Science Friday - Dr. Fauci’s Exit Interview, Goodnight Oppy Mars Film, Science On The Ballot. Nov 11, 2022, Part 1

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

Science Was Big On The Ballot This Week. Here’s What Went Down Another chaotic election week has come and gone. Across the U.S., science was on the ballot, and people cast their votes on issues like healthcare, climate change infrastructure, conservation, and abortion policy. Nsikan Akpan, health and science editor at WNYC in New York City, joins Ira to talk about how the science ballot initiatives panned out this week. They discuss the outcomes of the abortion initiatives, California’s move to ban flavored tobacco, and what this election could mean for the future of the U.S.’ climate goals. Plus, they discuss the mess that is COP 27 climate conference, why this hurricane season is so strange, how an in utero procedure successfully treated a rare genetic disorder, and new footage of octopuses hurling objects at each other.   As Anthony Fauci Steps Down, A Look Back At His Storied Career In recent years, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, has become a prominent public figure and one of the public faces of the U.S. government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Science Friday has been talking to Dr. Fauci for decades, beginning in 1994, about topics ranging from HIV/AIDS to Ebola, interviewing him about everything from the Zika virus to advances in allergy research. Fauci has been in his current role at NIAID for 38 years, and has served as an advisor to seven presidents. He is the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He spoke with Ira about his career in medical research, the things he’s most proud of achieving in his time with the NIH, and the challenges the nation still faces in dealing with the pandemic, and other disease outbreaks yet to come.   New Documentary Is Endearing Tribute To NASA’s Rover Program In 2003, the world became captivated by two rovers launched by NASA on a mission to Mars, known as Spirit and Opportunity. The rovers were sent to the Red Planet to discover what was on the surface. The rovers were only expected to last 90 days. Instead, Opportunity led a 15-year life of discovery, including the bombshell that Mars may once have been suitable to sustain microbial life. The story of these twin rovers is the subject of a new documentary out this month: “Good Night Oppy,” evoking the nickname of the Opportunity rover. The film features footage taken over nearly two decades, from the building of the rovers to recent interviews with scientists involved in the mission. Ira speaks with “Good Night Oppy” director Ryan White, as well as featured scientist Doug Ellison, engineering camera payload uplink lead at NASA, based in Alhambra, California.   Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, an exit interview with Anthony Fauci, stepping down from his role at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and a film about a plucky Martian rover and the team that got it there. But first, science was on the ballot this week. People voted on health care, climate change, infrastructure, conservation, and perhaps the most motivational topic of them all, abortion access. So, how did these issues play? play out. Here with his analysis and other science stories of the week is Sikon Akpan, Health and Science Editor at WNYC based in New York. Welcome back to Science Friday. Hey, thanks for having me again. Of course. Nice to have you. Okay, let's start with the abortion issue, perhaps the biggest

health care issue this year. What kind of measures were on the ballot this year and what happened? Yeah, you know, the Supreme Court overturned federal protections for abortion this summer. And to quote Michael Jordan, the voters took that personally. ballot measures in Vermont, Michigan, and California passed to enshrine the right to abortion in their state constitutions, while voters in GOP leaning Kentucky and Montana rejected state laws that would have essentially made it impossible to get an abortion. And so both of those latter states still have other restrictions on abortion access. So that made this week's result pretty surprising and was sort of symptomatic of a national pattern we saw in this election.

So it doesn't look like reproductive rights is going to go away, that issue. No, I don't think so. You know, a few national exit polls show that abortion was second only to inflation in terms of importance to voters, especially among young voters. Democrats campaigned really heavily on the Supreme Court's decision and seemed to work. And that's not a huge surprise. You know, reproductive rights have sort of seen bipartisan support in recent years, in part because it's a human rights issue, but also because people really don't like it when leaders take away. their health care. But all that said, some down-ballot results could imperil abortion in some

states. So Republicans swept state Supreme Court elections in Ohio and Florida, which could have a big impact on abortion cases there going forward. Interesting. Another health topic on the ballot was tobacco, but I understand it's not your conventional smokes, right? No, yeah. We're talking about flavored tobacco products. So in California voted to ban those products. And it follows similar bans in Massachusetts. New York, New Jersey, and also Rhode Island. But California is the largest state to institute a ban like this, which could have a big sway on potential similar bans on a federal level, just because California has such a huge impact on the economy and also the decision-making nationally.

And the FDA currently is reviewing a policy to ban menthol cigarettes as well as flavored cigars. What's the goal with banning flavored tobacco? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, part of the issue is that flavored tobacco products are really enticing to young people. And I think tobacco companies recognize that. It's a great way to get new customers. But that obviously creates a whole lot of issues in terms of, you know, cancer down the line. And, you know, you really don't want young people starting on tobacco. You really don't want anybody starting on tobacco, given all of the major health issues it causes. Yeah. All right. Let's change gears and talk about climate change on the ballot. How could this election decide the fate of climate policy in the U.S.? Yeah, you know, we're still waiting on some election tallies for the House and also for the Senate. If we see a split Congress, I don't think we'll see much movement on climate environment protections on the federal level.

And I think that's obviously also the case if both chambers are controlled by the GOP. But Rebecca Lieber at Vox has a pretty great breakdown on how the results in state elections could impact things. so Minnesota and Michigan gained control of their state legislatures and also their governor's mansions. And so both those places could pass new laws around requirements for electric cars. She also points out that voters prevented GOP supermajorities in Wisconsin, Montana, and North Carolina, which could prevent moves against climate action in those states. And Oregon's election of Democrat Tina Kotech will also keep measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions on track. But if there are major changes to climate,

policy in the coming years, it'll probably be through the Supreme Court, given that it's likely that we're going to have a split Congress. Right, right. Let's talk about other climate policy news. COP 27 currently taking place in Egypt. What is that and how is it looking? Yeah, it's been a little rocky. So, you know, ahead of the event, climate activist Greta Thunberg said she wasn't attending because

of greenwashing. Basically, it feels like COP 27 has become a place where leaders. and companies act like they're serious about climate action without really doing anything major or adhering to the commitments that they've made. Each day of the conference, it sort of seems like it ends with a call from smaller nations and island nations to tell richer nations to start paying for the harms of their carbon pollution. This is a common plea, isn't it? We've heard this over and over again.

We've heard it over and over, especially over the past few years. But the, you know, richer nations just don't seem to be adhering to those commitments, you know. But we've also seen this year that some of those big players didn't even attend, right? So the heads of state for China and India, two major polluters aren't there. The same goes for Canada and Australia, who are also pretty big polluters. Protests have also broken out over the host country, Egypt, which is being called out for human rights violations in the treatment of Al-Abdil Fata, who is an imprisoned activist there, who's on hunger strike. He's on a hunger strike, right? Exactly. He's on hunger strike and he's also now on a water strike.

Why am I not surprised to hear any of these things that you're saying? You know, nothing really changes. Yeah, it's frustrating to hear this. It's frustrating. I think after the Paris Accords, you know, we really thought, okay, now countries are uniting, companies are uniting. We're going to start to see some major changes, some major pressure on companies and countries to slow their carbon pollution and to stop their carbon pollution. but we haven't we haven't really seen that that pay out and like you know a lot of advocates and activists are sort of saying like maybe the changes are just going to have to come on the local level and that'll sort of apply pressure up the ladder until we start seeing some some big changes

or or or until large corporations which I think are beginning to realize that that green is good and profitable yeah but in a serious way you know I think they're there are a lot of corporations who say, hey, we're cutting back on our, say we're cutting back on how much travel we do via airplanes. So that way we reduce our carbon footprint. But when you really look under the hood, they're still polluting a lot. Right. So. Yeah, talk is cheap. Yeah, exactly. And leaders are, you know, leaders of these nations are the only ones who can really apply bands, apply, say like, hey, your company can't really operate in our borders like this anymore, but we're really not seeing like that type of policy being put

forward. All right. Let's talk about some other news that is kind of interesting this week. We're not out of the woods yet in hurricane season. Hurricane Nicole just hit Florida and this tropical storm now moving up the east coast. This is pretty late in the season. Is it not, Sika? Totally. You know, that's exactly right. And Andrea Thompson, it's Scientific American, has a great breakdown of this. So there have only been 10 tropical storms and three hurricanes that have struck the U.S. during November going back to 1851. Wow.

But we've seen in recent years, we're starting to get more and more. So it's kind of looking like we're getting more and more November storms. Studies that kind of look at the length of the hurricane season, they've seen to trend at sort of like the front end of the season with hurricanes appearing. earlier. But yeah, now we're starting to see like these November storms, a lot of November rain, if you will. Yeah, and hurricanes get their power from warming water, warm water, like a 90-degree water, right? And I guess the water is staying warmer because of climate change now.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, hurricanes form because, you know, the Atlantic Ocean becomes like a hot soup of water and that moisture just rises and it creates clouds and it creates storms and like, that's how we get these big cyclones. So what these patterns tell us is, is that the ocean is hotter for longer during the year. And it's, yeah, just another kind of scary sign of climate change. Yeah, you can't fool with Mother Nature on this one. Let's talk more about Florida getting hit with this double whammy, and we're wishing them well.

And let's move on to some good news. A toddler with a rare genetic disorder called Pompeii disease. I never heard of that. It was successfully treated while she was in utero. That sounds amazing. What's going on there? Yeah, if people want to see more details on this story, it's a really, it's a heartening story by Aaron Garcia de Jesus at Science News. But basically, there's this disease called Pompey disease, which is, it's pretty rare only about, you know, one out of every like 138,000 babies born globally will have something like this.

And it's an enzyme deficiency, which basically means that, you know, the fetus doesn't have a protein that the cells need to live to serve. survive. What doctors and scientists did was they caught the disease after the mother was already pregnant, right? And then they started to infuse this enzyme into her. And then, you know, that would just like filter into the fetus. And it kept the pregnancy alive. It kept the pregnancy going. You know, now that the kid's born, she's 16 months old. She's really healthy. There's a really cute picture of her at science news. But yeah, she has to get weekly infusions of this, of this protein. but it's going to keep her alive. Yeah, this could be like a test case, right, for other treatments.

Yeah, exactly. Like, if you don't have genetic screening, you know, these diseases can just sort of pop up from time to time. And I know that there have been some other conditions that have been treated in this way. There was a sweating disorder and also a blood disorder that received similar treatments and they were good. So it'll be interesting to see if in utero treatments can expand going forward. Lastly, I want to talk about a new study this week that shows a weird, funny behavior of a critter we live so much here on this program.

The octopus, well, actually, octopus is throwing things at each other. Tell me about that. Yeah, so researchers from Alaska Pacific University, they headed down to Australia to Jervis Bay, and they tossed a bunch of cameras into the water just to record octopus behavior. and they found this really random behavior where the octopuses were sort of throwing things at each other. They curl them up like a frisbee, release it like a frisbee with their arm like that? Yeah, they were throwing debris.

They were throwing food leftovers. It's hard to say why they were doing this. Like the researchers don't really have any clues on the why octopus were doing it. But they were able, they're pretty sure that the octopuses are throwing things at each other because the target of the thrower would often duck. So it does seem like a pretty, a pretty intentional maneuver. So we'll have to see if the Seattle Mariners, if they need a closing pitcher,

maybe they should, they should check the seas for these octopi, the octopuses. The octopitures. Seekon, always great to have you. Always good stuff. You bring us. Thank you. Appreciate it. You're welcome.

Sikan Akpan, a health and science editor at WNYC based in New York City. We're going to take a break, and when we come back, Dr. Anthony Fauci joins us. He looks back on his decades of disease research and government service, a really interesting interview. Stay with us. We'll be right back. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. I first crossed paths with Dr. Anthony Fauci back in the early 1980s when I was covering the first mysterious hints of an HIV-AIDS outbreak. Little did I know then that he and I would be spending the next 40 years in conversation.

We've been through a lot of diseases together, and I have lost count of the number of times he's appeared on this program since 1994 explaining AIDS, Ebola, yellow fever, Zika, flu allergies, and lots lots more. And you know what, Fauci never says no to an interview. Even over the past years, as he has taken on an outsized role as a public face of medicine in this country. Fearlessly speaking truth to power at the Trump White House or in congressional testimony. He has a reputation as a tireless public servant working long hours and navigating those weekend talk shows. So when he announced that he'd be stepping down from his

role as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, I was a bit surprised. I thought they'd find him one day slumped over his desk. Here to talk about his career and What lies ahead is Dr. Anthony Fauci, outgoing director of the NIAID at the NIH in Bethesda, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden. Welcome back to Science Friday. Thank you, Ira. It's really great to be back with you again. So nice to have you. I don't know where to begin. I want to have a wide-ranging talk about your career as a researcher and a public figure, and I think I need to begin with the present.

and have you tell us about your experiences with the pandemic. Can you recall a time when fighting a disease devolved into such a polarizing political battle? No, the answer is a resounding, no, Ira. It is certainly never even anything close to this, but it's also so disconcerting because we have two things that are unique. We have a pandemic, the likes of which we have not experienced on this planet since the iconic influenza pandemic of 1918, simultaneously with a degree of divisiveness in this country, in which political ideologies, misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories have all conflated together, to make what you would hope have been a unified, concerted, pulling together effort to fight this pandemic.

Instead, we have such differences in approaches that are not just honest differences of opinion, but that are manifested by attacks, attacks on science, conceptually, verbal, and sometimes physical attacks on public health officials, it is most extraordinary and most disturbing, Ira, because I think it not only inhibits what we would hope have been a better response to this deadly outbreak, but I think it's linked into what we're seeing in the country, which is really an affront and an attack on our democratic institutions and our democratic process. That's one of the more scary aspects. of it. One is a public health issue, but one of them is a manifestation of how profound differences

and divisiveness can impact important efforts like fighting a pandemic. Speaking of attacks, you became one of these people who was attacked and your credibility questioned. How did you handle that? And how do you handle that? Well, the only way I could handle that is what I'm doing, Ira, is to focus like a laser, on what my job and what my purpose is, which it has been, you know, ever since I became a physician more than 60 years ago, ever since I've come to the NIH, 54 years ago, and ever since I've become the director of the NIAID, which is 38 years ago, is to focus on what your purpose and job is, and mine is to do whatever I can within the realm of science, evidence, data, and public

held to preserve and protect the health and the safety of the American public. And if you get distracted by all the bobs and the arrows and all of the disinformation and conspiracy theories, that distracts you from what you should be doing. So as much as I don't pay attention to the praise, I mean, it's nice that people like what I'm doing and there are a lot of people who do. You don't want to get taken up by that, you also don't want to get taken up by the bobs and the arrows and the discouraging remarks. You know, that's really interesting that you say that, because of those of us who've known you for 40 years, suddenly you become this public figure. You're seen almost every day on the biggest public stage in the world.

You've become a household name. As you say, loved by many, hated by some. How do you handle that transition emotionally and mentally from one side to the other? Again, it is a question of compartmentalization. If you get too deeply immersed in the adulation and the praise, that's unrealistic and that's distracting. If you get too deeply immersed in the other aspects of it, that is also distracting. So I don't want it to interfere with my job. But what it has done, and I've got to be perfectly honest with you, it is very much disrupted my life in the sense that my job. That my job, job stay steady. And I keep doing what I'm doing. I'm doing what I did the first time you interviewed me decades ago, you know, working 16 hours a day, all the weekends and stuff, because I like it. I'm an unpolgetic workaholic. And I really love what I do. But when you get the venom introduced into it, it impacts, for example, it's not comfortable having to go around with armed

federal agents around you all the time. That's not a good model. for encouraging people to go into public health. I don't like the idea that my wife and my three daughters get harassed and threatened all the time, but I'm not alone. I'm a very visible person, so you know about it, but there are many public health officials who are also being threatened and harassed because they stick up for good public health principles. That should never happen in a country like ours, but it is. And where do you draw your strength from? I know, your background shows you to be a pretty tough guy in high school, you captain the school's basketball team, despite just standing only five foot seven inches. I mean, but do you have a

background that keeps you working and keeps your drive going? Yeah, I mean, I think it's just, you know, we are the sum total of our experiences in our background, Ira. You know, you're right. I grew up in a tough neighborhood in Brooklyn. I had great parents who kept me on the right track of education and doing things for public service. That has been a part of my family tradition from my father and my mother and my schooling. You know, Jesuit training and high school and college about making sure that honesty and integrity is absolutely critical to everything you do. And don't back down under any circumstances from that. The other important thing is the relationships you developed. I've been very, very fortunate. I have a wife who is just most extraordinary. She's,

She's brilliant intellectually. She is, you know, the anchor in my life in the sense that she has a bit of a different personality than I. She takes things very calmly and very measured way. She's very analytic. And whenever I need a reality check, I have one at home every day when I go home. That's really important. I recall during the early days of HIV AIDS that you and other researchers were also getting

criticized for the way federal research and funding were being handled. Now, if you compare the political and social pushback during the beginning of the HIV pandemic with the COVID pandemic, how similar are they? Or compare and contrast them, if you will, as they say in school. So the comparison is unit one. The differences are unit 1,000. Really? So let me explain. The idea that the activists who pushed back and picked me out because I was a visible figure, one of the few people who was out there talking about HIV in the 80s. There were not a lot of us there, and I was a federal employee, so I became the face of the federal government. The activists had some very valid concerns, and the authorities were not paying attention to them. So they acted in a very

theatrical, iconoclastic, and disruptive way to gain attention. They used exaggerated language, like you're killing us, you're a murder, you know, that kind of thing, hang you in effigy, but they were doing it for the purpose of getting our attention. And in some respects, that was a good thing because they got my attention. And when I started listening to what they was saying, they were making perfect sense. They had really important considerations that needed to be looked at and taken seriously, including them into discussions of the scientific agenda, the clinical trial design, the rigidity of the regulatory process. And I sat down with them and we talked about it, and we went from gradually there being adversarial to being cooperative, to being colleagues, to now many of them are literally my closest friends.

They were right all along. They were disruptive, but they made a point that was a valid point. What you're seeing now is attacks and slings and arrows that are based on misinformation, disinformation, disinformation, and very strong political considerations. The differences are profound between the pushback in the HIV days and the pushback now. Speaking of pushback, when you look back on how COVID was handled from the very beginning, are there mistakes that were made that if we had to do it again and we might have to, that you and the administration and society should do differently? Yeah, well, there's some things that really worked, Ira, and some things that didn't. So the thing that was the clear success story of all of this was the scientific approach, namely the fact that we had invested for decades on basic and fundamental and clinical science in platform technology for vaccines, in structure-based immunogen design, in delineating the replication.

cycle of viruses in order to pinpoint vulnerable targets. That investment paid off to save millions of lives by getting us a vaccine in 11 months. That was beyond anyone's wildest expectations that we'd be able to do that. And it was a combination of investment in science and investment in implementation. What didn't go so well was what we thought was a good public health response when you had a moving target like a virus, the likes of which we had never seen before, that the information that rolled out early on was not correct information. We didn't fully appreciate how efficient it was in spreading. We didn't get the right early information. from China. We didn't think or know that it would be aerosol spread. We approached it as a

syndromic disease where you knew who was sick by their symptoms when in fact you had 50 to 60 percent of the transmissions were of people who had no symptoms at all. That was a total game changes. So certainly, had we known all of those things early on, we could have done much, much better. But we didn't. Sometimes we responded quickly enough, and sometimes we didn't. So there was no perfection in this from a public health standpoint. That's for sure. Let's hope we learn the lessons of what has happened for the future preparedness and response, particularly the idea of getting data in real time so that we could move as quickly

as our moving target was moving. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. We're talking with Dr. Anthony Fauci, outgoing director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Let's talk about some of the things that you're most proud of in your research career at NIH as the head of your division or even before then. What do you get up in the morning think about and

smile about your achievements? Well, Ira, since I've been doing this so long, and I've worn, I believe, three different types of hats. So when I think of the things I feel good about, one is as a scientist when I came to the NIH very early on, well before HIV, when certainly nobody outside of the inner group of scientists in that field even had any idea who I was, I had the luck and the privilege of working in a field of auto-inflammatory and autoimmune diseases and developed highly effective therapies for inflammatory diseases of the vessels called vasculitis. They're rather unusual, but it was a major advance. in people who's had almost a 95 mortality rate

had a 93% remission rate. So that was as a scientist. Then when HIV came along, and I still do that to this day, have a laboratory that is delineating the pathogenic mechanisms of HIV. We weren't alone in that. There were many, many very competent investigators in the field, but I believe our lab

played a major role in understanding HIV pathogenesis. So that's the scientific hat. Then the hat as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, where one of the things I did right off was develop an AIDS program and put an enormous amount of resources into understanding HIV, but importantly, partnering with pharmaceutical companies to develop the multiple combination drugs that we have now that have resulted literally in transforming the lives of persons with HIV to make them lead almost a normal lifespan. That I feel very good about because that's a program that I started from scratch. Again, with a help from a lot of very talented people, but I was the one that

started that program. Then, being in the position I was in, I had the opportunity. to advise seven presidents. And among those experiences, the one that stands out was the fact that President George W. Bush, who did something that was extraordinary and for which he deserves great credit, tasked me to put together as one of the principal architects of the president's emergency plan for AIDS relief that provides treatment, care, and prevention for HIV for people in the developing world, particularly Southern Africa. I did that in 2002. The program was accepted in 2003, and thus far it's been responsible for saving 18 to 20 million lives throughout the world. So, you know, again, other people would judge, but when you say,

when I wake up in the morning and say, you know, what have I done with the almost 60 years that I've been doing this? Those are the three things that I think about. We're going to take a short break, and when we come back, more conversation with Dr. Anthony Fauci. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. We're talking with Dr. Anthony Fauci, outgoing director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. I spoke with Dr. William Hazeltine about the potential bad diseases looking out there, ready to pounce.

Do we have a plan, not only a plan, but do we have the money, the research, for dealing with the next one? Well, the answer is right now, no, and that's unfortunate. We have a plan. There's a pandemic preparedness plan that was put together involving an all-of-government response that came out a while ago from OSTP, the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The toll of that from the standpoint of resources, the amount that would be needed, was tens and

tens and tens of billions of dollars. We must say to be perfectly fair that the Congress has given an enormous amount of money for us to respond to the current outbreak. However, that funding has now dried up, and that's a real problem. Because if we want to continue to respond to the ongoing outbreak and be prepared for the inevitability, even though we don't know when it will occur, Of the next outbreak, we are going to need a continual, consistent investment in resources. And for a variety of reasons, we don't have that right now. If you had advice for the next head of the division who will be taking your place, what advice would you give that person?

Well, I don't like to use the word advice that's somewhat, you know, almost presumption. I would explain to that person that you have. have to stick with the science, the evidence, and the data, and do whatever you can to get the best of the best involved in the field for which you are responsible. And NIAID is responsible for infectious diseases, immunity, immune system diseases, and allergy, and just go for it. put everything you can into it, support the field, and work with the best scientists that you possibly can, and don't be put aback or get involved in politics. Because, you know, as I think some very wise people have said, when you mix politics with science, you get politics. So keep science

a pure discipline. Speaking of science, what is it about science that you think is most misunderstood or misconstrued by the public during a public health emergency? Great question, Ira. I'm glad you asked that because that's the source. I think of a lot of the anti-science feeling is a lack of an appreciation of what we in the field of science know that science is an iterative, self-corrective process. You get data and information. If you are dealing with an evolving process that changes, like a virus that all of a sudden mutates and develops multiple waves of variance. What you say at point A may be relevant to point A, but if you follow the science and the changing aspect of the outbreak, what is true at point A,

evolves into point B, C, and D. And what you may say at point D is different than what you said at point A because the data and the evidence have evolved. That's what confuses people. They think it's a static process when science is a dynamic process to keep up with the evolving data.

And that's why scientists get saying, well, you know, you flip-flop, you change your mind. No, you follow the data. Do you think it's possible to change people's minds? I've never found that people have made up their mind and don't want to listen to the facts or the data. They're not going to change their mind. Well, I think it is likely that not all of them will change their mind, but I really think it's important, Ira, to continue to try and educate and don't give up, because, Of course, if you give up, you've really given into something that is antithetical to what we stand for.

We've got to continue to try and get people to understand the importance of data, evidence, and science. You said when you announced that you were going to be stepping down that this was not the end of your career. What's next? If you got a book in progress, where will we see you next? You know, I can only say for sure, Ira, that you will see me. I don't know exactly the venue in which you will, because according to the government, ethical considerations for a person at my level in government, unless you want to recuse yourself from everything you do for the months that you're stepping down, I don't want to have to

pull away from my responsibilities. so I can't engage in any negotiations for positions outside of government until I actually step down. So I don't know what I'm going to be doing. What I would like to do is to use my multi, multi-decade experience to be able to advise and perhaps motivate and inspire young people to either get in science or for people in science to get them to really feel the same passion and the same motivation that I have felt in science. Whether I do that of writing a book or lecturing or writing essays

or advising people, I don't know that yet. But I decided to step down, Ira, at this point, because I felt while I still have some years of energy and passion and motivation, And thank goodness, good health. I want to be able to do that for a period of time. You know, you know me along, and for those who don't, I'm going to be 82 years old at the end of December. And it isn't like I have 30 years to do something. So I want to step down at a time while I still can do it. Well, Tony, I want to thank you for your decades of public service.

And I hope this won't be the last time we talk. I hope not, I always look forward to chatting. with you. We've had some great conversations over the years. Hopefully we'll continue to do that. Thank you, and good luck to you. Thank you. Dr. Anthony Fauci, outgoing director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Back in 2003, NASA launched two rovers on a mission to Mars, those rovers, opportunity, and spirit. They were sent to the red planet to search for evidence of water, a sign that life may have once existed there. What started out is a a 90-day tour turned into 15 years of discovery, including the bombshell that Mars may once have

been suitable to sustain microbial life. You may have followed their ex-plugs on the show over the years. The story of these twin rovers is the subject of a new documentary out this month. It's called Goodnight Appi, the nickname of the Opportunity Rover. Joining me to talk about this are my guests. Ryan White, director of Good Night Appi. He's based in Los Angeles. Doug Ellison, camera engineer for rovers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is in Alhambra, California. Welcome both of you to Science Friday. Absolutely pleasure. Thank you for having us.

Nice to have you. Ryan, let's start with you. What was it about the spirit and opportunity story that made you so excited to do this documentary? It was that the story had just ended. So as a documentary filmmaker, I'm typically out in the field with my camera. documenting some sort of remarkable event in someone's life. And I was a total space geek growing up. I always wanted to make a space film once I became a filmmaker.

But I had never found a story that I felt like suited that type of character-based filmmaking where you're watching something unfold. And then when the tweet went viral in 2018 of the translation of opportunities last communication with Earth, translated as my battery is low and it's getting dark. It had such an emotional gut punch to it that I thought, well, maybe this is the right type of story to tell because this rover who's lived this incredible life is nearing the end. What I didn't know is that NASA had almost a thousand hours of footage of her and spirits' lifetimes. Once I discovered that that treasure trove of footage existed, I felt like this is the type of story that I could tell

and make the audience feel like they're along for that journey from when Opportunity and Spirit our first birth all the way through their respective deaths and tell a really human story through the eyes, so to speak, of these robots. Yeah, Doug, Doug, you're one of those humans involved, featured prominently in the documentary. Tell us what it was like all those years. Did you get as attached to the rovers as we see in the films? And as it seems everybody else did? Absolutely. It does seem very strange for us to feel an emotional attachment to a robot.

But I think that is only kind of a natural expression of the robot being the focal point through which we are expressing this creativity, this teamwork, this dedication to doing something that's really exciting and important. The focal point becomes what you care about. And so, you know, as Ryan alluded to, you know, the wounds were still open, I think, when we were being interviewed for this documentary. Like, the mission had not been over really that long. And it ended quickly.

We went from having a super happy, healthy rover to Mars saying, you know, you're done. Good night. It got old, didn't it? I mean, the opportunity was an aging vehicle, but she was in remarkable health a week before we lost contact. She had loads of power. We were somewhere scientifically compelling. And then this global dust storm comes along and just pulls the rug out from under you.

And it was over so quickly. And I don't think any of us had time to process it in the moment. Or even over like the subsequent six months of recovery efforts, we're still trying to figure out, you know, what do the numbers say are the chances of getting her back? When might those solar panels get cleaned? What is the best strategy to try and get the rover back? And then all that ends.

And you've got this hole. And it's a rover. It's that project that is missing. And I don't think many of us realize that we needed someone like Ryan to step up and tell this story. For ourselves, it feels like emotional closure. It feels like finally the adventure is done. But then what it can do is take the entirety of that adventure, turn it around, and then send it forwards to be a story for other people to learn how all these great engineering endeavors, all these things, scientific projects. Even when it's just a robot, these are human stories. They are human projects.

And people should feel like they can also be a part of those projects in the future. In case you've just joined us, I'm Ira Plato, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Yeah, you certainly do feel like you were there, and you certainly relive those trials and tribulations that we were not even aware of much of the time. I mean, so much of the film is filled with, I didn't know that moments. And you start out, Doug, right at the beginning, by saying that the rovers were supposed to be twins, but I get the sense that opportunity was the favorite child among the scientists

because you have even one of the engineers saying, even before they left this planet, spirit was troublesome, opportunity was little-miss-perfect. I mean, opportunity little-misperfect, though she may have been, were certainly not everyone's favorite rover. I think you could bificate the whole team. And it's certainly right to say thousands of things. Thousands of people were involved in designing and building

and getting these robots ready for launch. And you could spit a line straight down the middle of those who's picking their favorite child. Some love spirits, some love opportunity, but they definitely develop personalities. And it seems so strange. You know, if you bought two laptops, you wouldn't expect them to have personalities, right?

But when they were being assembled, when they were being tested, Spirit would come across these tests first. She was like the first down the production line, for one of a better phrase. And so there'd be a problem, something might not quite go right, or maybe the test procedure was wrong. And so they'd fix it.

Then an opportunity comes through a couple of weeks later, aces the test, ready to go. And so their story bifurcates before they even leave the planet. And then when they land, Spirit lands first, and almost immediately descends into a very, very near mission-ending series of incidents with her flash memory. And opportunities just barreling down about to land a few days later. and Spirit had to drag herself across the floor of Goosev Crater

to go find that really compelling scientific evidence of an aqueous history of Mars. Meanwhile, Opportunity lands, opens its cameras and 20 feet in front of it is layered outcrop that absolutely speaks to the aqueous history of Mars. It was right there on a plate. And so, Spirit was, I think the phrase someone uses is the kind of a blue collar rover, an opportunity started off having things pretty easy, but things got tougher as she got older. Doug, what do you think Opportunities' legacy is? There are so many components to it. Scientifically it laid the groundwork that curiosity has carried on so beautifully.

From an engineering perspective, we learned how to conduct the first overland expeditions on another planet with these two vehicles. And I think culturally, these rovers taught all of those those of us involved in missions like this, that is important to bring the public along for the ride. It is not right to have a closed book when these missions are ongoing. And so every image going online invited everyone in the world to come along on this adventure. And I think every mission that is heading out beyond low Earth orbit has learned the lessons from spirit and opportunity that everyone should be in a place where they can feel that they are a part of

these amazing adventures. And Ryan, what do you hope viewers get out of? of this film? You know, it's not a, it's not a kids film. We didn't make this film for kids, but we made this film in a way that adults can take their kids. And we, I love seeing young audiences at this screening as young as six-year-olds have come to the screening. And I want young people out there to be inspired by watching these backstories of these humans that, that, you know, it was always surprising to me that everyone that we were interviewing seemed to be an outside. cider in some way, you know, whether that was being from a small town in Ohio or small town,

Texas, or a different country, or many of those people in our film say, I actually wasn't good at math and science as a kid, but I love space and I made myself good at it to get a career in this. So, I mean, I hope people just go on a journey and have fun with it, but I really do hope young people take inspiration from watching these human stories that led to this robot's adventure. I hope so. I got a few children. Shells watching it, remembering all the things that went on over the years. And I got to tell you, I got Misty a few times. Thank you both for taking time to be with us today. Thank you so much. An absolute pleasure. Ryan White, director of Goodnight Appi, Doug Ellison, camera engineer for rovers

at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Good Night Opie is now in theaters, and it will be released on Amazon Prime, November 23rd. And that about wraps up this hour. Here's Jason Dinn with some of the folks who help make this show happen. Thanks, Ira. John Dancosky is our director of news and audio. Annie Niro is our individual giving manager. Our community manager is Kyle Marion Viterbo. Danielle Dana is our executive director, and I'm NSF fellow Jason Dynne. Thanks for listening. Thank you, Jason. And this is NSF fellow Jason's last week with us here at Science Friday. It was a pleasure to work with him, and we're excited to see what he does next. Have a great weekend. I'm Ira Flato. Thank you.