The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Impact: How Rocks from Space Led to Life, Culture, and Donkey Kong by Greg Brennecka

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

Impact: How Rocks from Space Led to Life, Culture, and Donkey Kong by Greg Brennecka A Short History of Nearly Everything meets Astrophysics for People in a Hurry in this humorous, accessible exploration of how meteorites have helped not only build our planet but steered the evolution of life and human culture. The Solar System. Dinosaurs. Donkey Kong. What is the missing link? Surprisingly enough, it's meteorites. They explain our past, constructed our present, and could define our future. Impact argues that Earth would be a lifeless, inhospitable piece of rock without being fortuitously assaulted with meteorites throughout the history of the planet. These bombardments transformed Earth’s early atmosphere and delivered the complex organic molecules that allowed life to develop on our planet. While meteorites have provided the raw materials for life to thrive, they have radically devastated life as well, most famously killing off the dinosaurs and paving the way for humans to evolve to where we are today. As noted meteoriticist Greg Brennecka explains, meteorites did not just set us on the path to becoming human, they helped direct the development of human culture. Meteorites have influenced humanity since the start of civilization. Over the centuries, meteorite falls and other cosmic cinema have started (and stopped) wars, terrified millions, and inspired religions throughout the world. With humor and an infectious enthusiasm, Brennecka reveals previously untold but important stories sure to delight and inform readers about the most important rocks on Earth.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we appreciate you guys tuning in thanks for being here oh my gosh another? Chris, why do another one? 12 years of podcasts. Maybe it's

time to just stop and take a break already. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Go to youtube.com forward slash chrisfoss. Hit the bell notification and go to goodreads.com forward slash chrisfoss. See everything we read and review over there. We actually know how to read. I know it looks like I don't, but I actually do. Mostly that's a lot

honorable because, I don't know, I went to public school. Betsy DeVos is public school, so I can't read. Anyway, it looks like I don't, but I actually do. Mostly that's a lot audible because I don't know. I went to public school, Betsy DeVos' public school, so I can't read. Anyway, guys, go to also to our groups, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those different places and see everything that's going on there. Now, we do have someone who went to school on the show, actually those big colleges, the colleges, and he learned all sorts of amazing stuff. He's going to be talking to us and himself i don't know if he really wants to maybe that's his thing i don't we all do that in coronavirus now with the lockdown we're just walking around talking to ourselves but he is on the show he's

gonna be talking about his new book that just came out february 1st 2022 called impact how rocks from space led to life culture and donkey kong we have greg braneca on the show he's gonna be talking to us and when he mentions rocks he's not talking about like metallica or heavy metal at least i don't think he is so we'll have to ask him when he comes on the show he is a phd and staff scientist and cosmochemist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. After his doctoral work at Arizona State University, he received the prestigious Sofia Kovalevskaya Award. I'm going with that.

I'm not Russian. Sorry. They're invading Ukraine, so screw those people. I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. Alexander, I'm sure it's a prestigious award. Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. I just assume that's Russian. That. Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

I just assume that's Russian. That's probably not a correct assumption on my part. I'm going to hell. To study the early solar system at the Institute for Planetology in Münster, Germany, where he led the solar system forensic group for five years. His research has appeared in science, nature, and proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Greg lives in Livermore Wine Valley. Livermore Wine Valley? That sounds like an oxymoron, liver and wine.

Country and fully enjoys the local flavors. Welcome to the show, Greg, and my apologies for making fun of your bio. No worries at all. It's a lot of strange words in there, for sure. Shouldn't it be Liverless Valley Wine Country? Yeah, well, you want a big liver if you're going to drink a lot of the wine, right? That's true. I did vodka

for about 20 years, so I know all about livers and drinking. You can see it on me right now. So, tell us your plugs, where people can find you on the interwebs and maybe get to know you. I try to stay off the interwebs as much as possible. I am on Twitter at Greg Brunica, just my name. Pretty straightforward and simple.

So no Snapchat? Man, there's going to be a lot of women in the audience disappointed. They usually are with me. I have to block all of them. So give us, what motivates you on to write this? I think it was just the fact that I come from a group that studies meteorites in a small community, and there's not a lot of people that outside the community know why

we do it or why meteorites are important. And it turns out they've really changed the course of history, and not just on a human level, but on a planet level. So that's kind of why I did it. Yeah, now this has nothing to do with rock and roll and Metallica, is that correct? Not much, I guess, but I'm a big fan.

I said how rock should be. Okay. I thought this was a new band coming in from space. So tell us, like that Star Wars movie, like a cantina or whatever. It's a new band, yeah. Yeah, there you go. So give us an overall arcing thing about the book. We'll get some of the deets.

Yeah, sure. So people think, okay, meteorites are just nice doorstops or something you buy on eBay. A lot of people know that they probably killed the dinosaurs and that's kind of what I would guess the general population thinks about it. Cause that's certainly where I was when I got into graduate school. Yeah. Well, the dinosaurs kind of had it coming. We all know that. Big lizards, come on. And so that's kind of the end of most people's understanding about meteorites. And it turns out we wouldn't have life at all if it wasn't for meteorites. There's a lot of, a lot of different things that they've done for us.

And they're not just things that kill the dinosaurs or keep the door open. They're things that bring life and other things that we need. Wow. And there's some interesting aspects and things that you find in the book. Is the premise of the book that our life or humanity or all life was brought to you here from another planet and came across those meteorites? Well, not really life itself, but the ingredients for life. I don't think anyone seriously in the meteoritic community believes that life

hits you right on a meteorite and then kind of started propagating on Earth. But meteorites certainly brought the ingredients. And I don't just mean things like water, but even much more complex things like amino acids and even nucleotide bases that are making up our DNA and RNA. So there's some pretty complex molecules that do hitch rides on meteorites and that they deliver basically the entire biosphere to the planet. That's interesting. We had someone on the show who was a Mars scientist, and his theory was Mars, when it was maybe in a better position, had some sort of life, and then the dust and blue overtook us. And I thought that was kind of interesting. So, I mean, would you still say that we might be, as human beings, dust of the stars still technically of some type? Absolutely. I mean, we've got nothing but a big recycling program up there with the stars.

I mean, every atom that is created in your your body and my body was was a star at some point so serious yeah wow well this is great this is interesting now what part of the bible was that in exodus i don't know i only know two now do these meter happens over seven days? No, stop it. I'm an atheist, by the way. I should fully disclose that. I think my audience knows that very well. But no, this is really interesting because, yeah, from what I understand and the scientists we've talked to, yeah, like you say, you can find the stardust fingerprints, I guess, in our body. And so you talk about how it led to life, culture.

And what was the reference to Donkey Kong? I grew up with that as a kid. Not a Donkey Kong fan. What's up? I know I am. I grew up with it in the eighties. Yeah. Yeah.

Basically the reference of Donkey Kong is electronics and meteorites are the reason we have electronics. And that's not something that a lot of people probably know. And Donkey Kong obviously is the highest end electronic we have. And so that's why I put that in the title of the book. Yeah. That you, you, there that in the title of the book. Yeah. There's some interesting fun facts here. On average, over 100 tons of extraterrestrial material is added to Earth every day from micrometeorites.

That's pretty wild, man. Yeah, that's a lot of material coming down. I like to think of it in terms of amount of Volkswagens. That's like 75 Volkswagen jet of amount of Volkswagens. That's like 75 Volkswagen Jettas. 75 Volkswagens. That's a lot of stuff every single day. Now, hold on. 75 Volkswagens every single day?

Every day. Every day. Oh, yes. They're in dust form, so they're not in Jetta form, but it's still a lot of material. So no Jetta, just the Beetle sort of size? It's just the smallest ones, yeah. Just the smallest ones? Yeah. yeah i mean can we contact the company and get them to stop that folks like the we do it's good for us chris it's good for us it's good for us so it gives us those materials that we need for stuff this is kind of interesting king tut was bearing with a knife buried with a

knife from a knife with a knife i don't know he maybe had it coming to uh soul caesar from an iron meteorite so even our pharaoh folks back in the day in ancient egypt knew about meteorites and stuff yeah they worshipped them they they were obviously the egyptians have ra as a sun god so they were pretty tuned to the the sky but you know they were lucky enough to see some large iron meteorites fall and they made a lot of artifacts out of them. And they couldn't make iron themselves. They didn't have the technology to do it. So anything iron that they could make was from meteorites.

And, of course, if you're the pharaoh, you get a sweet knife out of it. Yeah, man, because you're the pharaoh, eh? This is really interesting. The weird thing about man and his religions, his man-made religions, is I really, one of the things that kind of centered me on my questions about why are we here and what we're doing is a long time ago, there were cavemen living in a cave and this sort of stuff was really extraordinary to us. I mean, even today it's extraordinary, but these people are living in caves and you go in the dark and you see stuff falling from the sky and you're like, the sky is falling, the world's over. It's

like anything on certain news channels. And so they i think there's 3 000 gods that that uh man has made up over the years because you know whether it's whatever it's a high number and the romans officially worshipped a meteorite as their prime deity for four years into the reign of emperor i'll let you tell me that name yeah well i'll say it wrong as well i i always pronounce it elegobulus but you know historians will certainly correct me on that yeah i usually have alagalibus problems after a night yeah but yeah he didn't last very long so that's why i'm not allowed to know his name like four years but four years is still pretty good rain i guess that and he sounds like a colon disease the i'm sure, sorry, we probably lost the Emperor Elagabasis room now.

So this is pretty interesting. So we've been fascinated with this. I just saw on TikTok like homeless or meteorites coming in together. I don't know where it was in Texas or Houston or someplace, wherever it was. But it was really cool. And people are still fascinated by things falling from the sky. What are some other aspects in your book that help us understand what's going on with these rocks from space? Yeah, well, I mean, your kind of references to religions and

how many gods we've had over the years and how important they have been, you know, to cavemen and et cetera, to ancient cultures. But it's interesting, you look at even some of the most followed religions today, Islam and Christianity, and they wouldn't be anywhere near the religions they are, at least the same trajectory if it weren't for meteorites. And I found that to be really fascinating as I was doing this research, is that how important they were to the development of Christianity, for example. In what ways? Tell us more. Yeah. So early on, even the star of Bethlehem is thought to be a comet. So it all kind of starts with that, I guess. But you may have heard

of St. Paul or Saul. St. Paul is the capital of Minnesota, of course, named after the evangelist Paul or Saul. He changed his name. But the story goes that he was an anti-Christian basically early on and was writing to give some Christians a hard time and then was knocked off his horse by this big meteorite impact, blinded him for three days and all that, you know, that's, that's the historical document. And then he of course converted and then became the most, most important figure in Christian evangelism. So that's a pretty big deal.

And it's interesting that that story actually holds up when you look at it scientifically, because we've seen that in, you know, various meteorite. Yeah. Maybe it works good for recruiting you're like god's angry at us look he's throwing crap at us maybe and maybe maybe i don't know for religions maybe that's what meteorites really are god's is angry he's throwing snowballs and well you know the the aztecs actually thought they were poops from the gods so really yeah which is i think really funny but that's what i chose to study was poops from the gods. That's gross. Earth is... It's like a litter box, man. There's a whole new movie script for you.

Earth is God's litter box. Yeah, it really is. That might explain some people I see in Florida on the news all the time. The Florida man people there. Florida, come on. Well, we've already run off the Emperor Elgabas of Lotus, Globulus gentleman, so we might as well lose the Florida crowd too with it. This is extraordinary.

And so I guess there's loads of organic molecules. Is there stuff that have come in? Like I know this sounds crazy, but anything you preface with, I know that sounds crazy these days. With all due respect. With all due respect, With all due respect. It might sound crazy, but I used to have this friend who claimed that he worked at, he claimed that he worked at Area 51 at one time. And he was like in a guard or some sort of facility where he wasn't like anything.

But he was like, there's something down there in the basement. And I'm like, you've watched independence day way too many times and he claimed that like all sorts of these sort of special materials that we have like titanium or other really rare stuff that we have comes from down there and we learn to make it from the aliens of course they're down there in the beds but is it is it throwing that craziness out of course i don't know i could be wrong we're going joe rogan all of a sudden the sudden. Is there maybe some materials that we've gotten on that we use as special metals on the earth from these meteorites? Absolutely. I mean, you know, friend, there's some craziness there. I'll grant you that. But the crux of it is that we do have a lot of material from meteorites that we wouldn't have otherwise. It's definitely true. I alluded to that earlier with the electronics. I

mean, there's stuff we make high-end electronics out of like palladium and gold and these fancy metals that are difficult to pronounce sometimes. All that comes from meteorites because Earth started with it, but it all went to when Earth melted, basically. And we wouldn't have any at all in the crust of the Earth that we could access if it weren't for meteorites just continually pelting us. So thank those Jeddahs that are flying down. Thank those Volkswagen Beetles coming in, unless they hit your car windshield, and then you're going to be pissed because you have to call the insurance company. So you really believe maybe, I mean, we came from the dust of the stars, and we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for meteorites, possibly?

Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of aspects to that, too. I mean, you can talk about the organic delivery. You can talk about killing the dinosaurs. If the dinosaurs weren't dead, then we'd probably rise up as mammals. They probably would have eaten us. First guy, they would have just eaten them. Yeah.

You're just a fuzzy snack at that point. The whole Bible study would have been different. It would have been added even the garden dinosaur T-Rex just comes in. They're like, oh, shit. God's like, fuck. This didn't work out at all. I spent six days making that crap. More intelligent design, I guess.

Yeah. Without the giant lizards. Probably. We deserve it. Seriously. Have you seen how we turned out lately? This is really interesting. Large swaths of the ocean would be virtually devoid of life if micrometeorites did not

provide bioavailable iron to plankton. That's really wild. Yeah. I know. I mean, they take away the dinosaurs, but they provide for plankton. Yeah. Can we get more of this stuff? It contains a lot of stuff that the plankton need, and they just use it. So it's pretty cool. Can we get more of this stuff?

Can we order it on Amazon or something? Actually, I got this one on Amazon. Oh, did you really? You think you bought a meteorite? Well, eBay. Excuse me. I take it back. It was eBay.

Now, if people come across meteorites, do I need to do a PSA health thing? Should they be touching them when they are in space? Studying them, probably not. But if you intend on putting them on your mantle to talk about, then that's fine. Yeah. I might wear some gloves. Because I know that the stuff that they bring back from space, like if they go to the moon

and stuff, which of course is faked. I'm kidding. Obviously. As long as we're on a Joe Rogan rant, we might as well just go off the rails. Evidently, the dust is pretty toxic, right? Or maybe it's because it travels to space. It picks up gamma rays or something. I think we more want to protect the dust

from us. I think we don't want protect the dust from us. I think it's we don't want to contaminate the rocks because they contain a lot of valuable scientific information. Why do you want my ham sandwich on it? Yeah. You're putting your ham sandwich on the rock? Well, you know. Do they not give you a plate salary as a

scientist? We actually had one of the people that I referenced earlier wrote a book about the discussion of the ethics of going to mars and whether or not we should it was kind of one of those discussions like when you go interact with species in the wild should you be careful not to give them our colds and our flus and all of our germs and then break that sort of uh barrier and so his his thesis was the same that we shouldn't go to Mars because we're just going to bring all the ugly crap that we bring and probably we should just leave it alone in its pristine condition.

Yeah. Prop it to humanity throughout the cosmos. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's the same thing we do with capitalism. Look how that works out. We try and prop it up somewhere, it just turns into communism or something. I don't know. It seems that way sometimes.

But no, if we go there, I mean, it's kind of funny that we can take a planet that already looks like a shithole and turn it into a worse one. But if you've seen what we've done with this one, you kind of get the idea. Man, you are pessimistic. I know. I'm just doing jokes today. I love this. This is fun. What are some other things that we need to know about meteorites and all this stuff with

rock? Well, you mentioned Mars. I think that's an interesting segue into talking about meteorites from Mars. I mean, we haven't brought back any pieces of Mars. We've been up there quite a few times with rovers and there's been a lot of cool stuff done, but the only samples of the planet we have are from meteorites. Yeah, and that's how we get a lot of our information about the interior of the planet and kind of how it's evolved over time is from these meteorites. And do the meteorites come from Mars or do they pass through Mars atmosphere and they pick up? No, we've got 300 that were blasted off the surface of Mars. Wow.

Basically, a big asteroid will hit Mars and then knock off a chunk of Mars and then we're the beneficiaries of it. Wow. That's really interesting. So what about these shows they're always talking about like i don't know what was that recent show that they did where an asteroid is common is coming to us don't look up yeah the are we are we in for one of those like how's that uh i hope not no i think i think we're okay for now we've got a lot of people trying to pay attention to big ones and you And, you know, who knows?

Things can come from the shadows you don't know about. So I wouldn't panic. What about that big asteroid that passed by that everyone thought maybe was a ship? It looked like a giant, I don't know, galactic battleship. Oh, that one with the Hawaiian name that I can't pronounce? Yeah. Yeah. Well, it didn't hit us, did it?

No, but, I mean, something like that's going to have a lot of different makeup and stuff. Yeah, I mean, it could make a big hole in the ground if it hits us. But luckily, there's a lot of space out there in space. Do most of the meteorites come from our galaxy, or do they come in from other places? They all come from our solar system. So, basically, everything we get either comes from the moon, from Mars, or from the asteroid belt, which is between Mars and Jupiter. So they're all locally sourced turds from the gods. This is the Aztec stock. Turds from the gods. I'm going to, next time I see

one, I'm going to say that. Well, this is really interesting and really cool in how it propagates life, how it has an effect on everything we do. And is there, I mean, some of these space rocks, how old are some of these? They're old. Most of the meteorites we look at are kind of snapshots of the very early solar system, so 4.5 billion with a B. Wow. So they're old. Do you know how old that rock is that's on your desk?

Is it like a fine wine? It's still pretty old. It's also 4.5 billion. I mean mean we go four point five six seven billion things like that there it's you know it's old if i were you i'd put it in the meteorite cellar and i'll let that let that steep for another couple of years yeah yeah and then open it drink it so pretty cool all the different stuff that goes on here do do are there like meteorite chasers of scientists where if they

see large meteorites come in they think they're not going to disappear through the atmosphere they go out and they chase them and try yeah actually there's there's a few people that kind of make a living chasing meteorites yeah that sounds like fun it does sound like a one hell of a life you see a fireball in the news and you just jump on a plane to that country and go take your metal detector and start looking wow Wow, that's crazy, man. It's like that, what was that old show, the storm chasers or whatever, the tornado chasers? Yeah, I remember that, yeah. Yeah, you just run around doing that.

So that's got to be cool. Anything more you want to touch on about the book or tease out about the book? I just think there's a lot of interesting stories that are in there about what meteorites have done for humanity and the planet. So if you're interested in big history or interested in how we got to where we are, check it out. There's some cool stuff in there. Is there anything new that we can find, or have we pretty much collected at all? Oh, man, we're finding new stuff all the time.

Serious? Wow. Oh, yeah, that's what keeps me going. And we've got some space missions that are going up. There's one that just returned from the japanese space agency and and nasa's doing one collecting pieces of a meteorite or basically pieces of an asteroid bringing it back so it's like going to the meteorite isn't it so crazy i remember watching that what there was one or two movies i think one was a bruce willis back in the day and they went to a meteorite and they blew it up and whatever yeah they're blowing them up then yeah and now we're now we're just going to them and it's like picking stuff up and you're

just like, Oh, I'm going to jump off at 5 billion miles an hour or whatever. Yeah. We're friends with them now. So it's fine. That is wild, man. Can you imagine the, when I think about this stuff where I see like the international space station or something like this going on, I think of the, the, the, the, the brothers, who are the brothers that invented

flight? The Wright brothers? The Wright brothers. I want to say the Linden brothers for some reason. And I think I'm thinking of Charles Lindbergh. Can you imagine how much their minds would be blown if they came and they're like, shit, we did this. We started this crap.

Anybody from the 1800s, 1900s, early 1900s. I mean, stuff that has changed since then is incredible. That's the 1800s, 1900s, early 1900s. I mean, stuff that has changed since then is incredible. That's awesome. Well, this is a wonderful book, and you should pitch off probably a lot of people in religion with it. So that's good to find my – Yeah, that was definitely the main goal when I was writing it. Have you gotten interesting comments yet on social media?

Yeah, a few. But I think most people that are reading it realize that it's not about how God created the earth in seven days. It's more about how physics created the earth in four and a half billion years. So yeah. To quote that, to quote that great show, I forget the name of it. Science, bitch. Oh, Breaking Bad, right? Breaking Bad, HBO. Thank you very much. Yeah. Science, bitch. I love that meme. So this is really cool. Give us your plugs, Greg, as we go out so that people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, just Greg Brenica is my Twitter handle.

So at Greg Brenica. And that's all I've got. I don't have anything else. I'm not fancy on the internet. Yeah, ladies, reach out to him. Maybe you can get him to set up a Snapchat account. Anyway, check him out. Impact, how rocks from space led to life, culture, and Donkey Kong,

which is always important, especially if you're a Donkey Kong fan. I remember the days when you put a quarter in arcade machines, and everyone was worried we were gambling or something back then, or they were satanic. It was the 80s. It was really weird. So check out his book. Order it up.

You can find out more. Learn science because science is important. Science is all around you, especially in all the different things that we do these days. To my audience, be sure to go to youtube.com, Forge.chrisvoss,

hit the bell notification button. Go to goodreads.com, Forge.chrisvoss. Go to all of our groups, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. Make sure you subscribe to that LinkedIn newsletter. It's killing it on LinkedIn and the big 132,000-member LinkedIn group as well.

Thanks for coming on the show, Greg. We certainly appreciate it. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. There you go. And thanks, my audience, for tuning in. Be good to each other, and we'll see you guys next time.