Fore Play - NASA Scientist Eric Smith, Golf Legend Annika Sörenstam, & Frankie’s Poem

Episode Date: January 11, 2022

Two big guests. One big show. First, we’re joined by NASA’s program scientist for the James Webb Telescope, Eric Smith (51:54), to discuss the monumental project, exoplanets, life elsewhere, the origins of the universe, the challenges of pushing the boundaries of exploration and the physics of golf. Then, golf icon Annika Sörenstam (01:37:53) joins to discuss her signature swing move, the enormous achievements of the Annika Foundation, elevating women’s golf and much more. Plus. each crew-member reveals his 2022 golf goals.You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/foreplaypod

Hey, 4Play listeners, you can find us every Tuesday and Thursday on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Foreplay, I'm at Barstool Sports. It is January 11th, 2020. We have a huge show, two very important guests, and our very own Frankie Brelli is doing some ominous bit that we are not aware of yet. We have Eric Smith, who is the program scientist for the James Webb Telescope program from NASA, who joins the show for nearly an hour, and we go through it all just as you would imagine.

And then we also have one of, if not the greatest, female golfer of all time and one of the great golfers of all time, Onica Sorenstam on this very show. So it's a huge one. We got the whole squad, myself, Trent, Frankie, and Lurch. And we have a really just weird smile coming from Frankie, who again has been preparing for a recap of last week's golf tournament.

So wait, before we get to that, I unfortunately had to miss the NASA Eric Smith, I believe you said, his name was interview. People are obviously going to hear it. And I'm going to have to listen to it myself. But just quickly, did it go the way that you guys thought it would? Like, we've talked a lot on this show. We've had a lot of conversations. At times, this has been a space podcast, not necessarily a factual space podcast, but a space podcast. Like, sometimes I worry that you bring in an actual expert and he's just going to tell you that you're a space podcast.

all wrong and that it's not nearly as interesting as that you that we hope that it would be. Trent, this guy knows, he just knows stuff and he explained it particularly well. And he understood because he listened to our last segment on the web telescope, which was a little bit revealing and kind of, I felt very vulnerable. But overall, he was, I would say, fantastic. I'd say we got more into just how impressive it is of what they're about to do. Like, and a lot of the things, like, when you're listening to this interview, and I get it, it's a golf. It's a golf. podcast and we're talking about space and I'm sure there's going to be a lot of people that get mad. This guy's one of the more impressive people will ever speak to in our lives and it's

honestly an honor that he came on the podcast. He has a NASA.gov email and it's just like insane. Everything about what he says just blows your mind even how simply he says it. So when he says, so for the first 10 years I was exploring other galaxies and he just keeps going on and like you're listening to him talk and it seems so very normal. And And when you really dissect what he's saying, you can't imagine that he's talking about the things he's talking about. He's like, yeah, some of the newer guys, it's almost like in golf where the guys come up and, you know, they're really into the exoplanets and all these other life-forming planets that we think. And I'm just like, dude, this guy is, he's a superhuman. And, you know, you might call these people nerds and scientists, like you have these weird perceptions of him.

he couldn't have been a nicer guy and he's just he's working on life-changing work it's amazing it was more about like his business and what they do and what they uncover rather than like debunking all the nonsense that we put together on this podcast like that was your up front question it was more he kind of at one point says that he kind of just went like this to the there's obviously like simple life out there which was an awesome yeah i mean he oh he he said he wouldn't he's like it wouldn't it wouldn't change his day knowing there's like simple life out there essentially he's like it's the intellectual life that we really need to get to um interesting but like most people would be like there's worms and like there's life on another planet he'd just be like yeah it's obvious he does say some

outrageous things too because he's like if life form is really advanced they might not even recognize a really like dumb down life form which we just like glossed over but i was like wait if they're like super advanced how would you not even recognize that other things living things are even in existence. But, yeah, no, he says some things that you need, like, a lifetime to unpack his brain. Because when he goes over things, you're like, no, we just have to get to the next topic because that in itself is another half hour. But, yeah, I mean, it was amazing.

And Riggs at the end, which I was kind of like, we got to get this guy back on. But Riggs was like, yeah, you know, if you could, we'd love to have you as a recurring guest. So I think he'll be back. I think he enjoyed it. He's coming back. Yeah, I would love to cross over. You could tell Trent that they like yearn for people to care about what they're doing. You could tell.

Sure. Trent, I totally get that. Did you know that when, you know, we're doing this Zoom right now, it's all just numbers being coded in and then brought out into a picture? Like you touching your, your, your beard right now is just a bunch of zeros and ones being digitally recreated for me to see. So essentially that's what this telescope is doing. I don't want to give away the whole interview, but it's amazing when you think about it from a numbers standpoint. I've heard rumors of the zeros and the ones.

I know that they're the basis of a lot of this. And I, after the podcast last week, I went on YouTube and I watched a 10-minute YouTube video on the James Webb. What do you call it? What do you call it? That thing is amazing. So if this guy is involved with that or talking about it in any sort of way, that's going to be a must listen. Because just the way that thing is configured and all the things they had to prepare for once it gets all the way out there is honestly, it takes. takes your breath away, so I bet the interview is great.

I mean, this guy pretty much is the telescope. Like, it should be, like, the next person in line for it to be named would be the Eric Smith like telescope. And they're already working on new telescope. So, yeah, it's definitely worth to listen to. And, yeah, I'm very happy that we finally got someone that knew what they were talking about. Let's hit a little bit of True Bill quick. And that's going to run us right into the mysterious Frankie Burrelli segment bit that he has

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Truebill.com slash four. that's truebill.com slash four. It could save you thousands a year. That is truebill.com slash four. Mr. Borrelli, our very own pizza boy, please take it away. Well, yeah, no, it's a new year. And I'm not going to say that this is like a New Year's resolution thing because I don't want it to be that. I'm not going to do this every single week.

It was way too much work. My brain almost combusted last night. But, you know, I was just thinking this was a big tournament and I love golf and I was excited to watch Capulua. And I just thought, why don't I do something? that, you know, if you miss the tournament or maybe you watch it and you just want a little quick recap, I thought I'd do a little something for you guys. So it's poem time. Holy shit. Jake hit the music. It's poem time.

We start at Capulua. It is finally here. The first PGA tournament of the new year. Hawaii was the venue. The views were so beautiful. The green books on tour were no longer usable. eight winners filled out the field. It looks like Brooks's arm has finally healed. The fairways were wide and the wind was not present, making the course easy, which the players found pleasant. Mickelson showed life early in the week, Kisner finished strong, I love Damon's physique. A course record was shot, a 61 for Justin Thomas, but Rahm quickly matched it, he always shows promise. The scores were so low, multiple records were set, 32 under loss,

when 34 under was met. Cam Smith finished the week with 36 birdies and eagles. His name in the history books, his mullet and stash regal. Two Aussie finished in the top three. That's one Aussie for you and one Aussie for me. Tough break for Jones, finishing 32 under par. Still too off the lead. That feels so very far.

Was it too easy? Some people may say, we may never see this again. It may never go this way. It was truly historic this talent on display. the best we've ever seen in Hawaii on this day. That's amazing. I will say it really good.

Like when you were talking, it almost made me think of the night before Christmas in just terms of your like tonality. It's got that cadence for sure. That same cadence. I got a few questions. How many times do you practice that a lot? No.

Well, as you're writing it, definitely I practiced the cadence. But I'll tell you what was hard is just writing it. That was the hardest part. I had the things that had happened. I know what happened in the golf. That was the easy part. Writing it was hard.

Were you taking notes throughout the weekend? Did you know this was coming? Was this sort of a last night thing? Something I, you know, as it was happening, I was watching some things. You know, I didn't get into too much detail there. It was kind of just the big headlines of the week, the things that caught my eye. You know, the really easy golf, you know, Michelson in the beginning caught my eye, and Kisner finishing caught my eye, and Cam Smith winning for the second.

second time called me. So it was just, you know, I figured why not try and put a little spin on this great game we called G and figure out how to bring it to bring it to thee. You know, I might be the next generation. God damn. I might be the next fucking Charles Dickens on this motherfucker or, or, uh, Dr. Seuss. Was there a nod to Joel Damon's physique in there? There was. There was. That was nice. That was really nice. Yeah, I like that. There was. No, so, you know, maybe, you know, this could become a thing and people can send me their own poems about the game of golf and we can talk about them. But I definitely want it to be a segment from here on out and maybe I'll just hit you guys with the poem from now. Don't ask me for one every single week because I'm not

to be able to do it. But when I hit you with the poem, I wanted to hit. A true Robert Frost of our generation. So that was, yeah, that was lovely. I can't tell you how positively I feel about the entire thing. I'm excited to really break it down going forward. I was nervous. My heart was You can tell you, in the beginning I was talking very confidently and slow, and you can tell I sped that thing up like I do on the drums where I just wanted to get through it. Man, my heart was in my throat. Well, Frankie, poetry is very vulnerable. You know, you share your, you're really spilling your heart and your soul onto the page and you're trying to make it rhyme. That's, that's very vulnerable.

I thought it was great. I thought it was fantastic. People are going to be asked for that every week. You're not going to get it every week. But whenever I would say, whenever you now, from now on, whenever you say, Jake drop the music, it's going to be, people are going to be happy. Because that's going to be fun. It's poem time. It's poem time.

I want to say that my thinking is that you probably had a pretty good weekend yourself. Did you have a nice weekend? I actually didn't have the greatest weekend. I mean, no, not really. Yeah, it was okay. Like, no Islanders hockey, kind of just fucking sat around and did nothing. Maybe that's why I did it. Well, art comes from pain, so maybe you just had you had a bad weekend.

I probably had an average weekend, but I had this idea for the last week. I told Jake about it. I walked over to Brendan's desk when Jake was over there. They were talking about one of the videos they were editing. And I was like, I kind of want to start writing poems about the tournaments that happened. And they're like, what does that even mean? I said, I don't know. Like, we always try and like break down what happened the weekend before.

And sometimes it kind of just gloss over because we assume people watched it. Like, maybe I'll just give a quick recap. Like, I don't know. I guess the only thing I was getting at was that that seemed pretty positive and upbeat. And I sense if you were to have a shitty weekend, then I, I just thought maybe there'd be some darkness in your, a little more darkness in your poems. No, maybe they'll start to sleep in there. But I think poems, I want to go to the Dr. Seuss, Robert Frost. Like, I want to go that nice route.

You know, I want it to be cheery. Maybe one week it'll be negative. Maybe next week. We'll see. Who wrote, who wrote a telltale heart? That's the negative one, the scary one. Why can't I think of that guy's name? Edgar Allan Poe.

My peers. Yeah, Edgar Allan Poe, yeah, he's a peer of yours. You also, you were hitting a lot of golf balls this weekend. On your Insta story, you were at the Holtzville top golf? Yeah, showing off that swing. So, yeah, I was hitting some swing. When you get these new clubs, you can't stop. You can't not swing them.

So we get sent to us in the middle of the fucking dead of winter here in New York. and I really wanted to start hitting that sim driver, Jesus, the stealth driver. I got a lot of shit for bringing my own clubs to a top golf. I will say I can agree with that in a vacation standpoint. If you're just going for drinks with people and trying to get food. But this place is 10 minutes away from my house and it's a heated driving range. Why would I choose to not bring my own clubs in that scenario? I was just going.

Yeah, I don't get that. It's a driving range. It's like I don't have access to a private club. clubs to a bar? It's like, well, dude, the bar's got golf balls at it

and a fucking target that you want to hit the golf ball. It's a little different. So, yeah, I did that. It was fun. There's nothing better

than hitting balls at night than putting them on the gram as we've noticed from, what's his fucking name? I got to give this guy a shout out. Calamara? No, yeah,

his guy across the pond. Calamara. Calamara? He's great. He's great. If you type in this guy on Instagram, everyone, Kawamura, K-A-W-A-M-U-R-A-2-8.

You'll never see anything like it. His Instagram stories and his posts are out of this world. Where is he? Tokyo? Is he in Tokyo? He could, yeah, I'm not sure. Somewhere on the other side of the pond, for sure. But, yeah.

No, I'm just trying to get some swings in. And I really like to take advantage of my game off the mats in the winter. I'm as good as I'll ever be in this part. of my game. So when I have the chance, I want to show it off. Like, I can ball strike like no other off of Matt in the, in the middle of January, and I can get some fits off of people being like, wow, you got some swing. And then when the grass comes and the light turns on, like, I can play at night, no problem. Whenever golf is what golf actually is, I'm bad. But when it's all the extra stuff, like at night and off mat and in the cold, I'm elite. So let me take advantage of that

latter part because you know the grass and the sun is coming soon and that's when it all goes to shit. Matt's are a free way to feel good about your game. It's like, because you can, the miss is really only a blade because no matter how chunky you want to get, that club face is just going to whip through the ground, never slow down, really even speed up, and then just rip a ball through. But I will say, Frankie, to your credit, and I don't know if these were doctored, you only wanted to show seeds.

but the drives you were hitting the drives you were hitting were like all right everyone's just an absolute frozen rope like if you were looking at the pole like there's obviously those big poles in the net like the ball would disappear into the pole and it would never break a two foot

like degree of separation it was just missiles and I was like all right this is what are there any can I see some from the cutting room floor there's got to be a couple on there bro I hit so I didn't like have a running camera I would hit go back and watch it So I didn't hit many drives.

There's probably one that I, like, faded a little too much I didn't put out. I didn't really miss it any. I didn't want to hit a driving range ball because they were so shitty at this. I went to the second. I actually really liked the place. It's Heartland because the ball comes up. Like, every time you hit it comes out. And then you can adjust the T on that one.

I actually really love it. But the balls are so cold and so shitty that I got a DM saying you're going to crack the face of your driver, especially a fucking carbon face. Like, why are you doing that? I just listened to an idiot on Instagram. So I was actually taking my tailor-made balls and replacing them. So I only hit like four of them at the drive range because I wanted to see how I was going to do with like a TP-5. And everyone's like, oh, you're wasting balls. Those are just going to the people.

There's a couple four-play balls that are just going to pop up at Heartland and you can just take those. Now, will those, and now, I don't know the top golf technology, but will those not register in the net? So somebody who wants one at the flag? This was the second place I went to where it's just a regular place. Okay, okay, that'd be great Because then there's no like tracker on it And it's like, oh, I stiff it It's like, well, that one didn't care

They're playing a very intense version of the angry birds mode at Topgolf And they had the last shot that didn't go, didn't register There's just something about that camera angle And when you hit it at night And Kawamura does the same thing where I still don't think those balls have landed There's something about that angle And that atmosphere where when you hit a good one

It just looks like it goes forever ever and ever and it's very cool yeah i just got to keep hitting balls and a lot of messages about not working on my short game like clearly that's where you don't you don't succeed and that's where your game foils and i just i don't have a grass range to practice my short game on when it's 12 degrees that's that i had to go to a heated on the mat type of place and when the time comes i'll practice it but i definitely want to get my i want to attack my game this year i don't want to just show up to these fucking videos and and and not be prepared i like i miss they're hungry hungry to get better i I enjoyed the hell out of it.

I missed the last golf podcast, and we said we were going to talk about our goals going into the year, and I could relisten, but Frankie, what are your goals? Oh, do we not do the segment? Okay. Do we want to do that now? Yeah, I do want to get your guys take on Capulua before we get any further, because I know we got a lot of space talk on here,

so I want to get some golf truck in. Then we'll do that. Capulua is always pretty similar, I feel like. It's just, it's gorgeous. This is court crunch off. The course is pretty fun to watch. I feel like they always go low. I know they went lower this year.

Everybody was going nuts about that. But like 30 something under has one there before. So they go as low as hell. There's, it's par, what, 73? So there's a million par fives. These guys eat up par fives. There's no win. It was pretty soft.

They make a bazillion birdies. Nice to see our guy kids with the top eight. I know there's only 39 guys, but he shot like 24 under par or something like that, which is fantastic. Cam Smith seems like a total beauty. Him fending off John Rahm, of all people. I mean, I don't think anybody really sees that comment, even though Camp Smith has some pretty sweet wins to hold off John Rom.

And then also on the other side, John Rob coming out after whatever, 100 days since he's played a PGA tour event and shooting 30 million under bar and almost winning a tournament. John Robb's got going everywhere. He's clearly here to stay. So I enjoyed it. I always enjoy watching it. I, again, don't get like, and I'm treating it like the U.S. Open. So you kind of ducking in and out. There's football on.

There's other shit going on. But it's Capaloo. It's always nice and pleasant to watch a little bit of PGA to work off for the first time in a while. Yeah, I'm going to, I think I'm going to let Frankie's poem speak for most of it, you know? He really, he really covered a lot of ground there because it's just like what Riggs said. Like, it's beautiful. It makes me a little depressed because it's always, it feels like an alternate universe because I'm in New York and it's getting super cold here now and it's snowed last week. And then you turn on the TV and there's these beautiful beaches and this blue ocean and these beautiful landscapes.

but yeah, seeing guys go that low is always super impressive, but they just, they fucking eat that course alive every single year. And I don't think it's going to change. These guys just keep getting better and better. So, yeah, 34 is the winning score. It's just, it's good that golf is back, but I'm, I'm with rigs where it's not like I'm going to go crazy about Capulua. It's beautiful.

It makes me a little depressed. It makes me want to golf, which is the opposite here out east because it's getting fucking super cold. I can see snow behind Lurch right now. It's fucking crazy. It is. It is. No, I'm in the same boat. I mean, I think I also love something about golf is just you have to earn it every week in this tournament. Everybody's getting a guaranteed money. So it's more of like a celebration of last year. So the thing that excites or that I like get excited about is the tournament were to close out. Like Cam Smith now just has just a gravy year. Like he's already won. He's back in the tournament of champions next year. He's guaranteed money for that. Like that is a, that's what I was kind of watching tournament. the end. And it became almost just a heads-up match from Rom and Smith going into Sunday.

I think there were a couple clear after Saturday, but it really kind of fell off. And when you talk about Kisner, when I tweeted out, Kisner shot 24 under. I mean, six under every day, and he's 10 off the lead. It's just preposterous in that sense. These guys are so good. They're not even real people. So some of that is really fun. But yeah, it's a little bit too early. It's a little bit of like reminder marketing. Hey, we do in fact have professional golf. These guys are the most epic horse in the world while you're, you know,

sitting at home with snow. So, yeah, I'm in the same boat, kind of tuning in and out. But what I'm always interested is who's going to win? And then who's just going to have kind of a gravy road this year for their golf career. And then obviously, you know, they're back in the next year as well. Yeah, I like it for what it is. We talk about this when whenever there's carnage. I think you need the opposite of that just to see how well these guys can play at a resort course.

This was essentially like taking Cam Smith out with you and a bunch of buddies and seeing how he would do at your local, at your hotel course, right? That's essentially what Capilua is. Brandl talked about how that's what it was built for. And the only defense for this golf course is the wind. And it just wasn't there at all. And you have guys like JT saying it was way too easy. and you're never going to see scores that are lower than this because when the wind's not there, we're just going to absolutely eat it up.

And he was saying like some funny things about just how. I think he said we're going to shoot nothing at this place. And when the wind is not here, we're going to shoot even better than that. So it is kind of a joke when it comes to like the competitiveness of trying to maneuver yourself around a course. But fuck, man, I like watching these guys. Dude, on Saturday, Rom went from the whole 14 to 18. He went birdie, eagle, birdie, birdie, birdie, birdie to finish off a 29.

on the back nine to finish off a 61 to match Justin Thomas's course record. That's just golf, man. That's guys just getting balls and holes. And it's nice to see balls and holes. It's been a long winter, a long fall, a lot of football, a lot of hockey, a lot of bad hockey, a lot of basketball. And it's just nice to see some sunshine and some balls and holes. Sorry if I have a little bit of a nice outlook on the game of golf right now. Yeah, Morikawa shot at 62 yesterday.

It's like taking the sliders in a video game and throwing them all the way to the left. Which is awesome. What's wrong with that? Give me that most of the time. Like, I want to see how cool these guys, like how low they can go. I'm not sure about most of the time, but I like seeing it at least once a year. Like where it's... I'm not in majors, but like, why do I give a fuck how hard the John Deere Classic is? Let me see this guy shoot fucking 50 under. You know what I mean? Yeah, but I guess a balance is nice. And I think they have a decent balance. I wouldn't want to watch sliders to the left tournament every week. Personally. Yeah. I agree.

I like when, if it's just a guy hitting it, bombing it down a wide fairway and then hitting a wedge close and making putts, like I think that can only be entertaining for so long. I like to see shots get fucking punished and catch a slope and they have to hit some crazy chip to try to get up and down. Like I just think that's got more elements to it so it can be more interesting. Capilua, like they are in interesting spots. Those par fives, right? Like they're all up near the green and two. So you do see them hit clever little like chips or bump and runs. They have to think their way through it a little bit.

So Capulua is not the same as like just a standard, you know, down and back, like really boring kind of straight golf course. It's got a little bit of flare, a little bit of excitement to it. But, but yeah, I'm with Trent Moore. Like, I do like to see some struggle. I do like to see those guys grind a little bit. So yeah, I think you need a little bit of a balance. And I think that this is a good way to start. It's fucking Hawaii with whales and shit in the second week of January.

Let those guys shoot 34 under. That's fine. Yeah, the coverage was trying to play up like the undulation of the course way too much. much of like if you hit it on the front, you're like, dude, it's obviously not that difficult. We're seeing ball, like we're seeing everybody's just flagging it. And then I don't know if the greens seemed to be, you know, more flat, but I mean, anything inside 10 feet these guys just made this weekend. So I was doing kind of dollar bet sitting.

I helped my buddy move. He was driving cross country. So I jumped in with him at Denver and we did a 12 hour and nine hour day. And so we were watching golf at night. And so we'd be getting to a hotel room or something like that and doing dollar bets. Like, is he going to make this put or miss this punt? I mean, anything inside 20 feet, it felt like it was just dropping. So, yeah, it was a little bit too much.

But, I mean, it is. Like, these guys are freaks. It's the tournament of champions. So to see them go just dominated a golf course, it's like, I don't hate that. And to Frankie's point, it is what it is in that sense. You don't, let me tell you this. To watch us go there and just not play better at all. Yeah, that's right.

That's right. That's exactly what I was going to say. The only way we can find out how hard this golf course is, get these four guys on a plane to Hawaii. We'll test it out ourselves, okay? Yeah. You know what I mean? Perfect.

Listen, that's the only way we're going to get to the bottom of this. We need a baseline here and we're the guys. If the truck goes out there and shoots an 87, we know this place is too easy. That's right. And we're willing to find that out. Right. Maybe play a couple other courses around there. Maybe, you know, just do, you know, just thinking about it.

Just do a whole Hawaii travel series. Stay out there for maybe three. Just thinking out loud here. Just think it out loud out of here. I'm just kind of, you know, spitball in here. It's the only way we're going to find out that these golf courses are hard or not. It was the first week of ESPN Plus's new coverage. Did you guys notice any difference?

I know there's a lot of talk about they're going to change the game of how they're going to bring us golf. And I watched a little bit on Hulu and just a lot of commercials is really what I saw. I didn't see any change. I also couldn't find maybe because I was watching on Hulu and not the ESPN Plus, but I couldn't find like featured groups or anything. any of that. So I'm going to have to do a better job of figuring out how they, like all the features they have, unless they just didn't have them.

I was driving around, so I didn't really get a sense of that. I was just watching on hotel TV, honestly, when I got back. So I didn't, I don't know. I was fine. I wasn't really engaged in it either, to be honest with. I wasn't like watching every shot. I was not just kind of check of the scoreboard checking social. Yeah, I'll have to wait for another tournament to really dive deep into the new ESPN

plus. What golf analysis from the boys right there? I don't know. I don't know. I've set up for five years straight. It's like Torrey Pines is usually when I go, all right, the PGA tour season is really started. That's usually when Tiger Woods would always start. That's when you'd get kind of a major championship type course and we're off and running.

Again, the Hawaii stuff's great, but they're on half like vacation and it's only 39 guys. So I love the tournament for what it is, but I'm not doing any deep analysis on it. I just don't have it in me. Jake saying that you have to be on the watch ESPN app to get all those features. so you can't just, Hulu, I guess they just shoot you out the main feed.

Hulu's been great, man, not to fucking talk about them, but I get to watch every hockey game now. It's unbelievable. Mr. Ice with the Marcell Sportsbook, it's electric. Hulu?

No, Friyes. Well, yeah, just ESPN Plus, essentially, you have all these fucking, you have all these, every single hockey game. And like the other day,

I watched just a Harvard hockey game, too. Like, they just have every hockey game on the planet. I love hockey. I never had, that access is like see all those hockey and islanders aren't playing so you got to find hockey elsewhere islanders haven't played a game in what feels like three and a half years when's the next time

those guys are hitting the ice you know they're hitting the ice on thursday and i'm hearing that game is getting canceled because the devils have now gotten a covid thing i just want to know who needs to pay for the new york islanders being the guinea pigs of the n hl where they didn't protect them when they had four division games with eight players or more out with covid why did they have to play those games and now every time a team gets COVID with like five or six plus players, they cancel three weeks of games for those guys so that they can get

replenished, they can come back, they can play their games and then they're good. Why did the islanders have to lose four to six division games with Andy Andrioff not to fucking take shots at them, but I mean the islanders were just not the islanders. I can't take it. This season two years ago we had the bubble.

Last year we had modified divisions and they only played in the division. This year's way more of a circus clown show. way more of a circus clown show. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm looking at the standings right now. The Rangers have played 36 games. The Islanders have played 28.

Usually that's like within one or two. Like that's the most amount of canceled games of all time. I mean, but I would argue almost like the Islanders are not good this year. They have not gone. That's not true. Like the Islanders, their roster. They haven't played a meaningful game since last year. Maybe I could argue.

But that's not true. Like the games they lost, they did. The games they lost are what the, the NHL is trying to avoid for every other team in the NHL. Am I making any sense there? Like the NHL is looking at their league and saying, okay, 15 teams now are completely depleted. We have to stop these games here and there.

We can't allow them to have all these taxi squads and all these guys lead. It's spreading through the locker room. The Islanders have had every single player get COVID except for the two goalies. Every single one. Every single player. I think it's Scott Mayfield and the two goalies.

That are the only ones. when they have played they just but they have not played well no yeah but when they have a full roster they win they're 10 and 12 on the season yeah they lost seven games in a row with no fucking players in they went out of 16 goal differential it's just they went on a 13 game losing streak or some shit and they even lost 13 kids bro i'm telling you i'm telling you if you watch this team when they are full strength they're a problem they've always been a problem come on they've got less points than games which is always a bad staff In terms of like you're keeping your momentum going.

Like every other team's just had 100% people in the whole time. No, but there's COVID stuff. You haven't had to deal with the Islanders have to deal with. I guess it sucked this year. Fine. Maybe the Islanders have had it a little bit worse, but they also have sucked a lot of the years. They suck this year.

It's the fucking, it's just the way it goes, I guess. When they get healthy, they're going to have to go on an unbelievable run because of the place Gary Bettman has put them in. I can't. I would love an Islander's poem. If we're being honest than that,

too, it would be a little. Yeah. Just a real sad poem. Can you have an Islander's poem on Thursday? Can we do an Islander's poem on Thursday? I can't do it. No, I can't do an Islander's poem. I just can't.

It's only when creativity strikes, huh? It's just got to hit me. So don't want to ask me for poems. I don't want anyone people asking me for poems. I want people to be excited about the poems, but also I want that sense of surprise. Like I'm going to drop it in like I used to do on the radio show where we used to do what was it called the gun game oh my god what was the name of that game that we used to play

oh under the head under the gun under the gun under the gun where i'd just drop the fucking ticking bomb sound and i'd say you have 15 minutes to name of female actress that starts the letter h go 13 seconds 15 seconds he said minutes female actress starts the letter h go one Hallie Berry Hallie Barry You guys said it Five

Um Heather Walker Hannah Walker Yeah That's what I said Hadna Storm That's what I said 10

11 I don't know Many addresses There you go Hillary Duff Hillary she's not an actress Yes she is She's a singer

Isn't she a singer Crazy Dude the Hillary Duff movie What's her What is what's that Blue that one by me then Lizzie McGuire She's actually on The Bachelor tonight.

Not that we want to talk about everything that's not golf, but she is making an appearance on The Bachelor tonight. That will have already aired when this goes out. But I couldn't think of one. I still can't think of one. All I could think about was Harrison Ford, and that's a man. Let's do cross-country mortgage. And then we can do interviews?

Yeah, let's do it. People ready for that? Yeah, that's true. People ready for that? Nothing's more frustrating than landing on the green only to three pot. That's true. Well, that are trying to find a helpful mortgage lender that you can trust. That's why cross-country mortgage does what they do.

They have everything for everyone that help you find the right loan or refinance or whatever you need to happen. They will get it done. Cross-Cuture Mortgage has a team of loan officers dedicated to getting it done and finding you the best possible loan terms available. They have an average close time of 21 days. That's ridiculously fast. They've got a wide variety of loan types, which means they've got everything to cover everyone.

Huge variety of products. They cover everything from renovations to everything. and what's what's refis is that a finance Frank you want to take short is that short for refinancing probably yeah refi which is amazing and I didn't know so I'm locked in with cross-country mortgage got my rate they actually just set me an amazing package yesterday telling me congratulations on final closing and that your closing dates coming up here is that you know that um to like tape all the boxes, that little, that little contrappment that you want to be able to tape all the boxes and it has like stickers on it so you can label everything. It's an amazing piece of technology.

They sent me one of those. They sent me all these box stickers saying like, congratulations, you're going to need this. Moving is hard. Let's make it easier for you. Chris Devon at the Devon group of cross-country mortgage couldn't be better. And then also he explained to me with the refinancing, like there's there's times where rates drop and then you can just refinance your loan. So whatever you lock in at, you're not always locked in at that number. There's always opportunities to refinance. You actually should try and refinance. It's not like healthy to have the same number.

It's not good for you to have the same locked in number for 30 years. You want to be able to always refinance and make your money work for you a little bit more than just being stagnant. Thank you to cross-catching mortgage. I can't wait to get into the house and get everything going. They made everything amazingly easy and I cannot, cannot recommend them anymore. Go to cross-caughty mortgage.com slash barstool. So cross-cotchy mortgage can take care of you through the homebobie. buying process. Cross-country mortgage LLC NMLS 3029. All loans are subject to underwriting approval.

Visit www. n-mls consumer access.org. Again, go check out cross-countrymortgage.com slash barstool. Hillary Swank. Hilary Swank. Got there. Was that within 15 minutes? I don't know, but I thought of that and I just wanted to let people know that I know a female actress with the name, with a letter that starts with H. I can't think of it. Congratulations. I still don't. I don't even know who that is. No. She's in that Hawkeye. I haven't seen it.

Okay. Hillary Swank, that's all I got. I really can't think of another one. Hallie Berry was the first one for me. That was a good one. Nice, stole Riggs also. You just keep saying the same names over and over again now. You guys tried these gummy clusters, these nerds gummy clusters?

No. Dude. You guys ever have a nerds rope? Oh, yeah. Bro, try and fuck around these gummy clusters, man. Go to your local CVS, Rite, whatever. This is no fucking ad read, but let me tell you something. If they want to put me on the books, I'll go on the books for Nerds Rope.

They're nerds rope into these little mini balls that just somehow taste better than nerds ropes, and you just pop them in like tick tacks. It is. I can't be doing that. It is fucking. It is fucking phenomenal, dude. I am not in a place where I can be introduced to new candy, you know? Yeah.

Like, I got it. I know what's going on. This could be the candy. No. Bro, I'm telling you, you wouldn't believe the case. Even if you're right, I don't want that. That's, I got the candies. I know what, what's going on.

And then you're going to enter a new one. Like, I can't be having that in my diet. Before we go on to the interviews, let's do quick, new years, goals or resolutions. Are we leaving them to golf? Because if I do regular life, it's going to get dark and nasty in here. We did, we did this last time. We did golf ones. We did golf ones.

Okay, so let's go golf. Remember what I'm going to learn how to cook, which I haven't even attempted. Thought about yet. No, I haven't even thought about it. I got more delivery, food delivery, take-out guys coming to my door than you believe. You know what I mean? Golf resolutions, for me, it's going to be easy for me. It's just break 90, which is we'll be coming to your YouTube channels, you know,

within the next couple of months. So get ready for that. And that's pretty all-encompassing for me. Because if I say I want to break 90, that means improve upon just about every part of my game, which I want to do. We're going to get my guy, John Tillery, back in the mix, and we're just going to roll again. So my 2022 new year golf resolution is to break 90. I love it.

Okay. Briggs. Mine's a big one. I want to be able to hit the ball 300 yards. I think it's going to be a really comprehensive effort. I think I've got to get, like, stronger, fitter. I have to change some things from a technique standpoint. But I probably hit the ball two fucking 60 or something.

now to, you know, and I know that I'm an athlete that's capable. I have gone through phases where I can hit the ball significantly further, but just in general, I don't, I don't hit the ball straight, and I don't hit the ball far. So I'm like, I just need to then, I might as well hit the ball far and just figure it out from the rest. So I'm going to go through, again, a pretty comprehensive effort. I'm going to try to find somebody maybe to help me, maybe just study and research stuff and just try to figure out by the end of the year, I want to be able to hit the ball on a launch monitor that it doesn't have to carry three yards. But when they give you, you, you know, your day, I want to be able to hit, like, I guess the barometer would be,

if I can hit like five in a row on a launch monitor where it levels all conditions, that the ball goes a total of 300 yards, like five times. It's a bracing year for you. I like it. Five times in a row is tough because, like, I think every once in a while I'll get like a 301 count, a 302 count. But five times in a row are squared up drop. I don't think I said five in a row, but like five out of like 10 or 15.

so it's like clearly you can do it. It's not like a miracle one out of 20. It's like clearly you possess that skill to do it. Okay. I like that. Okay. I like you also gave yourself like I am an athlete so I should be able to do this there. You gotta just tuck that in.

Watching these fucking people out there that like they just can do it. And I'm like, I know from a physical standpoint, I should be able to swing the club that fast as well. I'm not going to be as good at golf, but like they could just hit it that far. I can figure out how to just hit it that far. I think crazy that I hit one like 308 like 300.8 last video. It's inferior. Look at your body. It's just pathetic.

Right. Like if we were, if we're talking levels of athleticism. It took barely any effort out of me too. I just kind of swam. Right. If we're looking at level of athleticism, just overall, Frankie Riggs. Like we're, I'm the least athletic person on the podcast. I don't know if I don't know if I necessarily agree with that. Like you, you played baseball. You played sports. But if you're looking at it from a Madden rating, who's his higher? or Frankie, I think you're pretty even. I'm a 67 athleticism rate.

Well, there's definitely things where you're way more athletic than I am, for sure. Well, ping pong? I don't know. I mean, like anything physical, I'm just going to get crushed at. You both played, well, I guess it did definitely be Riggs because Riggs played, you play college hockey. Okay. Yes, he's not even close. Yeah, then I'm an 81.

He's an 81. Lurch is a 79 and Trent is 71. You wouldn't believe how much it infuriates me that Frankie could just hit the ball further than I can so easily. Just so easily. It's not why everybody. He's got that Alfonso Soriano body where it just unravels and just go. What I call.

I guess my mind would obviously, for the last five years, it's kind of been in the back of my mind, but it's just to improve the short game. And let's just really try and get those scores down. I mean, really try and improve on it. It's been a joke for five years. People can't take it anymore. They can't understand why.

I'm on a golf podcast, and I just don't try and at least practice it, which I do. and figure it out. But maybe that means I need to go to a mental coach. Maybe that means I need to figure out something that's not physical, that why I can't take it from the range to the golf course. And yeah, so I'm really going to focus on that.

I'm going to let people know I'm going to try and do it. If I don't do it, it's just like you can't make fun of me. It's like having a disease. Like, I mean, it's just what it is. I'm going to try. I'm really going to put the effort into try. Yeah, it might be time to start looking at the mental side of it. Because we've been doing the physical for however long we've been doing this podcast,

and you've been probably doing it before then. And you've got the best coaches in the world, the best players in the world, teaching you the physical, the technical physical part of it. And you still can't do that. It might be the time to look at a different avenue. I'm telling you guys, I feel something in my body when I stand over an actual chip shot. And I need to discover what that feeling is. It like releases some sort of hormone or some sort of feeling in my, I feel it.

It's like hot in the back of my neck, behind my brain. standing over it. I'm thinking about all the things not to do. But when I'm on the, when I'm on the short range or I'm chipping, it's this freeing sense of, well, there's no, there's no consequences here. Let's just do the things that I was taught. So I need to get over that. And that's like quite literally, it's not the mental term. It's not the medical term, but it's the yips. There's baseball players that just couldn't throw the ball back to the pitcher. They were professional, professional catchers that got paid millions of dollars to throw the ball. Rick Ankeel was literally a professional pitcher and could not.

throw the ball anymore. They had to move him to the outfield. He got kicked out of the MLB. The guy couldn't throw the ball home. There's something mental there. You think that guy couldn't figure it out? Like, come on. There's something there. Didn't he came back and it was a pretty damn good center field? Amazing center fielder for the card. He was really impressed. But dude, that guy couldn't throw the ball home.

He couldn't do it. Tiger Woods for like a year couldn't hit a green with a chip. Yeah. So I do it. There's something. There's something that's there, man. And yeah, it's taken five years. I've been talking about it nonstop. And I And people think I like to fucking make it on purpose. And there's something there that something's blocking me, whether it's a tumor or it's trauma from when I was a child. Who knows what the fuck happened?

All I know is, is that I'm going to try and figure it out. It's my promise to you guys. That's my resolution for golf. It was a dark time. Remember when Tiger, I can't remember what the specifics were, but they were opening up a golf course or something. And they were like, oh, hit, you know, three balls onto this par three. And everybody's excited.

Tiger's there. and he put three balls right in the water and everybody's like, What the fuck is happening right now? That was, those were, that was in the middle of the darkest time of being a tiger fan where he just couldn't put three balls on a green in a very simple situation

and he put them all in the water and I just turned my TV off and I sat and stared. This is a tough time. Larch, what do we got from you? That's a good one. I've been thinking this whole time. One, I want to hit balls every week. I'm just going to hit ball, find a way to hit a ball every week. And then in combination

with that, I really want to dial in my driver game. Like, that's a focus for me of getting off the tee to better spots. I feel like I hit like a lot of healy cuts. And when I step over it, I don't have great confidence of where it's going to go. So I really want to get that. I want to improve my game in that area. Just two things. Two things for both you and Frankie. We need you guys to quantify these goals. We need a target. So Lurch, you want to just get better at driving. What does that mean? How are we going to measure that? And Frankie, you just want to post lower scores like, what is going to be that goal? Is it on the gin app? Is it like you want your scoring average for the year to be like below a certain number? Or how are we going to, how are we going to know if you guys were successful or failed?

I think for me personally, it's, yeah, I mean, I wasn't necessarily saying I want my scores lower. I think what I'm trying to improve is my short game, which will then, in fact, lower my scores. But that's not what I'm trying to attack. I'm not trying to get to a number on the gin app. I'm trying to just be able to be a competent chipper of the golf balls. So I don't know how to quantify that into something like maybe just stop embarrassing myself on every video. I don't know. I'm trying to figure out how to quantify it.

I mean, I'm nowhere right now. I'm zero. So whatever the number is I'm trying to get to, I'm at zero. So I want to get to 12. I don't know. Like, I want to get. So less embarrassing clips on the internet of Frankie. Right.

Around a green. Go back. Go back to all the ones I bladed and chunked in videos and I want to minus that by 15. That number is high right now. So just try to be lower than that. If I can become, all right, with my swing, people have watched me on Instagram the whole thing. I'm swinging on these mats and it's the whole deal. And obviously, it's forgiving and all the shit.

I fucking, if I have the ability to get to a decent handicap. If I can just put it all together, I'm going to say that I want my handicap to be below a 6.5. Woo! Okay. Yeah. 6.5. Damn, that's good. Yeah, that would be a wild improvement.

Like, if I can get a 6.5. Super doable. What do you do? What do you now, Frank? 9.2, but that's also, we play once every two months, and we play for 40 days in a row. If you don't have it that week, you're posting 92. So I tell that to everyone that shits on me in my DMs.

They're like, you play so much golf. It's like, no, dude, we play a lot of golf for one week. And if you just don't have it that one week at the best courses on the planet and the hardest courses on the planet, then I'm just going to post really high scores. And that's just fucking what my handicap is because I don't play that much. So I need to be better at that. So, Riggs, I, okay, go. Well, I was going to say, Frank and I were talking recently. We're going to, it's tough because we do different things at Barstool and it's all just all happening at once and you never know what your schedule is going to be like.

I think we're going to make a concerted effort to try to play as consistently as we can. It's harder in New York, but once the weather turns, I think we're really going to try to get out there as much as we can, and that will big time help Frankie get down under a 6.5, I think. We're going to make a real effort to try to play more consistently and not the hardest golf courses in the world. Yeah, I mean, I think that's fair. I mean, that's why I said playing once or hitting balls once a week,

because that's like a quantifiable number. Yeah. Where driving accuracy, it's like we don't have PGA tour stats. Like that's really tough to, like, like hone in on. So I think if I can hit once a week and actually just hit balls into a net and feel that rhythm, because even if it's just into a net, like I still, you can feel a good one or a bad one or kind of just a spinning one.

Because Riggs, I think I joined you last year and said I wanted my scoring average to be sub 80 for the year. And I actually just looked at my scoring average for 2021. And I was 81.2 for the year, scoring average. So didn't hit the sub 80. But yeah, it's tough to quantify, like, better drives. I just put, to Frankie's point, like, less spiny ones. And when we play, like, hopefully you'll notice it there.

But I think my goal will be every week, I won't hit a ball. What's the lowest rigs and lurch you guys got this year in the year 2021 on your handicap? Mine got down really low in the summertime. I got down like a 1.8 in the middle of summer. But that's when I was posting like 74s and stuff. And then we went to Bandon, right? And that was an issue. Yeah. And that's when I just kind of fell apart. The wind just dominated me. And I've never been the same since. But to look at like, Frankie, you are trying to get to a certain handicap index. My average last year posted was 80.8. So just a little bit over 80. And I finished the year at like a mid four or something in the handicaps. So if you get you, you don't have to get your average like, you know, like again, idiots in the DMs might say. If it's like low 80s, you'd probably be below that 6.5. Right. If I can get to like an 83, 84, I'm going to be right around that number.

Because I think right now I'm an 88 point something, right? Like, so I need to shave off four or five strokes around, which seems like a lot. But man, I post so many 92s because of my short game. It would blow your mind. And then when I'm hitting greens and I don't need the short game and I'm not chipping, I'm posting my 80s and my 79s and my 82s and my 83s. Like, that's happening. So I just need to be better.

That's my resolution. Need to be better. My low, now that I look at it, it was a 3-6, was the lowest I ever got this year. Damn. It's low. I was there for a while. But I wasn't playing as much as rigs, but so that kind of held up for most of the summer. Yeah, mine was like a three-week stretch maybe where it's just like you put, I posted like that 74 at Forest Dunes and then like 74 at Aaron Hills.

And those just take like a month and a half to come out. And then once those come out, you kind of start going back up. Right. Yeah, yeah. No, it's always a good feeling when it's like, are you sure? you want to post the score because it's quite a bit lower than your average or whatever? And you're like, yeah. Yes, I do, baby.

Yeah, absolutely. And then you stand on a T a week later and you're like, well, it says I'm out too, but I'm really not. I mean, let's be honest with you. All right. I like it. I think we all got pretty reasonable goals here. I like it. Good year golf coming up.

What a fun show this was, man. We got to talk to a guy who fucking built the James Webb Telescope that's now a million miles away. and then we got to, you know, talk about our goals. And Anika was incredible. Is she going in this show as well? Oh, yeah. Wow. I mean, what a show this was, boys?

This is, what is this going to be like, two and a half hours? Give me long. It's a big show. It's a full show. Woo. Healthy. Let's do more. That's another goal.

Let's do more of these where you just fucking pack shows full of poems and guests and NASA. Yeah. I'm going to try and bring it. I'm going to bring those things. Also, I have this just fucking righty driver. I just got to figure out what I'm doing with this thing. You're going to get 8 million messages now requesting that thing. Let's take that out of the podcast.

That's right. Let's let's take that out of the podcast because I'm not dealing with that. All right. Next up. I'm giving it to my dad. I'm giving it to my dad. We have an incredible guest to scientists. We have Anika Sorenstam, so enjoy these interviews.

Hit it hard. Hit it hard. Hit it hard. All right, folks. We are joined by, I would say, from an intellectual standpoint, probably the most impressive person that's ever been in a conversation with us on this show. Eric Smith is the program scientist for the James Webb Telescope Program at NASA. We spoke a good amount about it last week, knowing basically nothing. So, you know, welcome to the show.

I know you've been working on this, I believe, for two to three decades at least. Is that correct? It'll be 26 years this March. So are you just right now, right? Like all of that. that work for that long. Is this period, this several weeks since it's launched and it's deployed, is this just you as hyper and as excited and as stimulated as you could possibly be? Well, it's certainly really exciting because, as you were talking about last week, Web's kind of like a transformer, had to do all this unfolding in space. Now, as a scientist, what I'm really looking forward to is when those data come back, some of those pictures. That'll happen in the summer. So I'm excited now, but I'll even be more excited in the summer.

Yeah, I personally, so this is obviously all going to break my brain. This is my favorite interview we've ever done. Thank you so much for joining us, us idiots, us ordinary folk. I want to congratulate you on a full deployment of the James Webb. Everything is now in place. I've been tracking like you wouldn't believe I watch. I watch everything on that website that says, where is web? Like I watch a New York Islander's game.

When it was fully deployed, I was cheering and throwing popcorn up in my room. I couldn't believe it. Now it's on its way to, is it La Grange, too? Is that the spot that we're trying to get to? Yeah, that's exactly right. It's a place that's a million miles farther from the sun than the earth is, and it follows the earth around the sun at the Lagrange too. So what is the, what are we doing here, right?

So to the average person that's trying to figure out $10 billion project, Jack, took 26 years. What is the point of all of this, right? We're going a million miles away from Earth. We're sending out this telescope that just built itself into space. What was the main, what's the main goal for the web? That's a great question. And it actually leads back to another telescope that a lot of people have heard of the Hubble Space Telescope. So when Hubble was built, one of the things they did was just pointed at a blank patch of sky where they really didn't see anything. And, the Hubble's amazing power showed that it was just filled with galaxies, thousands of them. And what they looked for was were any of these galaxies, the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang? And they found that none of them were. So at that point, astronomers knew this like the mid-90s. Astronomers knew they needed to build a bigger telescope that worked in the infrared. And so that led to Webb.

And Webb, in some sense, will complete the story of how the universe, I like to to say turn the lights on. There's a big bang, the universe is dark, it starts forming stars and galaxies, and then eventually it leads to folks that play golf like us. So hit me with the challenges from minute one between, you know, Hubble and Webb, right? Like you kind of describe a little bit the differences in the infrared and how you need that. Where do you even begin? How, you know, because, right, like the shape of it, the fact that it deploys, it's got the solar. Like all of that clearly started from nothing and you ended up with that. So what is that process like to go, okay, boys and girls, we're going to now build a whole new one go. Where does that go begin? And where does it go from there?

So it starts off with people predicting, okay, we can't see the first galaxies now. What do we think they'll look like? How bright will they be? And so they do some calculations and they say, okay, one of the reasons Hubble couldn't see it was the mirror was too small. So we need a bigger mirror. Another reason Hubble couldn't see it is that most of this radiation from those galaxies will get to us in infrared because of this expansion of space has stretched out the light that came from it from visible to infrared, made the wavelengths longer. So that tells us we need a bigger telescope than Hubble, has to be working in the infrared. And then the next thing, when they realized how big it has to be, is, uh-oh, you know, it's not going to fit in a rocket.

We got to figure out how to fold it up and then unfold it in space. And, you know, that's the 30-second description of how you conceive a mission. When you work on unfolding it, right? Your simulations, I'm sure you're trying to get as close to outer space as possible. You can't fully get there. So, you know, how nerve-wracking is that as it's unfolding since you've never actually been able to unfold it in outer space? before. Yeah, so you try to test it as best you can on Earth. Now, Webb is so big, we couldn't build the whole thing and test the whole thing on Earth, but we did in kind of two pieces. We built the telescope

part that has all the cameras and whatnot, and we unfolded that and tested it in a big giant vacuum chamber. So it was simulating space. And then with the other part, the spacecraft and the Sunshield, we built all these, we call them gravity offloading devices. So it's, It's things that hold it up like there's no gravity. So you simulated that. And then in the end, you kind of knit them together with a computer model and you go, it looks good enough. And then away you go.

As each checkpoint is reached, which it has been, you know, over the last month, which has been incredible. Are there like big celebrations each time, you know, at HQ? What's that seen like? So I was at the Mission Operations Center, which is in Baltimore, Maryland, Space Telescope Science Institute. And so you can see people are in the room appropriately distance for COVID. And when certain things would happen, you know, the team for deploying the sunshield, they would stand up and clap. And then now the team that's going to be working on the mirror, you know, it's going to be their turn to hoot and holler next. And so as we go through different phases, different parts of the team really get to shine.

So when this data starts to come back in the summer, that's when this is really going to start breaking all of our brains, I'm assuming. And what are we expecting to see? Do you guys have any expectations? Is it just really confirming what you've always thought? Is there the unknown that when this turns on, we have no idea what's going to be on the other side? Well, so we certainly have predictions for some things. But one thing we've always learned anytime people build new telescopes, the most of the most, amazing discoveries are the ones that are totally unexpected. So some young scientist thinks he or she like, oh, you know, well, people have tried this, but here's a new thing. No one's thought of. And those are usually the things, as you say, they're like the brainbreakers because no one even expected it. So we'll look for the first galaxies. We don't know what they're going to look like,

but we have some predictions. We're going to look at exoplanets a lot to see what's in the atmospheres of these things and are any of them capable of supporting life. Those are going to be two really interesting things that we do early on. That's crazy. So I have to ask because, you know, Frankie brought this up last time that this whole understanding on your guys standpoint, from your guys standpoint, that if you find something that is pretty confirming about, you know, extraterrestrial life or planet says that like, you need to make sure the public is actually ready to consume that kind of information.

So what is like, do you guys think we're ready for what you might find? That's actually a great question and it's really sort of almost beyond NASA. Now, Webb is unbelievably powerful. And we should certainly be able to say whether planets would be capable of hosting life like ours. They have oxygen and carbon dioxide and methane in their atmospheres. It's not clear that we would be able to see life itself. You might even need a bigger telescope. But to me, the coolest thing, a year, two years from now,

is everybody will be able to go up and look out at the night sky and point up to some star and go, you know, just like a couple of thumbwits away from that star, there's another star that has a planet around it that people could live. live on. I mean, that to me, that's world-changing. And do you think that information will get to the public? Like, because you said, you know, that's above NASA in some degree. So, like, does that go up the chain in terms of what information should actually get to us ordinary people?

It'll, it will all be public. All the NASA data is all public. And so, you know, somebody makes a discovery about a new thing and a star. well, that gets in the science journals and maybe it gets out to the newspapers. Something like this, you know, that's going to come out of NASA headquarters and maybe even higher in the government where someone would issue a press release. But you better believe we're going to tell people about it because that's exciting. I mean, it's, again, once you like that threshold, you start getting into other things

being out there, which is such literally new worlds. I'm curious, you know, you with this type of history. the 26 years you've been working on this from the Hubble to the web, the amount of things that you've seen, what is your kind of thought or belief on what might be out there, what could be out there? Do you, when you lay your head down on the pillow, do you think with everything that you've seen, like, oh, I know we're not alone? Or are you, where's your belief system on the whole thing? So when I started out in astronomy, we didn't even know there were any ex-examination.

so planets. We thought there probably were given that it would seem weird that only one star had planets, but we didn't have any confirmation. So now we know every star has planets around it. And probably many of those are in what are called the habitable zone, which is what we define as the planet is not too close or not too far so it could have liquid water. If it's too close, it boils off if it's too far, it freezes. So there's probably millions, if not billions, of those kind of planets. Now, are they capable of hosting life? I think some of them probably are. Is it intelligent? That's tougher to say. I don't know. And sometimes they even question whether there's intelligent life here. So fair, fair point. Yeah, because we, you know, we start getting into these

discussions and debates among ourselves, which again, you said you've listened to. So you're well aware of the limitations of those discussions. But, you know, we've spoken a lot about the actual clock and sort of the cosmic, like, right? And how if we've only been civilized for, let's say, four or five thousand years, whatever it might be. And planet's been here for four and a half billion years. The universe been here for, you know, over a dozen billion years. If there's another intelligent civilization or life on another planet, the chances that it's at the same point, even timing-wise, with us is so unbelievably low that they could be way less advanced. Or, I mean, imagine our society in a billion years, if we don't get taken out by an asteroid,

like we should be way, way, way, way more advanced. So I guess my question to that is like, are you got, I'm sure you guys contemplate this a lot more intelligently than we do. So we'd be curious to hear your input on where we might fall on that randomness with time. Yeah, that's actually, that's a pretty profound question you're asking there. In science, there's this, in astronomy, there's this thing we call the Drake equations named after a guy named Frank Drake. You can just Google that. And it basically is an equation to estimate how many civilizations are there. And one of the last terms in that equation is just a guess at how long do civilizations last? And that's totally unknown. As you say, ours is maybe four or five thousand years.

Do civilizations? Do they last a million years? Do they destroy themselves after six thousand years? Nobody knows. But that number will dictate how many are around at the same time. And, you know, your guess is as good as mine on how long civilizations last. And if they do last a long time, do they advance so far that a low, say a young civilization wouldn't even recognize one that was so advanced just because it had advanced beyond their ability to recognize it. It's fascinating question. It is incredibly fascinating. So I saw a tweet from Eric Berger and he said the James Webb telescope is now fully deployed. It is a a remarkable engineering achievement that 99% of the world will not appreciate.

Now, this is something I touched on last week where it almost feels like the day-to-day person is not understanding exactly how incredible this achievement is. Now, a lot of those people also, because they're not intelligent and pessimistic and all the problems that we have on this planet, they will say that, or maybe they'll ask someone like you, why is this worth it? Right? Why are we spending $10 billion all of our time, our smartest people on the planet? Why are they devoting all of this time and effort into sending a piece of technology into space just to find something that will never be able to go to or never be able to touch? So what would your explanation for that be? And why are we doing this?

Well, we're doing it for the very reasons we're talking about it today. People are interested in this. They may not know that it's going on, but usually when you get to talking to people about it, you find almost everybody is interested, you know, at different levels. So I think people recognize there are things above and beyond, things greater than themselves, that they're fascinated by. Now, you touched on the number 10 billion, and a lot of people talk about that. And there's almost this notion like somebody has a big cannon and we're just firing money into space. I mean, all that money, it was spent here on Earth. It was spent, people bought houses, they bought cars.

they sent their kids to college. So all that money is enriching society. And at the end comes a telescope with amazing discoveries. So I think it's a pretty good investment. That's incredible. You guys spent $100 billion in this thing. I'm in. This is like as excited as I've been.

I got to ask, so space is enormous, right? It's incomprehensibly enormous. And we've got this telescope out there now. What is, or how, what is there fierce debate about where to point? and who decides where you actually point it? Who decides, hey, we've been pointing it at this for too fucking long. Let's point it at something different. Like, what is that process like?

So once a year, we put out a call for proposals. And this is where it just goes out to astronomers all over the world. And we say, send us your best ideas. And, you know, you write like a 10 or 15 page proposal saying, you know, this is what I'm going to look at. This is why I want to look at. this is how I'm going to look at it and this is what I think I'm going to get. And then other scientists come together and they review all these proposals. And you would get about, I think the first time through, we had about almost 1,200 proposals,

so a little over 1,000 proposals. And then they decide which ones are the best picked. And usually they're by teams and people. It's not just one person. And so next year, actually this year now, November, another call will go out. And so every year we asked what are the best ideas to do with the telescope now. Sometimes people say, oh, okay, we did that thing and we kind of answered it, so we don't need to do that anymore. Other times they'll say, oh, well, that was a good first attempt, but now it means more questions, so we've got to do it again kind of thing.

I'm going to cite something very important, and the name of that is Spider-Man. do you know, to your knowledge of anyone at NASA that is currently working on, figuring out if the multiverse or other universe is living on the same timeline as us is possible? I'm sure there are people, particularly theoretical astronomers who are looking into that. I don't know of any personally at NASA who are doing it. And probably that kind of theoretical work is usually done more at universities. at NASA, it tends to be a little more practically applied, how are we going to build something out of it?

But, yeah, I know there are people who are researching that. For someone with so much knowledge about space and astronomy and building all these amazing pieces of technology, are you able to enjoy something like that, you know, these stories like a Spider-Man movie or, you know, all these Marvel movies where they're coming from different angles of space and different timelines, Or are you saying that's obviously the dumbest thing ever?

We know everything we know about space. It's impossible. Are you able to enjoy that? I feel like knowing so much would almost ruin it. No, I actually love and use the Marvel movie timeline to talk about what it takes to put a space mission together. If you think of all those Marvel movies, you know, each character has their strength and their weakness. But it's when they all come together that they defeat Thanos and the end kind of thing. And same with a space mission.

You got your engineers, you got your scientists, but you also need your people, your lawyers, your writers, you're the people who do the procurement. So everybody's part of the team. And at certain times, we're going to exercise everybody's superpower to get this thing done. So, yeah, I use the Marvel movie analogies a lot. And I actually like them. That is great. Yeah, it's, you know, the telescope part is obviously the sexy part.

but, you know, we were discussing before you came on about the budgets and the approvals and, you know, dealing with the bureaucracy behind it. Like how, how time consuming and how much of a part of your job is, is that struggle like trying to get funding and trying to approve funding? Because that must be a logistical nightmare. Yeah, that's, when I started on the project, I was at the Goddard Space Flight Center. So I was on the, like the technical side, figuring. out what it was we had to build, how we were going to build it. But then I moved to NASA headquarters, which is more on the, you know, how do we get people to pay for it? How much is it going to cost

per year? What's the policy for using it? And sometimes that's actually harder than the technical stuff because you got to persuade people. Yes, it's worth this kind of money. And then if you have a problem, oh, we're going to need some more money. So like any big government program, that's a challenge. And there again, you know, you have to, you have to, you have to, you have to to bring different people with different skill sets in to help you out to make sure that you're not just telling somebody something in science jargon that doesn't mean anything to them. But if you tell them a different way, then it's like, oh, now I get it. That's a good thing to do.

So, yeah, it's a struggle for a big program. With all you. For people, I guess. Yeah, like us. With all you know about space, like for us, we work about, we work on golf courses and we talk about golf, we get to go to golf courses and experience it, and we get to play the game. You work on space. So with all you know about space, do you want to go there personally, knowing all the risks that are taken? Like, is that something that you wish that you could just

go up there and see? So when I was younger, I thought, oh, I'll definitely go into space someday. Yeah, you know, it's not so certain, and I can't afford a ticket right now on SpaceX or with Jeff Bezos. But if it got affordable, man, I'd go in a second, no doubt about it. Even with all the risks that are incurring, all that stuff, that scares the crap out of me, man. Well, just imagine it as like the biggest roller coaster ride you've ever been on. That's, you're going up. And then when you're up there, you know, you're weightless. And so it's just that feeling of dissent that you would get, but it just lasts.

So I would love to do that. And I'd also love to see the sky and, you know, from above the atmosphere. but to look back on the earth. One of the thing, so I've known, got a chance to talk to many astronauts, and almost to a person, they say the most amazing thing is when they look back at the earth from space. They say it's almost undescribable. I can't imagine. It makes me not hitting a wedge shot feel so not important when you look at us just

sitting on an actual planet. Because for us, I'm looking out at just my town and the house next to me and the building in the far distance. and that all seems very relevant and important to me. But when you look at it probably zoomed out on this blue planet, it's like, what are we even doing? Who cares about any of that stuff? But I think it makes you appreciate that.

You have out your window, it becomes even more precious when you've seen it from above. Eric, I have to point out that our very own Frankie Borrelli here is actually a bit of a moon landing conspiracy theorist. And he's had quite a few questions over the years about well there's this one there's this one there's this one there's this one video that you know i like to find myself into the deep dark webs of the internet and i want to know everything about space even though i won't be able to comprehend it but there's this one part where people talk about

like oh like the the the um light on the video of them putting in the actual american flag you could just almost see you could see the moon drop off like the horizon where it's almost like right at the edge of where the flag is and you know there's idiots on the internet and i've obviously dove into that. But at this point, I think I'm ready to just completely foil on that. Okay, good. Yeah. Yeah.

One of the things that when people talk about, like, oh, this picture didn't look right or whatnot, you have to remember, most of them are coming from thinking about what a picture would look like when it's taken on Earth with an atmosphere. And that atmosphere does things with the way light behaves in a way that's different from a vacuum. We're not used to thinking, what does light behave like when there's no internal bouncing in the atmosphere? And so that's why a lot of the moon pictures don't look quite the same. It's because they're taken in an environment. We're just not familiar with it. That's incredible. One of the things we've had a huge debate about on this was when I was probably proven wrong, but when you drop a

golf ball and a spaceship on the moon, they'll both fall at the same rate, I do want, you, I do want to talk about this because I got a lot of people standing up for me in my DMs about saying, but if you would have, let's say you have a cruise ship and a golf ball on the moon and you strike a golf ball and you strike a cruise ship. There has to be a difference in what happens to those two objects because of the mass of the difference in those two things, correct? They can't both travel at the same speed and fall at the same rate. If, yeah, if you're talking about a person striking a golf ball, which has. a mass of about maybe 45 grams or a cruise ship, which has the mass of several tons. I mean, that's hugely different.

Now, if you somehow were to hold them both, you know, 10 feet above the surface of the moon and let them go at the same time, they would fall at the same rate. But if you're talking about hitting or pushing, then there's a big difference because the mass is so different. The original debate came up because I said if you're on the moon and you hit a golf ball, wouldn't the weight of the golf ball and the mass of it have it almost escaped the ability to fall down? It would just continue to float out. And I guess the argument was that everything falls at the same rate on Earth.

So what was it like four times longer on the moon than it was on Earth? Yeah, the moon's gravity is like one sixth of what the Earth is. So your shots would go way farther on the moon. But they would, you can't hit it hard enough to have it escape. Okay. You're on like a small asteroid. Yeah, you could hit it hard enough. It would just go on forever.

Frankie's original thing, he did think that he could hit it and it would just never come down, I believe. Which would be awesome. That's the ultimate driver ego trip there. Hit it off. Eric, as a golfer yourself, do you, with such knowledge of, of physics, does that drive you crazy with golf? Does it make you like, right? Because there's, there's a philosophy of like feel, a feel game. And then there's a technical game. And here you are with all of this deep knowledge of physics that I would think it might just drive you crazy, knowing, like,

if I just deliver a square club face on a neutral path at a higher speed, this ball will just go straight and really far. Does that drive you nuts? Well, yeah, it does in this. It does in this sense that I know how it's supposed to work, but it never seems to work that way. So that is kind of frustrating. How is your game? Are you able to play often? I mean, you got to be the busiest person on the planet. I don't play as much as I like. I joke. I play once or twice a year, whether I need to or not. And I'm hoping that in the coming years, I get to play a little more. I used to play when I was younger, go out with my father and brother, you know, careers come along. But yeah, hopefully I get to play a little more.

And I do actually want to share one web fact. This talk about the golf ball made me remember it. So the mass of a golf ball about 45 grams. Our mirrors on web, they're made of gold. There's a coating of gold on it. It reflects infrared. Well, if you took all the gold and you scooped it up on web, it would be about the same mass as a golf ball.

So there's the link between web and golf. That's phenomenal because they're huge. Yeah. Whoa, whoa, whoa. How big are these mirrors we're talking about here? So there are 18 segments and each segment is about four feet across. So this gold is spread so thin that it's only about 700 to 1,000 atoms thick on top of the mirror substrate. Oh, man.

When they're doing something like that. they're spreading the gold around is are they ever messing up and like redoing it is there are there any is there any room for for for something to go wrong when building this uh there could there could be um and the way they do it they called it's called vapor deposition you you sort of vaporize the gold and then it uh goes on to the surface so nobody's actually you're like rolling it out or anything just goes on a picture a guy i'm picturing a baseball field when they when they water right before the game. It's one of my favorite, like, satisfying things to watch when they take a dry baseball field and water. I'm picturing a guy just in a suit, just spraying gold on this thing.

Sprinkling some gold out there. Billion dollars. Yeah, no problem. So if, and they practice it on, you know, small samples until they're making sure they got it nice in uniform and it's the right thickness. And so you practice them up and then you put the real thing in and it works just fine. Do you ever, do you ever check out the, you know, how incredible the technology is with where golf clubs have come. So we're Team Taylor made and they just released this new carbon face driver, the stealth. And they were saying how much of an engineering accomplishment it was to be able to get basically 60 slivers or layers of carbon to be able to withstand the combat,

the hitting of a golf ball. Do you dive into that, you know, the technology behind these clubs and how far they've come? I don't. But the fact that you just told me that, that's amazing because all the structures that hold those mirrors, they're made of that same graphite composite layers glued together. So it's the same technology. And I actually didn't know they had in golf clubs, so at least for the heads of clubs, I knew about the shafts. So similar to the James Webb, it took them about, what, 20 years they said? 20 years, yeah.

20 years to be able to figure out how to get it to mold and figure. I'm going to show you this, actually. Hold on. Let me show you. Yeah, I got one right here too. But it is like it's, so the face, I believe, is like 10% bigger than the old club head face. And they actually give it a like carbon-fished face. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, so is it just the face or is the whole head done in a composite like that? Just the face. So I believe the back is what? Like they use titanium or whatever. So this is all still the same. And now I'm out of like the talking points. I'm gone.

We're not even sure the back is titanium. 60 layers. 60 layers, yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. Pretty interesting. I'm curious. No, it is.

And that's amazing that they use the same stuff on part of the telescope. I'm curious, you know, we were talking about the moon and the horizon and seeing all that and exploration. You know, you guys at NASA, someone that's been there for a really long time, how do you feel about, you know, the Elon Musk's of the world coming in with space. and saying we're going to go to the moon and we need to, or we're going to go to Mars and we need to build a moon base. Are you guys, have you always been incredibly welcoming of that? Is that ever been like staying in your lane? Where do you stand on that?

Yeah. So I'm from the science side of NASA. You can think of NASA having three parts. There's aeronautics, improving planes and stuff. There's human spaceflight and there's the science side. So on the science side, I love all these new players coming into the rocket game because it gives us more chances, more ways to launch stuff into space. I think it's great that they are now taking people up to the space station and back. NASA doesn't need to do that, right?

We kind of did that. It's great that private industry wants to take that. I want to see NASA doing stuff that private industry can't do right now, sort of leading the way and then have private industry take it up. over. So yeah, I'm 100% behind them. I love it. Here's something I really don't understand. When the James Webb Telescope is trying to send us back data, how is it actually seeing the images? Is it numbers and data and then we compute it into what we think it looks like? Or is it actually a picture? You see these pictures of these far off galaxies and you're like,

what is, is that taken with a Samsung? You just take a snapshot? No, like, how is that Well, it works in a way, just like the cameras work on your phone. There's a digital detector in there. And yeah, the numbers come back to us as ones and zeros, and then they get turned into by a computer, the images we see. So one of the things we'll be doing with Web over the next few months is looking at things that we know the brightness of in the infrared and calibrating it. So that when we say, okay, here we got a picture of this,

galaxy, you know, this many ones and zeros here mean a certain brightness. And that, so there's a big long calibration period. But yeah, it comes back to us digitally and then it gets turned into the picture just like your phone works. Didn't know that's how the phone works. So that really ruined me. I mean, I just, I don't know how any of this works. We, do you understand, you understand like the basis of how all of this works?

Like when I send a text message, how it just go, how we're doing this right now. I don't get it. I don't understand. I physically and mentally can't capture how it's all happening. Particles going up to a satellite coming down. What is it? What is the thing that is happening right now on this Zoom? Yeah, well, we're essentially more advanced versions of the first radio technology that was invented

last century, where we're turning information into electromagnetic signals, radio waves, in this case that get transmitted and then computers on the other end and turned them back into the pictures that we're seeing now. This was inevitable. It was inevitably going to go this way. What is life?

And he just like throws a computer out the window. It's just, you know, we just, we get in our cars, we go to work, we eat a million baguettes like lurch, and we just come home and we don't actually think about the stuff that we're doing. We don't actually, we don't actually, we don't actually wonder what the hell is going on. And I do.

It ruins my day every day. Oh, but that's, what a great way to ruin your day, though, to think about how it's going to work. Yeah. No, the thing that ruins is I never know the answer. So it's great to be able to speak with someone like you that at least knows the basis of what the hell's going on around here. Well, thank you. So I, I'm curious, you know, you spoke about the Hubble, right? And when the Hubble was launched and was,

up there that you guys pretty quickly could say, okay, we need, you know, we need infrared and we need these new additions. So then you start with the web. And are you guys not already? Is there another the next, you know, iteration of the web? Are you guys like Apple where you're like already like working on, you know, the basically Hubble 3 or, you know, how is that process work? Yeah. So the next telescope that comes after web is already pretty far along. The, the, the, the, name of that one is called the, it's the Roman space telescope. It's named after a woman Nancy Roman. She was kind of like the godmother of Hubble. She was worked at NASA and helped get Hubble started. So, you know, not many people know about her, but the next telescope will be named after her.

And so it'll work a little differently than Webb. You can imagine Webb, like Hubble, takes really deep observations of a small piece of the sky, kind of like a pencil beam deep into the sky. And Roman will be a survey telescope. So each picture covers huge swaths of the sky. And the difference between the two is Roman will find really unusual objects. And we're going to look for things that change brightness a lot. So that will tell us, we call it time domain astronomy,

things that are changing in the sky in ways that right now we can't see. And then after that, we're also starting to think about what the next big telescope would be that would look for life. So we'll build that one specifically to look for life on other planets. Yeah, so all these missions that are going out there, and you referred to, you know, young people coming into this field and bringing up new topics as brainbreakers, is there anything that you're looking forward to potentially understanding more. deeply because of conversations from younger scientists coming up that you're like, I've never thought

about that. Maybe we'll understand that more through Webb or Roman. What are those? Yeah. For me, when I look at the younger astronomers coming up, a lot of them are exoplanet experts. When I was early in my career, there were exactly zero exoplanet experts. And so now I learn a lot every time I talk to a younger astronomer about the way they are modeling what other planets could look like, how other systems of planets can form. So that is all new to me, and it's very exciting. I'm kind of from the group that was looking for these first galaxies. And so in some sense, we'll sort of complete that study. But the exoplanet stuff, it's all new. So I'm really excited for that. And I think with Roman, that will bring in this new group of astronomers who, you know, if you look up at the night sky, it pretty much seems the same every night.

The same stars are there. They move around, but they pretty much don't change. And they haven't for millennia. But now they're finding, oh, things are changing a lot. And we now need to survey the sky and look at that every night to see it. And so that's, again, a whole new field. I'm excited to see what it has. It's really interesting how every industry it feels, right?

Like there's young stars coming up in golf. It's like all the young stars got distance now. They're hitting the ball so far. And you're like all these young, you know, prodigies in astronomy are coming up. And they're exoplanet guys. That's what they're into. It's really, it's cool to hear that. And I imagine, again, it's very exciting for you guys.

It seems like the focus is almost kind of narrowed a little bit, right? like galaxies, you say you were really getting into galaxies and now they're focused really, really intently on planets and exoplanets. And it's like we're getting closer and closer. Yeah, yeah. Subjects change over time. Well, just as you were saying about the, as golf technology evolves, the game has to change with it.

If everybody can start, you know, 300 yards becomes the norm, well, you got to change up the game now because, you know, what was suitable in the past, it doesn't cut it anymore. it was interesting earlier you said you know how you guys are looking for changing of brightness right is that sort of the general um beacon like when you're trying to figure out kind of what exactly to look look at is it is it the changing brightness that like really gets you focus and and if so you know like why is that what's what's sort of the next layer why you guys focus on the changing of brightness so if because people have thought for so long that things didn't change much in the sky,

when you see something that changes rapidly, that's telling you, oh, all my ideas about why things were static, why they shouldn't change. I now got to look at, I got to re-examine it because things are changing. And they can change in some cases for exoplanets.

We know that if a planet were, you know, imagine a star and a planet goes in between, you and the star. It blocks a little bit of light of the star, and so the brightness of the star changes. So we can look for planets that way. We can look, stars themselves don't stay the same in brightness. Sometimes they flare, they get brighter, they get dimmer if there's a star spot. So learning more about how stars themselves work. And then even there are times when stars explode, and that's how all the elements that we get made of got created in the universe.

And that's pretty rare. So you have to look all over the sky constantly to see one of these supernova go off. And so that's another thing we'll be doing is correlating what happens when these stars explode. And then going back and looking and see what was there before it exploded and what's there after. When they explode, is that something that it explodes instantly? or does that explode over a really long period of time? So it starts giving off signals that it's going to explode for centuries and centuries. You can tell the star is unstable.

But when it happens, it's pretty much instantaneous. And in those supernova, that's where all the elements heavier than like carbon and oxygen and iron. anything heavier than iron gets created in a supernova. So all those elements get built there. When that happens is your data just go off the charts all of a sudden in that area? Yeah, in certain fields, it literally, it goes off the charts. Gamma ray astronomy, people who look for gamma rays or x-ray astronomy, they get a big giant spike and they know there's a new source for them to study.

Is Webb doing anything with black holes? I watched a documentary on how we try and figure out. out what black holes do in like bathtubs, right? We have no idea what the hell's going on with these things. They do all these simulations of if it's like a tornado, the way it takes it in. Is Webb going to be doing any sort of diving into how black holes operate, how they take in light? Yeah, in a, I'll say a secondary kind of way. And I'll describe what I mean by that. So, so obviously black holes black, you can't really see it. But what Webb will do is it will watch how stars that are near black holes, how they orbit.

So if a star is executing an unusual orbit or what you measure its motion, you can tell how massive the black hole is. And so they'll study it that way because a material very close to a black hole as it's getting ready to fall in, get superheated. That's where it's usually best to look at that with like an X-ray telescope. So we're actually observing close in, X-ray astronomy, observing the nearby environments. That's what we'll do with Webb. When you know all this about how scary, like, spaces and all the bad things that could happen out there, how impressive is Earth to you, like knowing exactly how insanely hard it is to find or even, like, have life on a planet?

It's, it is pretty amazing that, I don't think so amazing to have habitable planets or maybe even simple life. I think it's probably not too difficult to create very simple life. But to have life evolve, you know, that's pretty amazing. I don't know what the odds are. We only have an example of one. But yeah, it's, it's deep thinking that has to go in. I think what you guys are doing is like, I think it's the most impressive thing. I can't, I can't compare it to anything else.

It's something that can't be compared. Everything else on, on earth, if you make a nice car, you can make a nicer one. You guys are doing something that hasn't been done. And the only people that can do the next thing is you. You know what I mean? You're just, you're paving the way for, we have no other option but to just listen to you guys about what you're telling us with space. And that's incredible, that's an incredible spot to be.

So I personally want to thank you for all the work you're doing. You've devoted your life to letting us know something that we wouldn't know unless you tell us. Well, thank you. That's one of the nicest compliments I've ever received. And there are people who were doing this same kind of exploration across all fields of science. So, you know, it's fascinating people who are looking inside the atom or people who are exploring how DNA comes together to make life. So, yeah, there's lots of fascinating. things going on and as you may find out scientists love to talk about it. Well yeah I mean like

Frankie said we we can't thank you guys enough I mean you guys are pulverizing gold and then lacing mirrors with it like I don't even and then putting it into space it's absolutely incredible. I would love if you could be you know a consistent guest and update us you know as the web continues to sort of unfold and and move you know move around. the universe and send information back, that would be so cool for us and for our listeners if we could, you know, check in with you from time to time and ask questions about what's going on about in the... Once we get that data back, baby.

Oh, yeah. When we start getting those images, I want to speak to you for sure. Yeah. Okay, but then I'm going to start hitting you up for some golf tips, too, because I get my game back in shape. Well, you don't want us. You don't want, yeah. You don't want tips. We send you to the new taromade driver, no problem.

Yeah. We'll send you the carbon face. Yeah. That's not a problem. All right, Eric, well, we really, really appreciate it. Thank you again for everything you guys do. This will not be the last time that we speak to you. So, you know, good luck with everything.

I got the websites up on my tab or one of the tabs up on my internet all day every day. And like Frankie says, I check it all the time. So it's cool. On my internet. Yeah. Well done on sharing that information, right. On my internet. Yeah.

On my internet. The level of detail we get to on this podcast. That's right. We do well on these NASA meetings. Jesus. Right. Thanks, guys. I really appreciate it. This was fun. Enjoy it. Thank you very much. Pleasure. Thank you. Have a good one. All right. Yep. Bye-bye.

All right, folks. We are now joined by one of the greatest players in the history of golf, especially on the women's size. You got over 90 international wins, 10 major, 72 LPGA tour wins. Amazing work with the foundation, which we're going to get into. but Anika, So understand, welcome to the show for the very first time. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me. So we were just chat with your husband.

And I understand you guys got some good stuff going on this week with the foundation. So talk a little bit kind of about the foundation about, you know, this week and, you know, where you guys are at, what all you guys are working on this week. Yeah, thanks for asking. First of all, this is our 14th year, I believe. I started it in 2007 when I was about to retire. as a, you know, competitively. I wanted to get back to the game of golf. I want to get back to young girls.

I want to inspire them and share my passion and my knowledge. So we started with one junior golf tournament for young girls, 72 players, and that took off. And now we are actually have seven tournaments globally, but five of them are on a game vitational. So we go to all around the world. The goal has always been to, you know, be able to, you know, to inspire young girls from everywhere. So we go to, you know, New Zealand, we go to Argentina, we go to China, we go to Europe.

It's everything from literally six-year-olds to, what, college age, 22. So be able to just inspire them to play the game of golf. We've had several LPGA players that played in our events. We have over 100 that now play on the Cemetery tour. We have over 600 every year. We're becoming a recruiting spot. And, you know, it's just been, it's been great. you know, to be able to inspire the next generation. I mean, just met players like Nellie and Jessica Ecuador has played in our events. And we give out an award every year to the best collegiate female golfer division one. So that, you know, just to get them some exposure, some deserved exposure, I would say.

And, you know, just to inspire them. And, you know, I go to every event. I do a clinic. You know, our tagline is more than golf. So, you know, we either do a little workshop, whether they're, whether it's, you know, fitness or nutrition or, you know, we talk about college golf. And, you know, it's just, it's been great. You know, it's been a lot of fun for me as well.

And I look forward to continue, you know, on this path and to inspire the next generation. So I'm very curious, you know, golf and to win as much as you have, golf so individualistic. And it's very selfish and you're focused on yourself and improving your own game and you're in your own world. And then for the last 15 years, an enormous amount of your work and your effort and your focus is selfless and it's helping other people. How different is that for you just even as a person to sort of shift so kind of dramatically and the differences in that focus? Yeah. You know, it's a good question. I feel, you know, that I, the reason why I started down the foundation was to get back to the game, you know, to say thank you.

I mean, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for golf. You know, I wouldn't have met these people. I wouldn't have gone to those places. So I just felt like there was a need to help, you know, junior golf, girls golf, because I've been in those shoes. I can relate. You know, I wanted to do everything that I felt like fit me, whether it was international girls.

I wanted to create a high-end tournament because I love playing in high-end tournaments. And I wanted to feel like there was this motivation for them constantly to educate them. And some of the initiatives that we do really early is call Share My Passion. We invite 40 young girls. We do this about five, six times a year, depending on obviously the environment and COVID restrictions. But, you know, we invite these 40 young girls and they write a letter why they love golf. And we pick these 40 girls, whether it's, you know, in Los Angeles or just Orlando or whatever, New York area. We pick stations or places where they post an event so the girls can see what it's like to

you know, go in the media center at a PJ tour event or maybe go to the fitness trainer, trailer at an LPGA event. We want to inspire them. Maybe they can see some of those superstars today and just get inspired. So what that is, it's a small initiative, but hopefully we can plant a seed. You know, some of them have touched a golf club before. Some of them have never touched. But I think what's really important with girls golf is girls need other girls.

They want to feel that little, the comfort of having other girls there. you know, a lot of, as we know, I mean, the ratio today is a third of all the juniors are girls, but I mean, only 15, 16 years ago, it was like half of that. So you can imagine a young girl coming to a club somewhere and it's five boys and they're all like going this. It's a little, you know, it's harder for girls to kind of be seen and heard. So by just having them there, you know, they can share and build friendship. I mean, that's really. Golf is a social sport.

So, you know, our intention is not to create, you know, superstars, per se, it's more about opportunities, you know, being with other girls and learning the basics. And we all know that, you know, being in sports and, you know, it's really helpful for the future. You know, we statistics show that women in C-sweets in corporate America, a lot of them have sport backgrounds. So this is the beginning. And we know, I mean, I'm sure you play a bunch of pro-ams. You know, you can interact with others in business. And we don't really see a lot of women there because they feel intimidated. They feel like they don't hit it far enough. So how can we build that confidence in these young ladies and be able to use that, you know, that they can use it for the future? I think it's really important.

Yeah. Yeah, it's such a good point because it is, you know, golf is, I remember even growing up and none of us really played competitive golf. You know, we always played more recreational golf. We've come at it from that sort of advantage. But I remember he's a kid. My dad always telling me, like, you need to, you know, you should play golf because at some point it's really big for business. It's really important for kind of your future. And so, you know, we self-admittedly, you know, a women's golf has never gotten enough love, enough coverage. I'm curious kind of where you think we're at with that, because, you know, you played in the first, you know, the first woman to play in a PJ Tour of it. I think it was since 1945 when you played a colonial and you've

done so much work now to kind of elevate women in golf and the women's game. But obviously we can do a lot better. I'm curious kind of where you think we're at and where you think we can improve most in continuing to kind of elevate the women's game. Yeah, I mean, I must say, I mean, women's golf is doing really well. I mean, women's tennis is doing well compared to other women's sport. But I feel like, you know, this is just the top of the iceberg. I mean, as you know, I mean, you're a sports fan. And if you follow sports and especially women's sports, I mean, you know that there are

lots of great athletes out there. They're all fight for the, you know, for the check at the end of the day. And to, you know, to get an LPJ card or get a symmetric court card. playing in Europe. I mean, it's extremely competitive. And I mean, purses have gone up. Tournaments have gone up. We're a lot more global than we were, you know, just, I mean, 20 years sounds like a long time, but as you know, time flies. And, you know, just to see the international flair of the LPGA players out there is pretty incredible. So I think we're doing great job. I think, you know, the commissioner,

Mike won that we had. He was excellent. Now we have a new, new commissioner, Molly. We'll see what she does. But it was a great announcement. Just was it, Friday last week. I don't know if you saw about USJ, which Mike Juan is now, you know, captaining the USJ. They just announced that they're going to raise the purse for US Open to $10 million. And they will be playing these really that I think cool courses. I mean, courses that the men have been playing for years and we take for granted like US Open for the men, you know, you play Pebble Beach, you know, you play Marion, you play Chinatuck or whatever you want to. Now the women get a chance to do that.

So I think that is giving credibility to the game. You know, the Women's British Open really started that I want to say maybe nine, maybe 10 years ago they started to play St. Andrews, Turnberry, you know, True, just to mention a few. I've always said that women love tradition. Women love those courses too. And I think it's great that we're going to be able to, you know, host major championships on those courses. So that's one of the thing is.

And then of course, as you know, TV, exposure. I mean, if you, out of side, out of mind, and I think that's something we constantly have to work, you know, work on. But if you have a purse of $10 million and they're playing Pebble Beach, I think there's interest. There's interest from a lot of different levels. Totally. You're doing so much great work to, you know, bring girls into the sport and have them fall in love with it. I'm interested how you fell in love with the game. Like, was it something specific? And why did you fall in love with it? Yeah. Well, thank you. Well, my parents, you know, I grew up in a little town outside Stockholm.

And, you know, I was very into other sports. I competed in soccer. I competed in tennis. And, you know, at the time, and, you know, I'm talking, you know, when you're five, six, eight, 10 years old, golf is, he's a little slow. I mean, I was, you know, playing volleyball. I was playing. I mean, everything.

I did downhill skiing. I wanted action. I wanted speed. I wanted pace. And then, you know, my parents would play golf. I would go out there and we would have an ice cream at the turn. We'd have a little putting competition. And then slowly but surely I started to appreciate the game.

I think I just felt like, wow, this is so hard. It doesn't look hard, you know. And then you go out there and you're like, okay, well, I figured out yesterday. Why can't I hit the same today? And it was like this, you know, the determination or the stubbornness. Like, hey, how can this be so difficult? And I think that's what just made me want to focus more and more. And then I enjoyed going to other places and playing other courses.

And so the age of 16, I, you know, I was done with all. the other sports. I think I was more burned out in tennis than anything. And because, you know, it's quite intense. I competed, you know, at a high level. And so yeah, I'm glad I picked it up. And now it's like I look back and it's obviously the greatest thing. And to be able to have this game of golf and, you know, be able to share it with the girls in the foundation or even my family. I mean, we have golf in the family. And Mike Stad played on the PGA tour. He was a Ryder Cup member of the United States and my parents are social golfers, but they love it. And it's just a great thing you can do with everyone.

Totally, totally. It's amazing how, you know, you hear about a lot of the all-time athletes, they did have their run-ins with these extreme sports. And then golf always brings them back in and you zone in on it. That juxtaposition between like going downhill skiing and golfing couldn't be more opposite. But I feel like one helps you with the end. other. Like you think maybe focus around like a specific putter, a specific shot came from you being able to focus going downhill speed skiing? Yeah, I mean, definitely. I mean, I'm a believer that,

you know, you should try different things. I mean, I'm not a fan of specializing at all. I mean, because I grew up, I played a few team sports, which was great, but then I also did some individual sports and they all teaches you different things. I mean, number one, it keeps you out of trouble. But I mean, it teaches you a lot of things about life. And that's what I say about golf. It's so similar. You know, I think maybe when we get older, you start looking at a little different perspective. But, I mean, it teaches you so many things, you know, whether it's determination or perseverance and patience. And, you know, just keep on moving forward.

And I think that's really what golf has helped me. And, you know, I look at my kids now and our son will, he's super into it. And he's only 10. But, I mean, I look at him. And there's so many things I think he's going to take away from golf. because it isn't a humbling sport. It really is. And, you know, it's a combination of speed and power.

But then it's also, you know, there's finesse and there's touch. You know what I mean? It's not just, you know, hitting at 340, whatever, it's 380 that some of these guys hit it today. I mean, you have to, you know, you stand over three footer. And then now you have to be in control. So I think there's so many parts that I like. And I like the social aspect of it. And, you know, the times that we're living in now, as you know, with COVID and, you know,

all these restrictions all over the. the place, you know, golf has actually been booming. So there are a few things that we can, you know, smile about and golf is one of them. It's been, you know, bringing people into the game. We're more people starting the game of golf and, but maybe never play, but some of them they used to play. They're not playing. And, you know, I enter Will into golf tournaments. And there's so many kids. I mean, if you don't enter within hours, he's on a waiting list. I mean, they've never seen so much growth from, from the younger generation. So I think that's a good thing. It's interesting. You bring up Will, there are a lot of talk about Charlie Woods and Tiger

and obviously at the father son tournament. It was an incredible display. And a lot of the stuff on Twitter was like, well, just let the kid be a kid. And there's not, there's not supposed to be so much pressure about him getting into golf. You being an all time great, did you feel any pressure of having your son play golf or your kids love the game? Or is it just happened kind of naturally just because of the way of your life? Well, when they, you know, when both our kids were born, I mean, of course, we, you know, we had everything. We had shoes, clubs, balls, outfits. I mean, you name it.

It was like, you got to play golf because it's fun. And then you realize, you know what, they had their own interest. They have their own. And you kind of step away, you know, it's like when you have the first child, you have the first child syndrome. Everything is so protective and everything. And then you're kind of like, okay, it's okay. But it's funny because now, I mean, we don't do anything when it comes to Will.

He's just, I mean, yesterday he played 36 holes. I mean, with buddies. He's 10 years old. There was three of them out there. And I said, after lunch, let's go home. No, we're playing another. And I was like, it's just natural. It's, and I think that's really the key.

When you have fun, when you can be out with friends, it's the best playground I've ever seen. And they're learning so much about all kinds of things. And so, you know, I just, you know, we have introduced them to lots of different things, whether it's skiing, whether it's swimming, gymnastics, volleyball, soccer, baseball. I mean, you name it.

But eventually they have to pick. And I think that's what's the great about sports is, You know, the more you learn, the more you experience, you know, you will find your path. So, you know, I'm not a pushy parent in that sense. I'm probably more of a, I'm a schedule. I'm an organized person. You know, if you start something, I want you to finish. But it's more about the experience and learning for the future, I think.

And then we'll see. I mean, it's interesting, Charlie and Tiger. I mean, that whole thing is just amazing in so many ways. And it's not something, it's not a normal thing. Let's put it that way. You know, so, you know, they set in the standard very high. But in the end of the day, I mean, you do want happy kids, you want healthy kids. You want them just have a good time.

And if golf is to pat, you know, we'll help well along the way as much as we can. But I want him to, you know, he needs to, you know, make his own bogeys and doubles and learn how he can bounce back and make a birdie. And here we go. That's awesome. That's great. So next week, really cool event, the Hilton Grand Vacations, Tournament of Champions. There's a bunch of celebrities involved, including several that we've had on this show,

that we're pretty close with Brian Baumgartner's out there. Marty Fish, I believe, is won three times. How important and how cool are kind of those events for golf where you mix it up a little bit and kind of change it up and throw a little spice in there? Oh, I love the spice. I think it's fantastic. I mean, it is, I think you're a fan of sports in general. I mean, you have your fan favorites, whether it's baseball, tennis, or whatever, you know, actors.

And that's what, again, it goes back to how cool golf is. It really is. I mean, you bring all these people together and, you know, they compete under the same conditions, but with totally different backgrounds. And, you know, I've been lucky to play in a few of these, and I really enjoy it. But I would say I'm so impressed by these celebrities. I mean, I'm trying to think, okay, put yourself in a, you know, in a swim meet. I mean, how in the world?

I mean, I wouldn't look, you know, I wouldn't look like a natural fishman. by any means, I would be totally a fish out of water. I mean, these players look so professional. They have routines. You know, they hit it a long ways. And they have patience. I mean, everybody can play one hole, right? Maybe people can play nine holes.

But these guys and girls can play 18 and they can do it three or four days in a row. That takes a lot of commitment, practice, and dedication. So I really, I enjoy it for that reason. And I think it's good for the game and the personalities. I mean, it's fun to watch them. I mean, I've had a chance to play with some of them. Some are serious, as you know, and some of them are not so serious, but have a good time. I mean, they party along the whole time, and it just shows you the different perspective that golf can do.

So, you know, I look forward to seeing them again. I mean, you mentioned Marty Fish. I mean, he's a serious golfer. And here's a guy who has an impeccable tennis record at the same time. And so I really, I enjoy that. Look forward to it. And of course, you know, thank you to. Hilton Grand Vacations for putting this together, it wouldn't happen without them.

But it's going to be a great show. And then to mix it in with LPJ, I feel like I got one foot here, one foot here. It's a big week. Yeah, I know there's a, it's great. There's, I believe, a $1.2 million purse for the LPJ, I think is $500,000 for the celebrities, which is really, really cool. So great work, obviously about Hilton Grand Vacations. Marty Fish, it's funny.

We had them on a few months ago, and we were talking about his documentary, which is incredible. But he was speaking about sort of what you just said, where in golf, he's like, you know, I had to learn because I was so hyper focus and emotional and intense in tennis for an hour and a half or two hour, whatever it might be. And it's really, and then he's like, I found myself in golf. It's over four and a half, five hours of a tournament round of golf and how hard that was to sort of stretch it out and how different that is. So it is funny to kind of understand the different dynamics between different sports.

Yeah, no, it's golf really brings people together from a lot of different parts of the world and parts of life. Oh yeah, that's what we're doing here right now. Yeah, it's a really good list of the celebrities. I mean, we got, we got Jeremy Roanick. I'm seeing Larry Fitzgerald, who's awesome, Lee Bryce, who we've done some stuff with before. So it'll be a ton of fun. I have to ask you about, you know, you were pretty famously, you know, people were told all the time, especially young age by probably poor instructors or poor random folks who give them to keep their head down, always keep their head down, head down at impact. You, you know, you know, famously were not looking at the ball when you would, you know, make contact with the golf ball.

You know, can you dispel once and for all this belief that folks have to keep their head down when they hit the golf ball? Yeah, no, I miss that memo for sure. It's, it started a long time ago. Actually, it was, it was a drill. When I was a junior, I had a typical junior, you know, athletic, flexible swing. I would hang back on my right leg and have a reverse, you know, turn, I could say. So put a lot of stress on my lower back. but, you know, when you're 12, 13, 14, you know, you really don't think about it.

It just was a natural thing. And I would hang back on my, like I said, on my right leg. And then my hand would turn over. So I would hit low hooks, which gave me distance, but not so much carry. And my coach, Henry Rice, who I still work with, I said, you know what, you know, maybe I need to hit it higher. And it goes, yeah, also, if you want to have a long career, we got to make sure that you don't put pressure on your back. So how about you just transfer that weight and not hang back with your head so much? So really what it is is my head is moving with my spine.

So, you know, the shoulder and my hip is more rotating, more, you know, more laterly than just kind of more pivoting left and right like this. And so I hit a few shots. And to do that, I had to feel, it looks like I'm picking up my head, but I'm really just rotating it with my spine. And when I started to do that, all of a sudden I hit it more crisp and then I hit it higher and I was able to finish more on my left side, which is really my goal. And if you look at a golf swing, I mean, there are lots of different philosophies out there. But, you know, you transfer the weight from the center to, you know, to the back swing. And then you transfer the weight forward to the follow. And that's really how you get some of the power.

So, yeah, I mean, this thing of looking at the ball and I keep telling them, the ball is not moving. I know exactly where it is. So just, you know, trust your swing and hit it. And that's kind of what I've been doing since, yeah, since the beginning. There will be thousands of people out there. golfers now on driving ranges across the country. Just try the onica, which clearly work. So I think it's something I'm going to try to put into play.

I can't wait for what my dad says, keep your head down. And I say, I'm just trying to line my head with my spine. And I just shank it into the woods. It would be such a great, such a great excuse. Well, uh, well, look, we, we really appreciate it. We appreciate the time. Obviously, amazing stuff you've done for the game of golf,

for girls all over the place for countless, countless people raising millions of dollars, winning tournaments, inspiring people. So spend a little bit of time with us. It's very cool. It means a lot. And yeah, we really appreciate it. No, I would say the same thing. I appreciate you having me on.

You do good stuff. Keep up the good work. And well, maybe I'll see you in the links one day. I hope so. Thank you. Thank you so much. Take it easy, guys. Yeah.

You too. Bye.