StarTalk Radio - Going to Space with William Shatner

Episode Date: January 25, 2022

What was it like to send Captain Kirk to space? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson sits down with William Shatner to discuss his trip into space, Star Trek, and musings about life on Earth. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/going-to-space-with-william-shatner/Thanks to our Patrons Jim Dickey, Joey Lord, Alex Lopez, John Atwood, Caroline Gregson, Murtez Alrohani, and James Beall for supporting us this week.Photo Credit: Photo Credit: Blue Origin Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. And today we have a very special guest. Not just a special guest, a very special guest. Returning to StarTalk, we have William Shatner, the one and only. A beloved actor portrayed Captain Kirk on the Starship Enterprise

in the original Star Trek series and movies that followed it some years later. And he's of special interest right now because he was on board the suborbital flight of Blue Origin's New Shepard space capsule. This is a 10-minute journey where you go across the Kármán line. That's the line where you enter space. And he was the oldest person to ever do this at age 90. Let's get straight into this.

So William Shatner, can I call you Bill? Does that work? Yes, I can call you Neil. Yeah, please, please, by all means. So you start out life as wanting to be an actor. Yeah. Well, I mean, I must have emerged from my mother's womb not knowing what to do. Okay. By the time I was six. Given time and food and nourishment. Yeah, exactly.

After suckling a bit, I thought, I guess I should be an actor. I was about six years of age when I was in a camp play and as the legend goes, and I made people laugh and cry, and I thought, wow, that's wonderful. And I've never done anything else. So I was channel surfing one night, and I stumbled on you in a bit role in the movie Judgment at Nuremberg.

You were like a court clerk. Or a court jester, according to some people, right. A court jester? Right? No, but it's true. I sat there the whole movie at that legal table watching these incredible luminaries from the screen pass by and do a day's work and then leave and come back. It was an extraordinary experience for a young actor.

And there I am binging on classic and all the old episodes of The Twilight Zone, and you're two episodes. You've got a double credit in two separate distinct episodes. You've got a double credit in two separate, distinct episodes. Yeah, and they are among the most popular, strangely. The reason for that, I don't know. Perhaps your sagacity, you would be able to

analyze why those two shows have remained in the top 13 every time they play a group of them. I don't understand the popularity, but it must have something to do with touching some core of humanity. Well, you play a slightly crazy person in each one. Just only slightly.

Just enough where the viewer can relate to your anxieties. the viewer can relate to your anxieties. Being anxious about something, like in one case, flying. We're always anxious about flying. And the other one was about getting your fortune told. And we're always worried about what the future holds and why did I say that for something in the past? So we're always concerned about those two subjects. Yeah, so for that reason, I think, as you correctly deduced,

it reached into us as viewers in a way that, while you were a slightly extreme version of it, we felt enough of ourselves in your character to relate to it more deeply than I think other characters portrayed or written for. So I just want to make sure that your acting chops are out there up front, because to take this ramp into space, initially, of course, with Star Trek, ultimately doing it for real, did you have any space influences when you were a kid?

You were already fully grown up during the Apollo era, so we can't credit that. Space wasn't mentioned. You know, all those years ago, there was the sun, there was the moon, and people were running around trying to figure out how they hung in the sky. I was after, you know,

I was after Galileo. You did, okay. You and Galileo weren't tight? No, we weren't quite like that. We were like that, actually. But, no, there wasn't anything about, nothing about space and nothing. I was always interested in football and I was acting in Montreal doing amateur theatricals. And I somehow, I don't know what it was i think there's something in my genetic makeup

that allowed me to be in an intuitive actor i've never studied i don't know how you studied to be an actor but there are styles and i just fell into those styles I may have seen them in movies, maybe I was imitating them, but there is a regality to Shakespeare. There is a featness to 18th century, 19th century comedy. There are styles that you sort of acquire the way you speak, the way you move your hands, your feet. I never studied it, but somehow I knew it, and I don't know how. Well, so what's happening then is the world, you know, we enter the Cold War.

There's an arms race, and there's also the birth of a space race. And there's a poignant part of Shatner in Space, which is just now posting on Amazon Prime. If you have a video subscription there, I think it's, quote, free. In that program, there's a poignant moment where the Star Trek series, which went three seasons, all right, you know, just barely longer than Gilligan's Island or whatever. Okay. And so, and it ends. You're out of a job.

You and your wife divorce. And there you were putting a vision of space into our hearts and minds. And now that's gone yet you witness Neil Armstrong taking first steps on the moon could you just tell us about what you were feeling in that moment the contrast of these two yeah yeah well I got a divorce just as the show was canceled and I don't know whether you know this or not, Neil, but divorces are very expensive. Okay. So there I was.

I had this divorce. I was now broke, and I was coming off a serious, which in those days meant that the people who hire think, oh, well, he's known for that, and we won't hire him for this because he's known for that. That sort of thinking went on for a while, and I was in that thinking. So it was difficult for me to find a really good acting job, and so I decided I would do summer stock. And the summer stock is out on the East Coast, on the Cape Cod. And so I don't remember whether I bought a truck or whether I had an old truck. Then I put a cab on the back of that pickup truck. And it had a shower and a bed.

And I had a dog. I've always had a dog, a Doberman Pinscher. So there was a book out in those years called Travel with Charlie. I remember that. John Steinberg. I did Travels with Charlie, only my dog, I don't remember his name,

but a regal, marvelous male Doberman sat beside me and I drove across country and put together a play and did summer stock. And part of that summer stock goes on to Long Island and the Hamptons. Wait, wait, just to be clear, just to be clear, you were homeless at this point, okay? No, no, I had a hole that was in the back of a truck.

Yeah, your home was on wheels. Like if a guy sleeps in his car, is he homeless or has he got a Chevy? No, no, I had a hole that was in the back of a truck. Yeah, your home was on wheels. Like if a guy sleeps in his car, is he homeless or has he got a Chevy? My address is Chevy. On Interstate 10, exit 20. I got the Chevy truck. Yeah, I think I had a Chevy. That's back when cars were big enough.

You could sleep full out, flat out on the bench seating. Exactly. So the philosophical question is, are you homeless if you're in something you own in your car? You're not sleeping on the streets. So I had a little tiny house here, which I didn't pay for. So I slept in the back of this truck.

And you said you also ended up from Cape Cod into the Hamptons. Is that right? I'm in Cape Cod, and I park in a pasture. And I'm living there, and I go and I drive over to the theater a mile or so away, perform at night. And then that night I drive to the pasture and park and sleep in the cab. So it was this evening that I was sitting in a chair in the cab or lying down in the chair. And I'm looking through the window at the moon. And I've got a little black and white TV set and I'm tuned into Armstrong on the moon. And I had been at the Cape the year

before and had some wonderful exchanges. I lay down in the, in the limb. I looked around. I, I, I, the, the astronauts took me around. They gave me a ship of the model of the enterprise and I signed it. I'll see you on the moon. And it was, I was like, I was like a junior astronaut and everyone's, Oh, thank you very much. And they laughed and, and then I left. And a year later, I'm looking at armstrong uh putting his foot on the moon and we had discovered or either then or a little bit later that as our ratings in star trek went up uh the government voted more money for nasa uh

for NASA that became more popular. We popularized, Star Trek popularized space travel. And so I felt in some tiny, minuscule way, I had a little something to do with that. And there he puts it. And the world is watching. And I'm lying bereft, moneyless, homeless in my Chevy looking at him go on the moon. And the irony of that incredible moment and my destitution struck me even then. And upon retelling, I'm able to make it even more dramatic.

So, Bill, here's my analysis. I think what happens is once we're going to the moon, we don't need you, right? Because all of a sudden space exploration is real. It's no longer pretend. And then three years later, only three years, 1969, boots on the moon, 1972, no longer boots on the moon, we stop going into space. And here's my analysis. I think we all say to ourselves, wait a minute, that's not, wait a minute, this is supposed to keep going. And it didn't. It didn't. Even the film 2001, A Space Odyssey, 1968, that was imagining 2001. Wait a minute, this all stopped. Well, what do we have left?

We got to go back to Star Trek. Star Trek was that hope. And so your popularity grew in reruns, bigger than it ever was during the show. Much bigger. Star Trek took off in reruns. In reruns. And into the 70s. Seven years later. After we stopped going to the moon.

So you, dude, became our only hope at that point. I know. You were betting the wrong money. You had your money on the wrong guy. So I think the fact that we became more distant from space made Star Trek that much more important and relevant to us.

What do you think of that? Well, I think it's beautiful, and I heartily agree with you that I alone brought the NASA redid itself because of me. No. What happened is the expense of going to the moon. Kennedy's saying we're going to go to the moon in a decade. And American pride made us do it. Once we had done it, it was like, oh God, we're not going to spend any more money on that. We got the politicians' pockets to line and all the money is gone because of the expense. So they, because of the expense, and I don't know what happened, but it was like the air went out of American determination in space.

We lost it for a while. You know, I don't know whether this is apocryphal or not, but my understanding is Yuri Gagarin, and for your audience to remind them, he was a Russian astronaut who made the first launch into space, came down like a stone in a parachute. He was up there for a brief moment, and apparently he said, it's blue, and then parachuted down.

Now, we see the sky as blue, and we say, oh, that's blue. But knowledgeable people know that's refraction of the sun. The air is colorless. But whatever it is, the water, the moisture in the air gives us the blue color. The water, the moisture in the air gives us the blue color. And so we think, okay, well, but it's colorless, just blue because of the refraction of the sun. He gets above it and he says, ah, it's blue. And I thought when I heard that story, I thought what a glorious moment when the first human being looks down upon our planet and says, it's blue.

And what a color. I mean, blue is a beautiful color. It's so engaging. It's so calming. I mean, you paint a room blue because you want the color to be restful. Air Force One is painted blue in part for that reason. It's a very calming color for that. I have gone across this continent many times, uncountable times, in every manner possible.

When I was a kid, I thumbed across the United States. I left Montreal, got to San Diego, went to Vancouver, got to Chicago, back to Montreal on my thumb. I've motorcycled across the continent. I've driven a truck. I've driven in a sports car. I've been with a family. I've been alone. I mean, it's endless, Neil. The continent is endless. The roads go disappear into infinity. And you think, oh my Lord, I have to go. And then you get to that point of infinity and it goes even further.

It's not. It's then by rising above it and looking down, oh my God, it's minute. The earth is minute. And only then do you begin to get a sense of the relationship of this little rock to the vastness of space. Bill, we got to take our first break.

But when we return, more of my conversation with the inimitable, or occasionally occasionally imitable William Shatner. I'm Joel Cherico and I make pottery. You can see my pottery on my website, cosmicmugs.com. Cosmic Mugs, art that lets you taste the universe every day. And I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

We're back with William Shatner. So you, I think, are correctly recognizing that Yuri Gagarin sees Earth as a blue planet. By the way, even in Star Trek, images of Earth were not really about it feeling blue. That really took actual journeys into space. And so are you ever thinking while you're starship captain that you'll ever actually be high up above Earth and see the blue planet? That's fantasy. The whole thing was fantasy. Sometimes we'd laugh about how fantastical we were on stage 27 at Paramount Studios pretending to be we're in space.

And we move the rocks around. Now we're on a planet and we shoot this gun. And later they put a little light thing in and it's all fantasy. It's all beautiful fantasy about human beings somewhere in the future. But it's, you know, it's these crazy guys who were thinking futuristically, never thought I'm going to go up there. Well, just to be clear, Star Trek wasn't, at least for me, and I think for practically anyone who observed it, was not just space fantasy.

There was space movies and space, you know, there was Lost in Space was a TV show, but that didn't somehow get deep within our soul. Star Trek had messages within it. It had more, there were morality tales. The surroundings were fanciful, but the meanings, the reason it's popular, I think, is just what you're saying, that it dealt with human beings.

But I meant the surroundings were fanciful. If you're talking about racism and a guy is half black on the right and half white on the left, and he meets a guy who's half black on the left and half white on the right. Who are you? And we were fighting and we're because you're different from me. And so the stupidity, the nonsensical stupidity of racism is evident by this, by these two guys are fighting over the fact that one's different from the other slightly. But the value of telling a space tale is you get to present that to people

without them being confronted in their behavior. They have to sort of internalize it and then realize it for themselves rather than put it in their face. And think of how that would work. Exactly. Think of how that would work. The guy's like, oh, geez, what's he complaining about? He's got the black hair and the white hair and the white hair. Some guy who may be prejudiced in any way

is laughing at the stupidity of this guy. Yes. And he doesn't realize he's laughing at the stupidity of this guy. Yes. You know, and he doesn't realize he's laughing at the stupidity of racism until later. He says, wait, if he's, you know, if at some point in time, whoop, yeah, listen, black, white, what's the difference?

So that was the beauty of Star Trek. Yeah, yeah. And so it meant more than just a tale told in space. And by the way, just if I can fanboy a little bit here, any time I'm asked, okay, Kirk or Picard? This is, you know, this is like they quiz you that when you enter Comic-Con, right? Kirk or Picard? Kirk all the time.

And let me tell you why. Me too. Me too. You too. Don't scare me. No And let me tell you why. Me too. Me too. You too. Don't scare me. No, I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. Because your character actually, not that I'm a very nonviolent person,

so let me start with that, but let me just say, your character would fight the bad guys. If you see your captain actually getting into a fistfight, oh my gosh, they're invested in this. They care about what is true and righteous on a level where they're putting their own lives at risk. You fought the Gorn. You did, not some pawn that you sent out to do so.

And so I thought that level of bravery for a captain I greatly valued. And my favorite line, my favorite line, and forgive me, the Star Trek fans, for not knowing the exact details. Your character is on the bridge. Your shields don't work anymore. The enemy vessel is out front. Your shields don't work anymore. The enemy vessel is out front.

And you execute some command that's mysterious on a channel that's already been decoded. And Spock says, Captain, this is no time for a game of chess. And that command was a self-destruct command that would also destroy the enemy ship. Captain, there's no time for a game of chess. And you said, no, Spock, it's poker. And I said, yes, that's my captain. Oh, my gosh. I've totally forgotten that.

Totally forgotten that. Can you imagine the wonderful writer who wrote that thing? Best line ever, especially because Spock, you say, you know, Spock is right here. And then you say, no, you are more right because, you know, you're bluffing. And they don't know it. Oh, my gosh. So you got, I'm on the team, Captain Kirk, the whole way. So now you get tapped by Jeff Bezos.

And they must have known. About two years before that, about three years now, Jason Ehrlich, a friend of mine who was a producer on another series I did, said, you know, you should go up in the middle. No, I'm not going to go up there. Who cares? And I don't want to jeopardize that. He says, but no,

no, no. Anyway, the idea suggested, they say, come up to Seattle. We fly up to Seattle. I meet Jeff. The whole lobby of Amazon is all Star Trek. We sit down at the table, Shatner up in space. That sounds good. We'll let you know, and we go back.

And COVID hits, and nothing happens. Then we hear that Jeff Bezos is going to go up in space himself. So we think, well, maybe he'll choose Shatner. No, he chooses his brother and a lady with gray hair and a boy. And they go up. I said, well, let's see. Well, maybe they'd like you to go on a second. No, I don't want to go up second, for God's sakes.

That's the vice president. We want the president. So then they asked me to go up on the second one. Now I'm not going. So I turn it down. But then I, in my, you might have an explanation for it. The wonderful moment between sleep and wake. When you're lying there thinking, you know, and your brain is going and you've got all kinds of wonderful ideas which you forget when you get up. I'm thinking, you know, going up to space is an experience. I should try and experience that. As fearful as it sounds, so I agree to do it, thinking it's innocuous.

I just go up, come down, who cares, and I've had that experience. Who knew that that would be as newsworthy as it was? I didn't. I thought it would be unknown. Well, let me just say that you can't just send up any famous actor and have the same reaction as sending you. There's no question about this. So in the Shatner in Space documentary, he's got all this footage in anticipation of you going into space and some really fun encounter

with you and your wife and daughters where you announced to them that, and they say, Dad, are you going to die? We don't want to lose a dad on this. And, of course, if you died, you'd go out completely in flames, but in space. What a glorious ending it would be rather than lose your teeth slowly. One by one, you lose them. Yeah, no, I think that's the curve, you know. Stop! You're going, yeah, no, I play Captain Kirk, you know. Toothless Captain Kirk. So, and of course, there's no reason to have pre-footage of just any random famous person who's about to go suborbital.

It's not interesting. We need someone with space legacy who sat at the fulcrum of people's hopes and dreams of space, and that was you. So I'm delighted that such a documentary could be made with that footage. And we see this

side of you. I mean, I was delighted by that. I was worried because you guys had to walk up to the capsule, up all those damn steps. You don't have a cherry picker or something to carry you up. I mean, dude, you're 90 years old. I'm telling you, they asked me to come a day early. It's hysterical that you should come upon that point. So why don't I go there and maybe Mr. Bezos will be there and I'll have a chance to talk to him.

And he wasn't. And so and there's the gantry. Let's go to the gantry and see what the gantry is. Okay, let's go and see what the gantry is. Let's walk up the gantry. Eleven flights. Eleven flights and 4,000 up the gantry. 11 flights. 11 flights and 4,000. And I'm going up, and I'm going, you know, oh, look how pretty.

I stop at some landing. Well, it's really pretty, and then another three flights. And I finally get to the top. But I made it, and I now, looking back, I've got to assume somebody said, Jesus, do you think you'll make it up the gantry?

He's 90 years old. Let's check him out. I now know that was a checkout. Imagine if I had failed. What would they do? Oh, sorry, Shatner. We lost Shatner on the fourth step. On the ninth, right?

Fourth. Oh, Lord, I'm telling you, that was, when I look back on that, I have to laugh. What if I hadn't made it? And everybody was behind me. I was walking up, and there'd be like seven people behind me, you know, scampering up there, 20 years old. Hey, let's go. And I'd go, yeah, we're going.

I used to be able to scramble up, Neil. You may not believe it. I used to be able to run up 11 flights. Neil, how old are you? I am right now 63. Do you feel any of your strength leaving you? Like, can you open a bottle top as easily as you did before? No, but I take kindly the counsel of the years,

gracefully surrendering the things of youth. So do you mind the bottle my son daughter would you mind opening the bottle for me i've got i'm not saying would you mind getting this the lease up this bag up of the upper when they're flying okay i need some help and the bag is heavy no i no no i've got tools i. I've got tools. I'm good with that. But I was saying, so there's some shots of you inside the capsule before and during and after. And there's one of them when you're weightless. I don't mind.

I'm going to tell you, you look like you were about to barf. Just your facial expression. So you don't have to divulge that here. I was thinking about it. I wasn't really thinking. I wonder if I... And you know that vomit comet they fly. Yeah.

The outside loop that they get everybody ready to go. I've heard that people fart. Yeah, and if you fart, there's nothing worse than zero G vomit. Okay? Because it doesn't just fall. Now all your attention is trying to avoid it.

Oh, here comes one straight action. Be careful. And all your attention is dodging the barf. So tell me, so for me, whatever I would miss most, I think, if I never get to experience this, is the feeling of weightlessness. So can you describe that? No, I can't because there aren't words in the English language. Weightlessness is a new thing. There aren't words to describe weightlessness. Ohlessness is a new thing. There aren't words

to describe weightlessness. Oh, you're weightless and lift your arm. Well, you can't. You can't. The whole rehearsal part, the practice part was getting in and out of that seat in weightlessness. But of course, you're not weightless. So you have no idea of how to get into that seat and tie yourself in because you're going to hit seven Gs. So weightlessness, like suddenly I'm floating, but I don't want to float. I want to get to that window and see, and see whatever it is I'm going to see. And there's footage of Jeff Bezos in the first flight.

He's weightless and his ass is towards the camera. And this kid is throwing Skittles at his ass. That's the first moment of weightlessness. And I thought, I'm not going to spend weightlessness having Skittles thrown at me. I got to get to my window. It just depends how big your ass is, right? So it's indescribable.

You're weightless. But it's not like being in water, which the astronauts practice. It's like nothing. It's indescribable. It's like floating. If you imagine yourself floating, but your body's not accustomed to not feeling gravity. So it's like, what? And you're startled.

You're like, what is the sensation? And everybody's had things planned, like we'll lift our hand up. And in the first flight, they had hello, mother or something. I had nothing. I didn't, I wanted to, oh my Lord. And it was awkward. Like you didn't know what to do.

Now, if you spent time just in weightlessness, like they have that updraft of air. Oh yeah. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. The skydiving. Right. Exactly. So you can practice in a chamber that's approaching it i guess but here it's it's it it's like it's like being ill with an illness you not don't know i don't know whether it's feverish or or you know something something that you, how am I feeling? What am I, what am I? It's the complete unknown of weightlessness that occupies you to begin with. It's like startling. Like, holy cats, what is that? Combined with, in my case, I want to get to that window. I don't want to waste any time being weightless. I want to see the earth.

Or throwing Skittles. You're not going to burn weightless time throwing Skittles at anyone's hands. Exactly. You have two minutes of weightlessness. Two minutes in that orbit, in that moment, momentum. I wanted to make use of it by looking, by absorbing, having a sensation, seeing something that very few people have seen. We've got to take another break.

When we return, more of my conversation with William Shatton. We're back with StarTalk's conversation with William Shatner. Bill, are you a different person for having done this? Neil, I'm sure that when we talked a few years ago, I must have expressed myself in terms of ecology because I've been an amateur ecologist for the longest time. Rachel Carson wrote a book called The Silent Spring, and I read that 50 years ago, and I thought, my goodness, if that's what it's going to be.

And then I have a great friend, Michael Tobias. Do you know that name that he called it? I do know the name. Yes, I do. I don't know that we've met. He wrote many books and documentaries. Well, he's a dear friend of mine. And we did a series called Voice of the Planet many, many years ago. We went all over the place, even up into the Himalayas, looking at places that were being degraded as a result of, and this was years ago, this is more than 20 years ago. I saw for my own eyes what we're doing, including ocean stuff. I, so you were early in this, you were early out of the box. I was preaching this years and years to the scoffing of reporters.

Oh, look at this actor thinking he's a scholar of, you know, he knows something we don't know. There were early interviews. I thought, why would they scoff? Oh, he's an actor and he's talking about the world coming to an end. So I was tuned in a long time ago. But as it's become increasingly obvious and now everybody knows and now everybody should be panicked, like looking over their shoulder, when is this apocalypse going to hit? I'm a different person because what was theoretical, you know, there are buildings,

apartment buildings in Miami, but probably a lot of other places, where they paid millions and millions of dollars to have a view of the sea, right like on the sea, and the windows open up, and every morning they get up and think, well, look at the sea. That's why they spent $20 million for their condo.

Villa, yeah. And they're erecting 20-foot walls now for the anticipation of higher seas. There are cement walls going up, blocking their view. Now, how dramatic is that? Guy pays all this money for a view of the sea. What? Well, that's global warming, folks.

Yeah, yeah. So that's happening now. And what I saw was the vulnerability of this little tiny speck, the stone, this little rock. Neil, I saw this, about the curvature about like that. But that's finite because you can go continue the circumference and you come to an end.

I've just described the circumference of the earth. And you look out there, you know, I don't have to tell you, whole galaxies can come through each other and not touch billions of stars not hitting each other because the space is so vast

between them that what is it coming our way in two billion years? What's the name of the... You mean the Andromeda Galaxy. Andromeda Galaxy is coming its way. And it's apparently possible

for the whole Andromeda Galaxy to come through the Milky Way and not hit anything because the space is so vast. Correct. That's how vast space is. And this mote of dust, this little, I love the image of the speck of sand, this kernel, the grain of sand in the Sahara Desert. That's the volume of this earth compared to space.

And we are these little tiny you can't describe us as ants because we're smaller than ants compared to the earth we're tiny, we're freckles on earth you know that's how

innocuous I don't need you to blow a gasket remembering thinking this but the gasket is this. Where I retrieve it is this way. And I know you know this. The miracle is us being able to observe, to be a party to, an observer of this miracle of us being conscious enough to be conscious of our place in space. And that to me is what changed.

I understood this theoretically, but I saw it. And I'm filled with that thought that the miracle of human beings looking and saying, yes, this is a speck of dust. Yes, we are a speck of dust on a speck of dust, but we're observing it. We're a party to an observer of the grandeur of it all, the miracle of it all. And the miracle is inside us. And what is that? I don't know what that is. I guess consciousness, we're still trying to figure it out. But that was what I saw. Many a philosopher have waxed poetic on the fact that it's amazing that the universe is

knowable at all. Just start with that fact. You know this. just start with that fact. You know this. Oumuamua. Oumuamua. Oumuamua. And Avi, I've forgotten his last name. Avi Loeb.

Avi Loeb. He's a colleague of mine up at Harvard. Avi Loeb has written this book on using Oumuamua as the chrysalis for the thoughts of other civilizations existing, whether Oumuamua is a relic of some civilization. I mean, there's a great deal of argument about it, but he uses it and describes scientific reason to think that it was from another civilization somewhere.

Just to catch everybody up, Oumuamua is an asteroid-like object, interloper between the stars that happened to pass through the solar system in recent years. And went around the moon and made what's the alleles in terms of its trajectory. It changed. Its trajectory was not entirely Newtonian, as we say. And so the hunt was to find out why. And Avi Loeb was more embracing of the possibility that it could

have been an alien craft sent under its own power. Well, not a craft of much. He came to the conclusion it must have been like a sail, like a solar sail. So we saw this part of it and thought it was like a log, whereas in fact it was a dish. That's his theory. But you make the good point that if we use that as a launch point to even have that conversation. Exactly. That surely has value.

That's what he does in his book. He uses it as a launching point to have the discussion about how dare we think. Because life is so imperative. When you think that slime seeks the sunlight and mindless, what we think of as mindless things trying to live the imperative of life. I talked to Bob Ballard, who talked about seeing those chimneys, the calcified chimneys on 600 degrees Fahrenheit boiling water in 30,000 feet depth. And worms living and clams living. Life can exist in the extremophiles. And so there's life in other places as we surmise.

And the whole magic of it came alive for me in that trip. In that moment. Wow. So what do you want the future to hold? I can tell you this, we surely agree, that Star Trek,

I think, planted some seeds of what we want the future to be. And some tap roots have already taken hold. But if we go 10 years, 20 years, should we send every politician? Forget the actors. Let's send the politicians into space and then lock them in a room in the UN afterwards.

There is a hole. There are the animal, the insect, and the fungus lying beneath. We're just discovering this whole other world of fungus. Yes. It's an entire branch. It's an entire sector of the tree of life. Correct. Exactly.

And you and I are old enough for it to have not been there when we first learned of the tree of life. We don't know this. Yes. People don't know this. I love mushrooms. And mushrooms are the fruit thereof. But people don't know this. Yes. People don't know this. I love mushrooms. And mushrooms are the fruit thereof. But people don't know that.

There's so much going on on Earth, and it's going to end unless we do something now about it. Not tomorrow. Not wait for funds 10 years from now. We're on the cusp of apocalypse. You know that, right? Yes. Do you agree with that? Yes.

Not the apocalypse of our extinction, because I think we will survive, some humans will survive no matter what. We're on the brink of the loss of civilization because all the greatest cities in the world are on the water's edge. And how high can you build that 20-foot wall right uh before the ocean is just completely overrun most of what

we've taken 10 000 years to build right back when your first horses show up further but but then go inland and you have the extreme weather and you have, I mean, the world as you and I know it, our children, but especially our children's children, are not going to know what we know. And looking in your eyes right now and seeing the pain, like, I don't want to discuss this, you're saying, this is not what I intended with Shatner. It is a truth that we have to impress upon the person you meet on the street. Bill, give me a sense of hope. You spent three years on a TV show

where every single show had glimmers of hope. So I interviewed Jeff Bezos. I don't know how much they showed on this documentary, but I had intense conversations with Mr. Bezos, whose view is this. Let's get the polluting industries up into the air in orbit, pollute up there because it'll dissipate, and get rid of the pollution here as quickly as possible. That's his drive. I said to him, but Jeff, that'll take 100

years. We don't have 100 years. And he said, apropos of what you just said, we have to have hope. If without hope, what else is there? So the hope is that all these warring politicians, both in our country, and I'm Canadian, and in the world, realize what you and I are talking about, the imperative of what you and I are talking about, and the necessity of immediate action. Do we do that by sending them all into space? immediate action. Do we do that by sending them all into space? Well, in 100 years, if we're still here and moving along, there will be a number of industries, people living in space, coming down to park-like Earth for restoration.

So... Why do you smile? Why do you smile? You're one of the wisest and most communicable of the astral people. Why do you smile? Why do you, why do you smile? You're one of the wisest and most communicable of the, of the, of the astral people. Why do you smile? Well, okay. So, uh, by the way, I think a hundred years is a very long time in the future. When you consider a hundred years ago, we were only just swapping out cars with horses in the cities. So a lot can happen in 100 years.

So let's hope it happens sooner than that. But you're suggesting or implying that access to space will become so prevalent that we can just send politicians. Or for people to make a living up there and come down here and find the Earth with its natural beauty. Yes, that's the dream. Okay. All right. So, because if we get a dream from anyone, it's got to have Star Trek DNA in it because those are the only ones that really. Well, look at the space vehicle.

People have been living there for years now, coming out every six months, coming back down. You're talking about the International Space Station. Yes. So that's been there for many years. Now, amplify that. Amplify that so that there's industry going on. They're burning coal

or oil if they have to, making electricity, wiring it down here, and, because I don't want to use the word beaming, it down here. And... You'd be totally forgiven for using the word beaming. We've eliminated

a large source of pollution. Yes. Yes. Yes. Unless everyone recycles everything, then there is no more. Pollution is a, what, Grandma? Used to have, what's that word? Pollution. Pollution.

What is that? There were vast areas of the ocean with plastic in it? What, Grandma? Right. So, Bill, we've got to land this plane. Let me just remind people that it was the new Shepard that was the capsule

you went up with. And in the interest of disclosure, Jeff Bezos owns Amazon and owns Prime, where your documentary is being shown. He's a remarkable man. He's a remarkable man. He's a remarkable man. Remarkable with a dream, and you want to use his fortune.

I learned to really care about him. What I learned from the documentary, because we learned a little bit about Jeff Bezos as well, is that he has very long history dreaming about going into space. So this is not just some latter day thought when you have some cash falling out of your pocket. Driving force. Also wanted to mention that

I do a talk show called I Don't Understand. Oh, I was a guest on your talk show. Thank you. Yes. And you were a wonderful guest. And it's all about things I don't understand, which is everything. I hate to admit it. I don't understand anything.

It was a brilliant title. I enjoyed my time there. Yes, definitely. It was wonderful. And then there's this wonderful show called The Unexplained on the History Channel, which is really great fun. It's very popular. Well, people love stuff that's not explained.

What happens is sometimes they jump too quickly to conclusions i can't explain that it must have been aliens who built it you know so i'm not that quick to i love the mystery but i'm not so quick to sort of invoke uh an explanation but william shatner thank you for lending us your time on StarTalk this is not your first time you've been on this show and when you're 100 we'll bring you back

and we'll get your 100 year perspective on this work because you don't look like you're going out anytime soon no, I hope not but I also want to say how much I admire you and not only your intelligence, but your ability to communicate. It's very important.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bill, that's all the time we have. Got to land this plane, land this starship. Thank you once again for being a guest on StarTalk, this not your first rodeo with us.

Live long and prosper. Or rather, live longer and be even more prosperous. How's that? StarTalk, this not your first rodeo with us. Live long and prosper. Or rather, live longer and be even more prosperous. How's that? You already satisfied the first two conditions. So we're out of here. Neil deGrasse Tyson for StarTalk. As always, keep looking up.