universe talking to us us telling us that our understanding
[00:10:03] of how things are might not be correct and if the authorities are inflexible in what is or is not correct it creates conflict and in his case he ended up under house arrest basically died in house under house arrest for his views that conflicted with Biblical Genesis so because any rational read of biblical Genesis would have the Earth for formed before everything else okay heavens and Earth the Sun and Moon came later all of so you can’t square that and one of his great quotes which I will mangle is uh why would God give us these faculties of reason and then expect us to forgo their use so [Applause] so so uh so anyhow so that’s the title of it so I wanted to by the way a a cautionary tale for any disruptive thinkers this day yes yes watch out
[00:11:02] who’s going to come after you for saying something and they still do I with not without yes but there’s an improvement on that because they don’t torture you in a dungeon that’s true okay so that’s progress that’s progress but but they may discredit you so um so I thought today there’s so many things that permeate our society that could benefit from a rational analysis scientific analysis with a dose of a cosmic perspective and so all the many chapters of the book are paired words that have generally created Conflict at holiday dinners like um uh truth and Beauty uh exploration and discovery which is the subject of this conversation uh Earth and Moon uh I meat eaters and vegetarians yeah I went there okay
[00:12:00] okay uh uh color and race gender and identity Law and Order risk and reward each of those is a chapter and the power of scientific analysis is brought to it and when you do that you learn that you discover that there are perspectives on so many things that divide us that that sit above where you have formulated your opinions and if it sits above it you say wait a minute maybe both of us are wrong or there’s a whole other way to look at this that diffuses the conflict that would otherwise unfold the entire book is that on all of those subjects and and your man here he decided to acquire that book for everyone in this room yes so you have a sign copy okay you have a you have a sign copy by Neil for all of you here personally signed with my overpriced
[00:13:01] fountain pen okay just so you have that but uh in getting back to your 30 years yes uh so and I want to hit one subject before then if we could but we’re going to talk about the fact that X prise being 30 years old this year happens to map against some interesting thinking and logic constructs that uh Neil discusses in Chapter 2 but before we get there I want to talk about uh something that’s important as a precedent to that that which is the fact that our brains are wired for linear thinking in an exponential world and it’s causing us a great deal of strife and yeah I it’s understandable that we have linear brains why why would it be anything other than that think of you know we evolve on the seretti or wherever and you you know you just don’t want to be eaten by the lion that’s not exponential thinking that’s very linear thinking can I get to the tree before the lion gets
[00:14:00] to me that’s linear that’s a linear exercise okay uh the speed of the lion is not increasing yeah all right add for item luckily we’d have to have a different brain to understand that so I I don’t want to fault us for thinking that way but to have self-awareness can bring you great benefits if you know in advance you have linear thinking and probably the cleanest example of the failure of our brain to understand exponentials is the one that involves a lake and there’s algae growing on a lake and you see it there and you and you see that the area of the lake covered by algae is like doubling every day like it starts out in a little patch and you come back to the next day it’s like twice as big next day it’s twice as big so that’s that’s kind of scary that’s classic exponential growth the simple doubling doubling doubling correct correct so now so the question is
[00:15:00] um you’re there and you go away for a month and you come back and the lake is half covered with algae your favorite Lake it’s awful it’s half covered so the question is how much more time do you have to wait for the entire Lake to be covered and most because you all are smart in here that’s what I’m thing most people say another month that’s linear thinking no the entire Lake will be covered in one more day with the doubling per day and that’s a perhaps the simplest example of this another one is there’s an old story uh in ancient China where there’s a chess board with 64 squares and someone I I’m going to get the details wrong here but there’s someone who did something favor for the king and the or the emperor and the emperor wanted to return a favor in advance
[00:16:01] and uh offered him no and the person said I want one grain of rice for every Square on the board but doubled for every square and they said well don’t you want these riches and no I want rice for every and the King didn’t know exponentials and so by the time you can’t reach 64 there’s not enough rice in China it’s like it’s like a mound as big as Mount Everest yeah yeah it’s 2 to the 64th power and so well my my favorite is with my kids I I did this with them my my two boys I said I’ll give you you know do you want but are they okay now they’re fine okay they’re fine like would you would you performing experiments on your children okay would you rather have a mill would you rather have a million dollars now or a penny doubled every day for 30 days and um they actually got it correct nice yeah nice yeah after 30 days there’s more than $5 million
[00:17:00] it’s definitely you want although you might not have the 5 million by the end of the month and you take the million now and run you see so uh oh and by the way the 5 million is what your payout is on the 30th day yes you’ve accumulated if you accumulate it all you’re up around 10 million okay so you’re at $10 million I well it stays in the family though so so this linear thinking it’s you said gets us into trouble no it just prevents you from realizing a possible future that awaits you and my my best example of this is in the year 1900 New Year’s Eve the Brooklyn daily Eagle then a newspaper well R Brooklyn was its own town um Brooklyn is the origin of the Dodgers okay just putting it out there so I it’s 1900 and they did what anybody
[00:18:03] does at the beginning of a century they want to imagine what the next Century will bring yes okay and there’s a whole pullout section where where economists politicians scientists engineers they all proclaimed their they all laid down their predictions for the future here’s the most interesting prediction There It Is by the head of the New York Central Railroad okay so he’s in the transportation business at the time think back 1900 sir you are around in 1900 yes okay don’t be bragging about the zip code and not just accept this uh so the in 1900 there was steam ships crossing the Atlantic in record time
[00:19:01] there were I you know the railroads crossing the country you can get to California faster than you ever could before there were airships there was the bicycle was perfected early uh combustion engine so he was riding High Transportation was moving he I see what you did there thank you thank you I know you’re capable of better than that well exp exponentially better than that okay good so here’s what he said and I quote we can scarcely imagine that advances in transportation of the 20th century will be as great as were those in the 19th century whoa that has got to be the most boneheaded statement ever made by anyone ever especially someone who’s in the business of Transportation he could not have imagine the airplane which was 3 years
[00:20:02] later he was this was not in his head that the were flying supersonic or going to the Moon okay and so and by the way he’s saying that in 1900 and by 1930 we had already crossed the Atlantic in an airplane that would be invented three years later I think it’s uh 1927 Lindberg thank you and we and we have we have Eric Lindberg someplace here in the audience Eric where are you I know Eric we met he’s artist limberg is that the one I remember yes hey I have one of your pieces on my desk it’s one of those beautiful sort of uh uh retro style Rockets coming off of a from our rocket races in the desert there you go okay uh please to see I had seen you in 25 years good to see you again so um see you another 25 so uh so you go from 1900 to 1930 that’s
[00:21:03] a 30-year period yes and life in 1930 would be wholly unrecognizable to anyone from the 1900 and this 30-year increment I got to thinking about 30 years yes I was sitting in the library at Princeton I didn’t get my masters there but I postto there post there so I’m sitting there in the library the astrophysics Library which is like dying and going to heaven because here’s your favorite subject and this entire Library just for that subject okay they decided to put our feature journal the astrophysical journal which was birthed in 1895 on one wall okay rather than on multiple shelves so there they were in 1895 and when I did this experiment might have been 1994 something like that 1995 and that was down over here and I
[00:22:01] asked it’s one wall all the journals of the astrophysical journal and I thought to myself I wonder what year the midpoint of this wall is that would be the doubling time that’s a great question that the doubling time of published research simple question easy to answer so I doing this exercise in 1994 that’s how old I am so when I was in graduate school so coming out of I I was in postdocking there so I found the middle of the wall it was 1965 30 years I said oh that’s interesting what’s the middle of the the the of that point before that yeah what’s the M it was 1930 okay and the middle so this goes and I thought to myself wait a minute it’s double every 30 years now of course
[00:23:01] you can argue whether every published paper is it you know is it exploratory is it a real Discovery that’s a detail here the fact is we were doubling our output in astrophysics every 30 years and that got me thinking how can we measure society that way yeah and how would you even go about doing that you can go to the patent records I looked that up that’s I report on it in the book patents uh they have a doubling time I it might have been 20 years but it’s it’s not 100 years it’s not five years it’s some low number of decades but what’s incredible was the consistency of it the consistency of the doubling y the exponential yes okay now at the risk of stating the obvious to this crowd even though half you didn’t know what the ZIP code was um
[00:24:01] uh just a quick again I’m an educator so I got to say this okay um the word acronym is actually modern it had only been created not much longer before the ZIP code was introduced um just the word acronyms an acronym a series of letters that spell something you can pronounce okay so IBM is an abbreviation not an acronym CIA is an abbreviation not an acronym scuba is an acronym self-contained unorderly bring that you all know that okay NASA is an acronym because you can say it all right so I so I looked this up and then I I keep historical dictionaries and I found a dictionary from 1947 the word wasn’t there and it was like whoa how it was like how how could that not and so that was my exact
[00:25:00] reaction and then I learned there was so many abbreviations that came out of the second world war sure that all of those that spelled words we invented a word for those that spell a word and that was acronym f so look at old dictionaries is not there and I love words that come in and out of favor and their stock value um and I don’t mean to brag but I have a word that was lifted into the Oxford English Dictionary what might that be but I was kind of bragging there wasn’t I yeah yeah yeah uh I I named the phenomenon where the sun sets exactly on the grid of Manhattan because Manhattan streets and avenues are on a grid and that happens twice a year and it’s beautiful because it’s aligned exactly and the buildings frame it and I called it Manhattan henge as a a throwback to Stone Heng but you’re better than that sorry sorry okay I’ll work harder yes than getting
[00:26:01] my word into the Oxford English Dictionary let me see what I’ll work I’ll keep I’ll keep at it did you see the movie Oppenheimer if you did did you know that besides building the atomic bomb at Los Alamos National Labs that they spent billions on biod defense weapons the ability to accurately detect viruses and microbes by reading their RNA well a company called viome exclusively licensed the technology from Los Alamos labs to build a platform that can measure your microbiome and the RNA in your blood now viome has a product that I’ve personally used for years called full body intelligence which collects a few drops of your blood spit and stool and can tell you so much about your health they’ve tested over 700,000 individuals and used their AI models to deliver members critical Health guidance like what foods you should eat what foods you shouldn’t eat as well as your supplements and probiotics your biological age and other deep Health insights and the results of the
[00:27:00] recommendations are nothing short of Stellar you know as reported in the American Journal of Lifestyle medicine after just 6 months of following biomes recommendations members reported the following a 36% reduction in depression a 40% reduction in anxiety a 30% reduction in diabetes and a 48% reduction in IBS listen I’ve been using viome for 3 years I know that my oral and gut health is one of my highest priorities best of all viome is Affordable which is part of my mission to democratize health if you want to join me on this journey go to vi.com Peter I’ve asked naine Jane a friend of mine who’s the founder and CEO of viome to give my listeners a special discount you’ll find it at vom.com Peter all right let’s let’s go back to so so I said is there a way to measure this I I don’t know if there’s a way so that I just picked 30 years because it
[00:28:01] divides cleanly into the time frames I was looking at and I said let me start in the year 1870 so I was going to go there and then I researched real hard what everybody was doing in 1870 and then I just went 30y year increments to 1900 1930 1960 1990 2020 when this book was published yeah yeah the book came out in 2022 okay written in 2020 yes conceived throughout that exactly so and I went into each time frame and lifted up what everybody was chatting about as their modern way of living and their predictions which they were absolutely accurate about not okay so so this became a highly Illuminating exercise so going from 1870 to 1900 shall we okay uh so got to remember I took notes oh you took
[00:29:00] notes yeah what did I say in 1870 well let’s see we got the steam ships yeah steam ships we got the golden spike the golden spike so the railroad was first late people say yes oh my gosh we can cross the country as as a new thing to celebrate we had the Orient Express Orient Express across Europe right uh 1880 bendz and the engine yes the internal so between 1870 and 1900 uh the uh internal combustion engine right and the bicycle the bicycle the modern bicycle as we know it was perfected it’s got somebody’s name associated with it which we’ve long forgotten so that’s another means of transportation that did not exist in 1870 it’s odd though when you think about it no ancient painting of anybody is it riding a bicycle that’s just kind of weird right a fun a fundamental Discovery that’s persisted ever since uh and it’s been extraordinary you one of the things you point out that I think is so important to say here is that every age we think now is the most incredible
[00:30:00] time ever yes like now is like one of the great delusions of it all yes you say well all the great discoveries happen while I’m here and while I’m no no no so so if you plot an exponential all right if you plot an exponential so time is on the XA are we on a log scale or on a linear scale linear scale have to be linear skills to see this effect right okay so just checking good thing to check so the x- axis is time the y- axis is whatever is the thing you’re measuring that’s changing exponentially it doesn’t matter what if you plot it it will look like it’s mostly horizontal and just in the last time frame it goes up like this and you’re at the top of that because you’re in modern day you say look at all the new advances that just happened yeah what a what a privilege it is to be alive today we must be special we must be special so now why this is a that that’s the big problem of humans thinking we’re always special so now if you truncate it
[00:31:02] anywhere I don’t care where truncate it to like here where you said that’s pretty flat now replot it it’ll look exactly the same it’s because the exponential of today tamped everything else down relative to it you cut it off Midway that’s the exponential you’ll think is your special day except where you were is now back down here right so if like 10 years ago you thought you at the top and now 10 years later that top is now back down here and you’re at the top again correct because it keeps ascending yes and so this is another what we it’s a delusion that we live in I mean I keep on thinking like now with you know with Starship and with uh with AI and with you know humanoid robots you’re thinking you’re living in special time it’s like my God we must be in a simulation otherwise why would you be alive right now so so that Verge is strong it is and I recognize it and I I’m victim I fall
[00:32:02] victim to it every now and then but then I look back I have a lot of books that go back several centuries one I because that’s what I do one of them is a book in 1898 written by a professor of astronomy and he’s reporting on discoveries made about the Sun and this is the second edition of his book on the sun when was the first edition 1895 he said in the last three years we’ve learned so much about the sun I have to put out a new addition he has no idea what he doesn’t yet know we we don’t know that there’s thermonuclear Fusion in the core he doesn’t know how the Sun is making energy as far as he knows there’s a lump of coal cooling off over the past 10,000 years so they were idiots but they didn’t know it but they celebrating what they knew so reading passages such as that keep you humble in the present moment and that’s important
[00:33:02] because this everyone like the guy from 1900 saying we would never rival those other advances one of the points you make is we all think we’re super special living right now but none of us say oh my God we’re such we’re so backwards and so innan compared to what we’re going to be no one says that that would be a completely legitimate sentence to UT correct and and what x prise is doing is of course uh making that happen so you’re making it more real we’re trying to we’re trying to accelerate the future into the present day so if you get everyone to think to themselves gosh we’re such idiots compared to what we’ll be in a 100 years that might be another engine of progress because nobody wants to be an idiot yeah so let’s move on go a couple 1900 1930 oh my gosh 1900 to 1930 we have the invention of the airplane we have a total World War we have a pandemic that kills more people than did the war we we we have up to
[00:34:00] 1930 okay uh the atom uh the structure of the atom Yes we finally learned the atom quantum physics is discovered we are on the Centennial decade of the discovery of quantum physics in the 1920s and there is no creation storage or retrieval of information digital information without an exploitation of the quantum and we’re on another heels of a Quantum Advance with Quantum Computing but Computing itself can only exist as we know it because of the foundations that were laid in that decade and by the way we did that without even knowing that the neutron exists the neutron was discovered in 1930 look at how much we even got to figure out about the atom in the absence of the neutron the radio comes online yes the radio comes online we have the early uh Cinema it’s silent black and white and black and white but it’s oh my gosh a moving image there’s stories where people one of the early movies was the uh was it the Great Train Robbery
[00:35:02] was one of the great early movies and they have a scene with the train coming towards the camera and people were in a cinema and they were like and he say if you’ve never seen that what how would you react I saw some was it an episode of Beverly Hillbillies or something where he sees a TV he’s who’s that man in that box and he Tes his gun and shoots it okay cuz that’s what we do in America if you’re from overseas here uh so you shoot then you ask questions uh uh we saw the diminishment of Hors Manor in favor yeah oh oh so sorry sorry there two photos one from 1905 fth Avenue New York Easter Sunday okay there’s nothing but horse drawn carriages nothing okay okay and they’re T they’re horse taxis it’s horses they
[00:36:01] are the currency of urban transportation and of farming okay 10 years later 1915 that same photo was taken there nine no more than there’s like 30 automobiles for every one horer Carriage we went from a civilization that literally and figuratively was was built on the backs of horses and within 10 years you couldn’t give away a horse you couldn’t give away a horse because everyone was using a car now lessen to visioner what what’s the word visioners Vis visioners okay lessen it’s 1900 there’s the fear of the great manure catastrophe yes which an article written tongue and cheek pile but it was in Manhattan which is not a large place
[00:37:01] and you access it by Bridges and tunnels it’s an island there were horses and horses do what they do you feed them they poop the poop goes in the street the horse you don’t take it to the horse bathroom it’s in the street and the people’s whole job was to clean up the manure now what do you do with it you bring it to another place and it makes a pile then somebody else comes in with multiple HSE drawn carriages to haul the manure out of the island okay but those horses that are hauling the manure they are pooping okay so if you run the arithmetic on this people imagine the manure catastrophe and manure was a a a a a uh it attracted flies there were no indoor supermarkets back then at least in the in the inner cities most of of of food was sold by Street carts your fish your fruit your all of this was Street
[00:38:01] carts so the Flies were everywhere and it smell you you read the descriptions and the horse urine and horse poop just permeated the conversation yes yeah it was just in the air and so there’s a lot of visioning discussion about what to do about the horse poop or the Flies so they said let’s put something in the feed so that when it comes out as poop the Flies will not be attracted to it because that was one of the health issues how do you get rid of the Flies if you’re not going to get rid of the poop then another one was what can we feed the horse to reduce the amount of poop that comes out the other side this by the way is a question NASA has addressed over the Apollo ERA with their astronauts because they’re sitting there in the capsule and they got to eat but you don’t want them to poop so you want to reduce the poop Why Not only feed you things your body’s going to use and have no waste at all so these are thought so I’m imagining linear thinking
[00:39:02] visioners back then would have been trying to solve the manure problem in that way I’m going to the actual solution was the car yes yes that was the solution okay so that’s a lesson to us all and that that happened within 10 years so somebody in 1900 coming back in 1930 they would not recognize the landscape they said where’s the horse well it’s a horse Str Carriage without a horse how do you do that oh it has an engine what’s an engine oh use on fuel what’s fuel oh it’s gasoline where do you get it from under the ground it’s a the heads would explode and that’s just that’s just 1900 to 1930 well and we and let’s not forget the fact Lindberg crosses the Atlantic we Electrify our cities cities are electrified yeah oh I got another quote for you I got a quote 1908 the quote man will never fly from New York to Paris
[00:40:02] 1908 you know who said that Orville R Orville freaking Wright said that he invents he and his brother invent the airplane but he cannot think exponentially yeah cuz to get to Paris is an exponential thought from flying a few y yards in Kitty Hawk do you we go we go with meters by the way oh you’re oh yeah it’s America Jack everybody I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that’s very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love company is called Fountain life and it’s a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented Physicians you know most of us don’t actually know what’s going on inside our body we’re all optimists until that day when you have a pain in your side you go to the physician or the emergency room and they say listen I’m sorry to tell you this
[00:41:01] but you have this stage three or four going on and you know it didn’t start that morning it probably was a problem that’s been going on for some time but because we never look we don’t find out so what we built at Fountain life was the world’s most advanced diagnostic Centers we have four across the us today and we’re building 20 around the world these centers give you a full body r a brain a brain vasculature an AI enabled coronary CT looking for soft plaque a dexa scan a Grail blood cancer test a full executive blood workup it’s the most advanced workup you’ll ever receive 150 gab of data that then go to our AIS and our physicians to find any disease at the very beginning when it’s solvable you’re going to find out eventually you might as well find out when you can take action Fountain life also has an entire side of the Therapeutics we look around the world for the most Advanced
[00:42:00] Therapeutics that can add 10 20 healthy years to your life and we provide them to you at our centers so if this is of interest to you please go and check it out go to Fountain life.com Peter when Tony and I wrote Our New York Times bestseller life force we had 30,000 people reached out to us for Fountain life memberships if you go to fountainlife decomp will put you to the top of the list really it’s something that is um for me one of the most important things I offer my entire family the CEOs of my companies my friends it’s a chance to really add decades onto our healthy lifespans go to fountainlife decomp it’s one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners all right let’s go back to our episode I don’t know if you know this that from 1930 to 1960 we introduced the first commercial
[00:43:02] jet plane yes the Boeing 707 707 and that was done in 1956 or8 58 okay do you know by the that’s within the next 30y year period 1930 to 1960 watch do you realize that the wingspan of the Boeing 707 is greater than the distance flown by the right Brothers on their first flight that’s awesome that’s freaking oh just yeah give it up for the right Brothers yeah okay and and and and and their and their sister and their sister tell me about their sister um we’ll find out there’s a great documentary coming out that she actually did most of the work as these things go as these things go so was she the one who took the
[00:44:00] picture of them somebody’s got to take picture wait you left out that oh also we have an orbiting satellite yes what what day what day in what year was Sputnik October 4th of 57 1957 and before that not well 10 years before that we break the sound barrier yes now if you said to the right Brothers hey one day this will go fast enough it’ll be greater than the speed of sound they’ll laugh you out of you know out of Ohio so so okay so that’s in those 30 years we get Atomic power it’s a World War we CRA the atom and oh by the way we discover plutonium named after the object formerly known as a planet and don’t get me started on want Pluto back Pluto hold on hold on I by the way I’m uh so when do you stand on that by the
[00:45:01] way yes or no not stance as a matter of what is true no no no no Peter what do you stand on whether Earth is round yeah it’s not a stance it’s just the truth no it’s a definition defition Pluto had it coming Earth Earth our moon dwarf Moon my butt I Moon dwarf planet should who hears a Pluto file here raise your hand okay our moon has five times the mass of Pluto I bet they never told you that did they no okay do you know more than half of Pluto’s volume is ice so that if it were brought to where Earth is right now heat from the Sun would evaporate that ice and it would have a tail and has no kind of behavior for a planet don’t get me started all right so now I think we’re in 1960 no but but
[00:46:02] before then I I’m I’m I I love the periodic table and I just got to say this about it okay um when hersel discovered the planet Uranus and was finally named Uranus properly pronounced yeah if you’re older than eight years old you should say Uranus okay you get a hall pass if you’re younger than eight to call call it Uranus if you want all right so um this is the planet Uranus has discovered within a few years a brand new element is discovered turns out to be unstable we would use the term radioactive later on but they named that after the new planet that was discovered that was the element Uranium element 92 the sky now watch yeah some years after that 100 years after that we just discover another planet and we name it Neptune the next element in the periodic
[00:47:03] table heavier than uranium now number 93 was not yet named and not yet discovered until just after that planet so they named that after the next planet and that would beat neptunium and there’s element 94 not yet discovered waiting its turn the object formerly known as a planet called Pluto was discovered in 1930 okay shortly after that we discover element 94 it’s named after the ninth planet plutonium so the periodic table preserves uranium PL neptunium and plutonium in sequence nice with Pluto getting a a a a an element named on false pretense okay so now but here’s the point we discover plutonium in 1930 it is weaponized turned into a bomb and deployed 15 years later wow that is
[00:48:01] the pace yeah of what’s going on at the time uh the two bombs was a uranium bomb and a plutonium bomb that we knew uranium would work we were not sure about plutonium it was new new boy on the Block and so that’s what was tested at as famously now portrayed in the film Oppenheimer they tested the plutonium bomb not the uranium bomb and that that’s the one that then was dropped on Nagasaki point is between 1930 and 1960 we crack the atom weaponize the atom break the sound barrier go into space Oh My Gosh is there anything about 1960 that would be recognizable to anyone from 1930 I think not let’s keep going so 1960 to 1990 a lot oh a lot computers go from specialized room-sized equipment that serve the military and scientist to things you
[00:49:00] have on your desk standalone computers this is something that got wrong in the movie 2001 oldtime here when was the movie released 196 oh 1968 he’s good he’s good uh 1968 the vision of life in the year 2001 we all saw that was like wow that’s how we’ll be living in 2001 and in there the main ship’s computer was one huge computer because back then in 1968 if you want a more powerful computer it had to be bigger this whole idea that the computers get smaller and smaller and carried on your hip that’s not a thought they’re linearly extrapolating this they got sort of FaceTime in a tablet correct a little bit okay we can cherry pick that and say wow look how brilliant they were they got this correct I can tell you this that in 2001 oh there’s a quote from someone
[00:50:01] from the futurist uh the magur Clark the that says in the year 2000 there’ll be 50,000 people living and working in space that was maybe he was trying to think exponentially but he definitely got that wrong okay in the year 2003 people were living in working in space so space has a unique problem yes it’s expensive up until Sputnik launched space was an inaccessible domain and people imagined it would be centuries before we landed on the moon when spotnik was launched everyone went into exponential mode but they aired in the wrong way and I’ll tell you why in a minute Kennedy announces we’re going to the Moon before the decade is out and he said that at a time we didn’t yet have a vessel that could launch and not blow up that was capable of carrying people it
[00:51:01] was prophetic this was a badass prediction was okay before the decade is out all right so he says this and then everyone who’s trying to predict the future we on the Moon by 1969 will be on Mars by 1980 1985 and of course the space task group you know part of the White House was predicting by 1984 that we would be going to Mars yeah they were clueless they were clueless on budgets no no no it’s budget is irrelevant here for the reasons I will about to say educate me uh so uh the problem that oh by the way I wrote a whole other book on this it was titled when I submitted it Failure to Launch the dreams and delusions of space enthusiasts because the predictions never match the reality and they publ no we can’t have delusion and failure in the title so got reworded
[00:52:03] um space Chronicles facing the ultimate Frontier took all the teeth out of the title here’s the problem everyone naively presume well we’re Americans and we’re explorers that’s why we’re going to the moon and this is a natural progression of exploration and at no time did anyone ask themselves why are we doing it they presumed it’s cuz it’s in our DNA no it may be in our DNA but it doesn’t happen unless somebody pays for it and who’s going to pay for it not just anybody not just the National Science Foundation not just NASA it’s somebody’s got to write the check who’s going to write the check Congress and so when Kennedy says we’ll put a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth we think that’s the stirring rhetoric of a of a future thinking young president excuse me let’s go back to that same speech delivered on May 25th 1961 to a
[00:53:01] joint session of Congress oh what happened just 6 weeks before that Yuri Garin had been launched into space and came back safely what’s the date April 12th 196 thank you Loretta oh April 12th 1961 and 6 weeks to that a joint session of Congress is called okay oh by the way I have to slip in put a pin in that come why why did we lose our ship lose our poop when Sputnik launched I’ll tell you why Sputnik a radio transmitter was launched in the hollowed out shell of an intercontinental ballistic missile so if that could be deployed over our country that meant Russia could deliver a nuclear warhead over our space and back then we there were international restrictions on access to
[00:54:01] your airspace you can’t just fly anywhere unless you have permission but there was no treaty about your space space the space above your air all right so there it was we lost it we told within a year NASA was founded a year and a day later and this became a military priority thank you thank you oh under the does go back it does go back to budgets no wait it’s not just budget but is like put a number here or a number there I’m talking about motivation because in that s back to Kennedy speech go to Cape canaval there at Kennedy Space Center there the center the front entrance there’s a bust of Kennedy and chiseled in the granite are those words put a man on the moon return him safely to Earth before it’s there and you just say Yeah in that same speech here’s what he said several paragraphs earlier here I quote if the events of recent weeks
[00:55:00] couldn’t even utter the man’s name Yuri Garin if the events of recent weeks are any indication of the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere then we need to know the world the path of Freedom over the path of tyranny that was the battlecry against communism that dislodged the money to go to the Moon that’s what did it it’s it’s just not just budget let’s add the budget it’s what is your motivation I agree with you it was the I don’t want to die but it was you know anyway listen no no what I’m saying is no what I’m saying is this is a rich country we can do whatever we want if we all agree to it so it’s really not a matter of a budget it’s a matter of what is motivating us okay okay it’s not a matter of budget about what motivates uh our guy to fly across the Atlantic he had a paycheck at the other end of that that wasn’t about budg was like motivation okay so I wrote an essay late
[00:56:02] 1990s um for the Columbia history of the 20th century and it was called paths to Discovery and I wanted to assess what were the drivers not the budgets the drivers of people doing major major project civilization committing to Major projects and if I could find out what motivated people over the centuries and Millennia maybe I could find a way to motivate people to go to Mars because it’s really expensive let’s find out what the motivational so I set up this table at the end there were only three motivators not five Fe fear curiosity and greed curiosity is not one of the motivators are you going allow me to tell you what the three I did the work okay listen to me fine but motivator something has nothing to do with curiosity nothing to do with curiosity that’s the problem here okay number one drive is the I don’t want to die
[00:57:01] motivator that’s the fear we’ll give you that I don’t want to die okay next I don’t want to die poor so that’s the money one that’s great the third one is will perceived will or real will of royalty or deity much less in operation today than it was in past centuries so list the most expensive things humans have ever done there’s like the Great Pyramids there’s the Manhattan Project there’s the uh the Apollo project there’s uh the Human Genome Project uh well not the most expensive thing I’m talking expensive all right there’s only three billion that that’s nothing know I got that in my left pocket okay they can be big without being I’m talking about expensive in human and physical capital the cathedral building of Europe if you can list them we can quibble on the sequence but all of them will be drawn from one of those
[00:58:00] three drivers in modern times remove the royalty and deity it leaves economics and War and I’m telling you that everyone thinks we went to the moon for curiosity sake and because that’s what they thought they believed we’d keep going the moment we got to the Moon looked over our shoulder and the ruskies weren’t there they weren’t there we ended the Apollo program we got Apollo 18 60 years more to go and six minutes on the clock sorry so so so I will say this there there is a there is a there is a scientific ratio of the motivator of fear to curiosity and it’s the ratio of the defense budget to the science budget yeah that ratio is infinite yeah and unfortunate real quick I’ve been getting the most unusual compliments lately on my skin truth is I use a lotion every morning and every night religiously called one skin it was developed by four PhD women who determined a 10 amino acid sequence that
[00:59:02] is a cytic that kills scile cells in your skin and this literally reverses the age of your skin and I think it’s one of the most incredible products I use it all the time uh if you’re interested check out the show notes I’ve asked my team to link to it below all right let’s get back to the episode all right so I’m going to I’m going to finish up the 1990s by saying we’ve got you know the desktop computer we’ve got women entering the workforce we got uh the transistors you know creating the entire chip Revolution we go to the Moon nine times a pretty good time 1990 to 2020 let’s take it to this last 30-year segment a lot occurring there yes so 19 so 1960 to 1990 that’s obvious the cold cold war all of this uh uh 1990 to 2020 that’s in the lifetime of most of us in this room I Ian I remember it 1990 with the you know the dialup modem to try to
[01:00:01] get you know back to my computer at my office the internet wasn’t yeah the internet wasn’t really a thing yet and yeah in the movie you got mail people look forward to their email oh my gosh okay oh I got mail let me like stop everything and go read it all right uh here’s a one of my favorites is uh 1989 uh if you had a fax machine you were badass fax machine okay 1989 was the release date of Back to the Future Part Two which took place in the year 2015 okay so Back to Future Park 2 was made in 1980 released in 1989 took place in 1989 and they go to the Future 2015 so you get to see how they imagine it fine uh if you remember the movie our lead
[01:01:00] character Marty he irritates his bosses and his boss and he gets fired well he’s living in a home of the future and any home in 1989 has one fax machine that home has four fax machines because that’s the home of the future and the boss alerts him that he’s fired through and you see this Montage of fax machines showing that you’re fired you’re fired you’re fired and by the way the fax machine is dot matrix um in the future oh my God we we sequenced the human genome during this period of time pretty extraordinary $3 billion today well I got one other thing I got to finish the facts an I know we got okay Old-Timers will remember early 1990s AT&T had a series of ads called you will and they asked have you ever wanted to whatever and they say you will an AT&T will bring it to you so they’re Imagining the future they got a lot right I don’t I don’t want to take it away from but one of them they show somebody doing something I’ve never thought of doing
[01:02:00] never wanted to do never will do never did do it was somebody on a on a beach chair on the in the surf okay in the sand and he’s working on a tablet that was a good prediction and he says have you ever wanted to send a fax from the beach you will a so this it’s like that’s linear thinking the future so I if I were to leave people with a lesson it’s try to break out of your linear thinking and imagine what other Technologies might come from the side that you things you’re not even thinking the convergence that’s what the smartphone is the the smartphone didn’t invent GPS it didn’t invent digital storage it didn’t even invent touch screens or the digital camera or the digital camera the touchcreen in fact was invented by a an N was it NSF a grant to the the archives to the US
[01:03:00] archives the museum grouping of the archives because they didn’t want people typing on keyboards to get information and so they developed this screen that can respond to you as your tourists moving through the facility that’s how it got invented it was The Innovation just for that and that then has transformed our lives in almost every way little things like that and today if you show someone a little you someone from 1990 to today and they take him to a restaurant and they say well where’s the menu they say it’s that little pattern of dots in the middle of the table they they won’t they can’t they won’t relate oh uh uh can we get a a a taxi uh no I’ll just pull out my smartphone what’s a SmartPhone by the way it would be S how many 17 years from 1990 before the smartphone arrived okay so this whole thing about well I have a cell phone and that you know I don’t you all remember seeing the movie um um Wall
[01:04:04] Street and and I remembered seeing gecko on the beach with his shoulder-mounted cell phone and I say wow I wish I was rich so I could have a phone like that and talk without any wires and it was like I that was my Imagining the future and I had no idea what the future would bring and and last thing last thing and all sir you have kids this is my 100-year old man in the front row so um had your kids said to you Dad what one day I want to grow up and be a YouTube influencer and I want to out earn any money you’ve ever made in your life doing it you I don’t this is these are conversations this the thing we don’t even know how to have them yes yeah yeah I I I will just for the hell of it oh and you’re here in LA I’m driv we don’t have this in New York yet we’re going down the street that’s a
[01:05:00] car with no driver going by it’s like where’s the driver what what is that it’s they’re making left turns it’s you’ve seen these right La people it’s just like the driverless cars they’re just in the middle of the traffic like where’s it going I don’t know but it’s it’s it it feels like it knows it belongs there right cuz it’s got all the sensors the cameras and things so I don’t know people said in 2020 let’s imagine 2050 you can’t you can’t you’re not so that’s my that’s my favorite request on stage can you give us a prediction for 2050 I’ll do it I still do it I can barely give a prediction for 2030 I still do it but I’m doing it in the spirit of how humbled I would be when the actual 2050 comes based on what I’ve researched for the past 150 years so I’m going to make three predictions I’m going to make three one we will have designer drugs they’ll
[01:06:00] analyze your genome find drugs that will have no side effects for you why do we have to be a statistic in the reported side effects you know I’m not very side effect prone so I generally ignore that but many people are so figure that out medical community so that there are no side have the medicine do only what it’s supposed to do don’t make it make you throw up or give you diarrhea or depressive thought or rashes fix that okay that’s one two I think in the not to distant future all cars on the road will be self-driving electric and you say no that’s why that can’t be no no but I because we went from horses to cars in 10 years I’m just talking about going from Cars to another kind of car that’s can surely be less time than going from horses to cars self-driving and but you know how you start that only self-driving cars in the HOV lane then
[01:07:04] then these cars know where all the other cars are you want to change lanes it tells the other car I’m changing lanes now they part it changes lanes and they can even text and drive at the same time with no loss of their Acuity on the road because they’re freaking electric computers and they can drive 120 mph with two cars distance between them because there’s not going to be something they don’t anticipate and so once you see that cutting down your travel time I think it’s going to go quickly and suppose but you’re a car Enthusiast what do you do I like my my a classic car there’ll be car parks for you to drive them is that any different from people who like riding horses and you go to the stables and ride horses it’s quaint a quaint memory of bucolic past so so you’ve got your Ferrari whatever
[01:08:02] go you park it at the car park you’ll take an electric car to get there and you can do your thing uh as we now people who ride horses so I see that happening last thing um I’d like to see space people ask what where should we go next in space all of space why does it have to be a next destination when we built the interstate system which to the tune of 100 billion by the way about the same as going to the Moon uh what drove that well War drove that what’s the other name for the interstate system Oldtimer oh he’s scratching his head the Eisenhower internate system he went to Europe in the second world war saw the autobond survive under rain and snow and tanks could roll over without it fallen off the side of the road he says I want that in my country as a defense project project and so the initial monies for that all came from the defense um were
[01:09:01] informed by our posture as a country that didn’t want to get invaded and wanted to keep our military ready on the and you may know the interstate system doesn’t go over mountains it goes through them and after every distance there’s a certain stretch that is straight so that you can land an airplane on it if you have to it is to military specs that’s how that money got dislodged so I’m saying when you build the interstate you don’t build let’s just go from New York to LA no give people choices so you send the interstate everywhere let people’s creativity take them to wherever they want to start whatever businesses they want or have whatever free life they want to lead in a country that we still think is free uh and so so when I think of space I think of not a rocket to go here or there get a warehouse of sort of strap-on boosters and I say I want to do science on the backside of this Comet that’s coming through we need these
[01:10:00] three boosters in this rocket and we’ll schedule the launch in three months think about that then the entire solar system becomes our backyard and it’s not this other place it is a we we’ll have a relationship with it and yeah let’s mine some asteroids we have wars on Earth over the limited access to resources that are plentiful in the universe in our own back yard the future of space is one where an entire category of warfare will be rendered obsolete because access to resources will be unlimited we’ll still fight over which gods you worship or what your skin color is probably but this category of War would be gone forever if the entire solar system had lanes that you would take and you decided where you wanted to go and it wasn’t something a single National destination and the only thing we know about these predictions are they’re going to be wrong
[01:11:01] [Applause] yes all right everybody um let’s give it up for Neil the grass Tyson thank you I’m going shake your hand come here I’m shake your hand come here’s our Oldtimer right here where you go all right um we are we are woefully over scheduled but I cannot not take a few questions which is which is the definitive side of saying let me take a few questions here okay quick back okay okay all right so we’ve got microphones okay so uh raise your hand kids first um Okay so we’ve got two over here the microphone givers you
[01:12:01] decide come on come on give it come on we’re losing time hand them out when when you were mentioning all of the Innovations in the different periods you didn’t list contraception now there’s a thousand ones we didn’t list well I know but that’s I think it’s a really specific one particularly where we are at this time okay so important there are advances that are very important in our culture uh especially in health and well-being there you know there’s discovery of vaccines but that goes even farther back it’s there’s the discovery of Sanitation these uh contributed to our life expectancy the it’s not just the discovery of contraception it’s the how widely available it became and how inexpensive it was women enter the workforce women right to vote all of these things occur during the last century at the exact same time that you said that voting rights so that perod of time that was a huge social change women in the workforce women being able the
[01:13:00] population so I to comment on that yeah so I tried to keep the advances International and votes came to different people at different times we got we got two more microphones over here these are important yes I can tell you this that there people say oh it’s worst ever for women or blacks or trans or I’m gay no it’s not worse than ever if I had a time machine and I I and I said you can go in here and put any time you want to go in the past or the future if you are female person of color on the gender Spectrum there is no time in the past that you would choose that was much better in 1960 when when the Sunday paper the Sunday paper had a section oldtime remember this Sunday paper had a section it was called the women’s section it had the recipes and the okay that that’s the women had their place all that’s different and gone and
[01:14:00] so I’m saying those if you’re not white male go to the Future not the past in this time machine all right fantastic let’s go over here and then we’ll come here please go ahead yes you oh hi um I’m an undergrad student I think I’m the only one here um excuse me so you were a big portion of my childhood and why science was cool um in the late ’ 9s early 2000s um but my question is what would your 12-year-old self say to you now I I don’t I don’t know if my 12-year-old self showed up like right here yeah I think you say you’re pretty cool I I I don’t know I haven’t thought about that uh uh you know probably be it’s like you can actually make a career of the universe that’s probably what I because let’s flip the question what would you tell your 12-year-old self now no she Pur she
[01:15:01] did not ask that question that that question everybody asked that one so I’m saying you’re not answering it when I was 12 I was not certain cuz I knew at age nine I was interested in the universe by age 11 you ask me what I want to be when I grow up I say astrophysicist okay to that annoying question that adults ask kids so by age 12 I’m not entirely certain I can make a career of being an astrophysicist so I made sure that I went into college I majored in physics which has many more Pathways from it than just astrophysics my college degree is in physics and I even considered engineering just to broaden the job Spectrum for me to come out so I would just be uh delightfully surprised that I could what my deep interest at age 12 could be pursued all the way into adulthood excellent yes one last question all right first I just want to really thank you for carrying
[01:16:00] the torch of Carl Sean For the Love of Science and just bringing it to the current thank you Carl famously said when you’re in love you want to tell the world so yes I agree right here so uh what I want to ask you is if you had to choose an X prize in astrophysics what would you choose if you have to create a next prize for astrophysics I the what I would choose would be the same as what would get a Nobel Prize no so you’re asking what would you want the world to work on that is a you know a 10x bold problem a moonshot something that people don’t think is possible but if enough people work on it it might get scour the solar system for life that is a Genesis other than what occurred on Earth but if that happened it would get a no prize so we don’t we don’t need the X prize for for the science I think because we have our
[01:17:00] our reward system built but the Nobel Prize is a retrospective for something done in the past it’s about incentivizing new people to come in and take on something that’s worth we should be doing but people feel too limited you mean a single goal that’ll okay uh how about uh oo now I have my own personal x prise i i i want suborbital flight so that I can go to Tokyo have lunch and come back for dinner to New York because if you’re suborbital any two places on Earth are within 45 minutes of each pitched every other year here at visioner so where is it where is it okay um and so I I asid uh asteroid detection yeah but we got we got that yeah but I like the mining asteroid mining the first person who or group who can send uh a Lander to an asteroid dig get material from it and bring it back to Earth or take it to the
[01:18:02] moon where it might be useful for colonies that would be set up there how’s that for an X prise that sounds great an astro X prise less than the cost of getting it all right everybody again let’s give it up for NE grass Tyson [Music]