The Joe Rogan Experience - #1992 - Oliver Stone

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

Oliver Stone is an award-winning director, producer, screenwriter, and author. Look for his documentary "Nuclear Now" on June 6 via video on demand.www.nuclearnowfilm.com

The Joe Rogan Experience. Showing by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Yeah, I have been fascinated by this subject for a long time, and I'm very, very happy that you made this documentary. And it's a very good documentary, by the way. Thank you. Thank you for making it, and thank you for highlighting this very, very important issue that seems to have been really confused. And I'm really glad how you covered it in this documentary about Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and Fukushima. We have these ideas in our mind

about the dangers of nuclear power. And I love the analogy that you made in the film About how driving a car is not scary, but it's dangerous flying in a plane Feels scary, but it's far safer Yeah and this is a great analogy to nuclear power when you went over the Data when you talked about the amount of deaths from coal every year, when you talk about the amount of deaths overall ever from nuclear, it's stunning. It is. It's stunning. And then when you cut to in the documentary, you showed the anti-nuclear movement that happened after

Three Mile Island and how crazy it was. There's all these stars and celebrities and they're doing concerts. We've got to stop nuclear power and what a mess. That happens when a fad becomes fashionable. It's a very successful movement. You're talking about the negatives here and the accidents.

We cover all that in the film which is called Nuclear Now. And the idea that was behind it was because I really was like you. I went along with those things in the 70s and the 80s because I didn't know better. I wasn't educated. I really wanted to know what is nuclear power. I wanted to go back to the source. And you've got to go back to the beginning.

and you've got to go back to the beginning and you've got to go back to Marie Curie and Albert Einstein and World War II and all how it got developed. This nuclear energy is a beautiful, incredible, almost a miracle that was given to us. We have an Earth. It's in the Earth, uranium. It's everywhere, the planet, the Earth, the sun.

And we, in a sense, we took it like Prometheus and we kind of misinterpreted it, misused it, which is not, which is kind of normal for given what we do with natural things. World War II was happening just as the nuclear fission was being understood and that made the bomb. They made the bomb with it because there was a war on it. They rushed it, and they did an amazing job up in Heimer, down in Los Alamos. And they got it, and they were successful. But as you know, it was misunderstood at that point that nuclear

energy was not nuclear bomb. In the contrary, a bomb is very difficult to build. And it takes years sometimes. It takes scientists and they have to enrich the plutonium and they have to work at it. There's all configurations in the bomb that don't exist in nuclear energy. So when people see a nuclear energy plant, they subconsciously, they cross it with both war and they cross it with horror films that they've seen in the 1950s with radioactivity and monsters that come out of that. You know, a spider bites the man and he becomes Spider-Man. Hulk, yeah.

It's incredible, the stuff that happens. And Hollywood has done no favors to it. It's continued for years and years and years. And then, of course, you had Three Mile Island. The film was coming out at the same time, China Syndrome, with Jane Fonda. It was a good film. I enjoyed it. We all enjoyed it. But it really was hysterical and alarmist. Nothing happened at Three Mile Island except the reactor did melt down. But nobody got hurt because the containment structure worked to keep it in. So there was no release of radiation.

And they continued on. Silkwood was another one. If you remember not too long ago, there was the HBO thing, Chernobyl. Yeah. Which was a complete fictionalization of what happened at Chernobyl. So we went to Russia and we talked to the scientists there. And we wanted to know what happened at Chernobyl. And we find out that it's in the film. And the same thing is true for Fukushima, which is unbelievable because when you go to the bottom of it, I was astounded to find out that nobody died there from radiation.

Not one Japanese. They checked the whole thing out, and it's been done to death. But you hear about 15,000, 20,000 people died from the tsunami and the earthquake, which was the biggest earthquake Japan ever had. I mean, really, we show the earthquake. We show the tsunami. The wave was 100 feet tall. There was a badly built wall. The wall was not a seawall that could hold.

And the generators were flooded beneath the water. And these were also not state-of-the-art. That's right. It's like what they can do now in terms of these power plants. No, everything gets better. But even those nuclear reactors built 60, 70 years ago are still functioning. They're legacy reactors. They do work.

And we mustn't dismiss them. Yeah, it gets better. Technology do work. And we mustn't dismiss them. Yeah, it gets better. Technology gets better. As in any business, there's another generation and it's better, hopefully better. The point was that they could avoid what happened in Fukushima today.

Fukushima was, if you look at closely, Japan had built 20-some reactors at that point and this one is the only one and the others were exposed to the same earthquake and the same kind of tsunami. Several of them were on that same coastline. But this particular one, this plant, was the only one that was shaken up. And even then, all the radiation that was released, there was a hydrogen explosion. That radiation released in the air, you heard about it, it was supposed to be another terminal.

Well, we have shots in the film showing they're taking tests on all the Japanese citizens. And nobody gets, you know, it's low level, what they call low level radiation, which is we can sustain it. We have DNA in our body that fixes fixes repairs our body as each day goes by we uh but it's also you point out very well in the film that there's a lot of radiation that you don't even take into consideration that you encounter constantly we have this idea of radiation as being a net negative it's a terrible thing but it's just a thing. You get it from being outside. You get it from rocks. You get it from all sorts of things.

There's radiation in this room. You get radiation from eating a banana. I think what you said is so true that films and comic books are fictions of radiation. That's part of the problem. Yeah, that started early in the 50s. It's a giant problem. Comic books and all that. It plays to the worst aspects of human nature,

which is we just love to get terrified about headlines, so we don't read into the devil of the details. Exactly. That's what was confusing to me, and really, we're miseducated. And there is still a bias against nuclear, if you it to anybody yeah it's scary instantly it's yeah but the point is we can live with it and we have to because we're facing or we're facing a very difficult situation a cliff that we're going to go over and it seems that no one's really getting it. So that's why I felt like the film, I wanted to know.

I need to educate myself. So in doing the film, I think I was able to bring out these things you talk about. What is wrong with nuclear energy? It can work. It is a miracle. We should use it. And we should use it abundantly. The Chinese and the Russians are way ahead of us. They built it, and they Russians are way ahead of us. They've built this,

they built it, and they built it with government backing, not like the U.S., where we kind of back it, but we don't really back it. So as a result, well, China's really cutting out now because they have about 70 reactors, approximately 70 reactors, yeah, about 74, I think. Anyway, they're building. And I've heard, I can't, I don't remember the source, but I did hear that they're putting another $140 billion into this thing, which means that they're going to build 150-some reactors over the next, by 2038. That is a serious investment serious investment Wow that's a serious investment that would take a long time for us to catch up to oh it's not about competing it's right but if we wanted to do what they're doing right now well we have even if it's not competing just to do just a big

current yeah so they're the leader right now in it. Well, no. We're the biggest country in the world. We still have 90-some reactors online. So China's climate goals hinge on a $440 billion nuclear build-out. That's interesting. So we still have more, even with all the negative stereotypes about nuclear reactors. Planning at least 150 new reactors in the next 15 years. More than the rest of the world has built in the past 35. That's wow That's why I'm surprised you remember. It says it right there

China has you got a system working out. Yeah, Jamie's the wizard look at him over there. He's the best He doesn't know what the service about you This this article that you just pulled up, Jamie, this is from Bloomberg. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Well, you see, you got the source right away. Yeah. And this is from 2021.

This whole thing is exactly how you lay it out in the film. It's almost like we have to cure ourselves of these misconceptions. And if we don't, we're screwed. China's building, man. They don't fuck around. Now, they have a lot of coal. They're still building coal plants because they have a huge demand.

And they have to get off the coal. That is crucial because they are completely contaminating the atmosphere as well. The more nuclear they build, the better it will be. The contamination from coal is terrifying.

We showed a documentary that had been done. Do you remember the documentary? No, but I remember it was in Indiana. It was a documentary that was all about, one of the things

it was highlighting is all the people that live around these plants and the air quality that they suffer. It's insane. Their cars are covered with like a thin film of all the particulates in the atmosphere.

That's great. It's horrible. They estimate from air pollution alone, I've read figures of 4 million deaths a year. It's just so many cases of respiratory illnesses. It's horrible. I want to say 4 million a year from air pollution, but 1 million at least from coal a year. That's what I've seen.

But there could be more coal. And who knows what the health negatives are on top of that? Like how many people are suffering with illnesses and ailments because of those particulars, especially around those reactors or the plants rather. It's horrible. Well, we still have coal in the US. Yeah. No, this was in the US. This was in Indiana, correct? Oh yeah. They have coal everywhere. I mean, President Trump said, Trump digs coal. I dig coal. He said clean coal once.

I was just like, what the fuck are you saying? The fuck are you saying? Cleaner than what? The other... Lighting tires? No, the other truth that we miss is gas. We know how ugly the oil thing is. I mean, there's the waste and all the oil, and this fossil fuel itself is destroying the universe because we're putting carbon into the

atmosphere, CO2. But gas is considered, they're using gas everywhere. It seems like a modern thing. They say, well, renewables, which is solar and wind, we're all for that. I want wind, we want solar. But they don't work all the time. They run out in the winter, at night. Is it also a problem with battery technology when it comes to those things? Well, that's part of it too. But the point is when they run out, what they need is gas backup. It's backup. You see, nuclear doesn't need storage and it doesn't need backup. What's the beauty of it?

It's a real clean energy. And gas does. I mean, renewables do need backup. And that backup is gas. So it's not 100% like one of the issues is about storage, the waste. Yeah. And when you talked about just the size of the amount of storage, it's not nearly as much as a lot of people think it is. All the waste that America has used up to now in the last, since 1958, whenever Shipping Port was built, amounts to about the size of Walmart, frankly.

You could put it in a Walmart. In other words, people make a big deal about waste, but they don't realize that it's so intensive. And energy, huge amount of energy that it's, how do you say, compact as a result. So it fits into, if waste itself is a positive about nuclear, because first of all, there's been no harm done. So it's been buried in casks. And first of all, it goes in into water for maybe two, three years. And that's a conductor that takes the radioactivity down. And then it gets put into casks that are 12 to 14 feet. They build these casks in the United States.

They're concrete and steel. Concrete is a great, does not conduct radioactivity. Concrete stops it. So concrete and steel casks work. They can go for 100 years, and then you can do another 100 years. And then eventually, eventually, you realize that radioactivity drops each time. In four or five years, it's way down. It tops to almost, if you, I don't have all

the figures, but you can see that it's a ridiculous fear given, compared to what? Given climate change is so dangerous. And compared to the deaths that are already occurring every year, just from using the methods we have now, in comparison to the amount of people that died from nuclear, it's very, very small. Well, the only people who have died from nuclear that we know of are returnable. There were 50 first responders who died in the actual – they were badly protected. They were sent in by a corrupt and decaying Soviet government. And then they were hiding the fact that there was a leak.

The radioactivity went all over northern Europe. And still, it was not what we think it is. It's not like Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It wasn't that enriched kind of radiation. It was a low-level radiation that exists that went out there. And they went out. The UN went in and the WHO went in. And it was really exhaustive what they did.

And they came up with a number of about 4,000 possible deaths from cancer after Chernobyl. Now, since then, there's been another examination by another scientific organization that says that is even in a high number. We don't really know because people die from cancer, you know, naturally. So we don't really know how bad Chernobyl was, but nothing like what has been what the environmentalists say is the end of the world. Or the HBO series. Oh, the HBO was a disaster. I mean, it was. I didn't see it, but I heard it was great.

Yeah, it was great as tension and all that. Yeah, I make movies, I know. You can make movies out of disasters, but it's not fair. It's not fair. It's not fair for humanity. Nuclear's never had one proponent. Nobody in... That's what bothered me.

Nobody said, it's a good thing, as opposed to, it's this horrible beast. It's crazy that it's something like that that's right in front of our face it's right in front it's not like something that has to be invented it's not theoretical no it's like you know again myth over you use your reason go scientific yeah trust the science uh which is very hard to do in a world where, imagine tobacco, it was sold to us as tobacco is good for you. Right. Car seat belts were not necessary. We have automobile safety.

You know, all the good things that happen, they happen against the desire for profit. Yeah. But even this desire for profit, it's like when we're talking about like renewables, you're talking about that. It's really interesting that that gets connected to green. Everyone says that's green. This is green power, green energy. But there's very little that's more green than solar. Yeah, that's it's never mentioned.

We went to Davos with a film and they're taught here. They are Davos, all the world's richest businessmen, biggest guys, movers and shakers. They don't even have it on the agenda. They talk about clean, green, this, that. It's maddening. It's maddening. We had to struggle to get a screening of nuclear. And we got one.

So, in other words, people know about it, but they— It has to become trendy, right? Yeah. Right? but they, they, they, it has to become trendy, right? Right. I mean, and it's almost really what has to happen. It's almost like that has to become the trend of being one of the people that the early adopters recognize that nuclear is the way out of this. It's a sad thing because the truth is they, they, it worked for 70 years and it still work and the old ones work work but okay we want new stuff that's the American way we always have to have a new thing because we get bored with the old thing Oh nuclear I heard about that that that that's

dangerous that's that's the way the reaction so now they're building in the in the US there are 50 new company 50 companies working on 50 companies working privately toward with some Department of Energy help towards making SMRs, small modular reactors, that are sleek, great looking. And they all have different methods of working, including Natrium, including Bill Gates is there with a new company. Does this lead to nuclear power cars? Because if so, I'm in. Yeah, sure. Well, no, that's another thing.

I want one of those. No, cars, transportation, that can be dealt with. That's another. See, it's not just electricity that has to be improved. We have to nuclearize electricity, which is about a third of the problem. But we still have the problems after that of transportation. And aside from that, heating buildings, heating offices.

Cooking. Heating in general. Yeah. For apartments, for offices. And then there's the industry aspect of it. Concrete, steel. These are huge, highly intensive CO2. They consume a lot of carbon to make these things.

And don't forget agriculture. It sounds horrible, but ammonia is one of the worst byproducts of the – ammonia is in the air. And you remember the Oklahoma bombing. Yeah. But ammonia is terrible. And what we have to do is get electrify everything, essentially. So the demand for electricity, given the whole world's coming into it, look at all the people in Africa, Asia, who are coming to want what we have. They see television. They see what Americans have. Have you gotten into regenerative farming at all and looked into that? Not really, no.

It's something to consider because when you're talking about ammonium, when you're talking about just the different fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides that get put in through the ground, I don't know if it's scalable for the entire country. That's the real problem with it. But there's people like Joel Salatin and White Oak Pastures that's down in Georgia, and they figured out a way to have farms where it's regenerative, where the animals are eating the grass, they're fertilizing the grass,

they use the fertilizer, the fertilizer, they use the fertilizer for, you know, to grow food and they bring in these animals to these ecosystems and they have them exist in a way that it just basically contained nature. It's just the way the natural cycle is and they have a zero carbon footprint. It's essentially, everything sort of works in balance and that's how it's supposed to happen and if you look at especially from white oak pastures he had video of the runoff from a rainstorm on to from his property into the river which is nothing to the next-door neighbor's property who runs

an industrialized farm and it's a fucking disaster it's horrific to look at because you just see the topsoil's gone look at the look at the difference there's a clear line between his property on the left and the neighbor's property on the right i mean how insane is it that this is normal for us. This is the problem. The problem is they've gone into these monocrop agriculture situations where they plot. They use the same land over and over again, and they have to apply fertilizer, and they have to apply herbicides and pesticides. It makes it toxic for everything. But whatever the fuck it is they're growing, a lot of the stuff they're growing is genetically modified in order to be more tolerant of these pesticides and herbicides and that's not good no this is this is a major source of the

problem yeah fertilizer but i can't comment on that yeah it's really interesting stuff it's obviously not my wheelhouse either but these uh people that I've had to talk about it. But the point is that we're going to need, some people say, three, four, five times the amount of electricity that we have now by 2050, which is the, we used 2050 as a goal mark because that's the IPCC standard. They said that by 2050, all the countries of the world have to bring down the carbon emissions to zero emissions to zero. To zero. Yeah.

How is that possible? It doesn't work. I mean, the green renewables are great. There's great idea. It made great sense when you saw Al Gorsfield. But the truth is that CO2 keeps going up, not down. It's gone up since then. And we've spent trillions of dollars since the 2000 period.

This is 20-some years now. And it just hasn't worked, and nobody admits it. That's what's crazy. So the only way to get the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is do it clean. Do it right now. You've got to get rid of gas, and you've got to get rid of oil, basically, and you've got to be severe about it. That means you have to have an alternative, a clean, cheap, scalable alternative. And nuclear is the only one

that's proven itself, proven itself for so many years. And yet nobody, it doesn't even get talked about. I mean, journalists will say, and there's nuclear, which is dangerous. But it's not dangerous if you do it right. If you build it right and you keep it right. It's been done time and time again. It's just that one, you know, I wish there had been more accidents. It would have really taught the lesson. Every industry has had needed accidents. I mean, when they started the railroad, they thought that your brain would get pushed back in your head because of the speed of going forward.

Same thing was true with airplanes. He had more crashes before the airplane has been modified into this incredibly powerful machine. We're not going to get rid of the airplane. We're going to have to use fuel. We have to use aviation fuel. And that will come from the marriage of hydrogen and carbon, actually. And it will need a lot of heat. And that heat is going to come from nuclear. It's not going to come from anything else, that amount of heat. So we also have to take into consideration that if the

population continues to grow and we're doing things the same way, whatever our output is now that's damaging, it's going to get worse and worse and worse. There's going to be more people. United States is in good shape compared to the rest of the world, but look at India. Look at Africa, which is, I mean, people will burn wood if they have to, much less coal. I mean, they're not going to stop people from getting things and they're going to want energy. That is going to be the prime. India is crucial. We bring it up in the film. They are doing some great nuclear work. They have 20-some reactors in India. But they are definitely on the path of coal like China.

Their demand is enormous for coal. So what happens? There's no luck. We can't get out of that mess. We're going to have so much pollution, so much warming that the only way we can do it is by building nuclear now and taking everything else we can throw in there, including renewables, alongside it. Well, I think it has to become something that people are aware of and becomes trendy.

And that's one of the great things in the film. This Brazilian woman that lives in Austin. Oh, yeah. Yeah, she lives in Austin. Her name is Isabel Bomke. And she makes TikTok films. Yeah. And these little TikTok videos,

the great thing about those is they become viral. And maybe that is how the message gets out. Yeah. I think that's part of it. I think it needs to be addressed by leaders. The leadership of, let's say, President Xi of China has committed to the UN that by 2060, they will have zero carbon emissions. Well, I think that's a vow. It's going to take someone who's got some courage because it politically it's an issue because people do have this false narrative in their head.

Yeah. So it's going to take someone who's willing to step outside of what the polling would show, who's willing to step outside of what the polling would show. Because I would imagine that most people, if you just started talking about we have to switch the entire country over to nuclear power, if you're running for president, people go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So many people just have the knee-jerk reaction that is brought about because of these films, because of the anti-nuclear power movement. There's still that propaganda exists in people's heads or the false narrative. Necessity is the mother of invention. As things get worse, it will be clear that we need nuclear more and more and more.

And we'll come late to the game and we'll say, well, we've got to build more and more and more nuclear because it's not working with wind and solar. Right, but I don't think you're going to see that from a politician. I don't think a politician is going to stick their neck out. I think it's going to have to be so prevalent in the public narrative. It's going to have to be so prevalent in the zeitgeist that they think politically it's okay to be a proponent of it. Well, I think the younger generation is changing the numbers and the demographics. I think 60% I'm reading are pro-nuclear now.

That's great. In the U.S. It's probably TikTok. Well, maybe. It might be. But, you know, it's a new generation. They're more scared about climate change than they are about war. Yeah.

And a lot of the older generation, they confuse, who confuse nuclear energy with nuclear bomb are about war. And a lot of the older generation they confuse, who confuse nuclear energy with nuclear bomb are dying off. And I think there is going to be a change. It has to be. There's no other way. There has to be. On top of it, it's a miracle. It's incredible.

If it's handled correctly, built correctly like Hyman Rickover did with the Navy, that's the Navy was one of the biggest developers of nuclear in America. Yeah. From the 1950s, they built nuclear submarines and they kept going. Just talk about the power in a nuclear submarine, how long it lasts too. Yeah. One small reactor can run a submarine for how many, 50, 60 years?

That's insane. And also, if you put two of them into an aircraft carrier, you've seen the size of those. Yeah. That's just a giant 6,000 people on that thing. That can go for also two reactors can make, that's what they're doing actually. also, the two reactors can make, that's what they're doing, actually. Two reactors can make an aircraft carrier go for

I don't know how many years, 50 years, 40 years. That's insane. It's incredible. I mean, really, there's nothing like it. Nothing like it. The fact that that is not, that's not something that people marvel at. No. That you have a ship at

sea that's powered entirely by nuclear power and it can go for 50 years or whatever it is. We try to show that in the film. I mean, it's just a miracle. It's insane. It's so much different than anything else. And if you just do it right like they do with the submarines or like they do with… You need discipline and you need to do it and you need to redo it and do it and do it. So you standardize it. The United States never standardized it.

Japan did, Korea did. They built one type of reactor and they built it consistently. Just recently, Korea built four heavy water reactors, big ones in UAR, the United Arab Republic, four of them, 1.4 gigawatts each. A gigawatt's a billion watts. And so it's 5.6 gigawatts. That's a huge amount. For the United Arab Republic, that'll cover a huge area. That's incredible. That's the kind of building you need to do.

But you have to do it consistently. Didn't the phrase—go ahead, please. And by the way, you can to do, but you have to do it consistently. Didn't the phrase... Go ahead, please. And by the way, you can ship it too. If you assembly line it, like in Korean shipyards or something, you can build it in a way that with SMRs, parts, you can put the parts in and ship them like a Lego set up and down the coastline of China or the coastline of America, any country. Russians did that in Pevek, which is an Arctic outpost.

They built, they sent a barge. The Greenpeace, of course, predicted it would be a nuclear Titanic, and it wasn't. It arrived in Pevek, and it's set up, and it's working beautifully to this day. So SMRs are shippable, and they can be built in shipyards. They can be assembled by the thousands. There's no reason not to. Now, what about if one of those things sinks? Yeah, well, water absorbs it.

It absorbs radiation. Well, so, like, what happens when there have been nuclear submarines that have sunk, right? Well, if they did, there's been no damage. Isn't the phrase can neither confirm nor deny? Doesn't that come from, I think that comes from an operation. I believe I heard this on Radiolab. I think that phrase comes from an operation where they were trying to recover a Russian downed submarine. Right. I remember that. And they had to answer the question. And so when they were questioned, their answer was, we can neither confirm nor deny. Because they were put in a position where they were supposed to interact. So how do we say this?

We can't lie. We can't say, no, we're not going to tell you because we have to answer. So the answer they came up with is we can neither confirm nor deny, which is a beautiful, it's very eloquent. If you really think about it, if you want to be a bullshit artist, like that's an amazingly eloquent statement.

That was the one that Howard Hughes was involved in, Globar. Is that what it was? Yeah, Howard Hughes. Yeah, that sounds right yeah never heard more about it you know whatever happened happened it was you know the world the world's like the world didn't end that's the thing about nuclear people say well when something goes wrong it really goes wrong but that's there's no evidence that's an exaggeration in but in comparison to

the things that we absolutely know go wrong with just transportation, just driving. Like deaths are inevitable when you have hundreds of millions of people. Obviously, you want to mitigate them as much as possible. You want to mitigate dangers as much as possible. But we're just victim of like bad narrative. Industrial accidents. You know how many people die a year? Two million.

It's incredible. So 50 people died at Chernobyl. And here we are running away from nuclear. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. But that's humans. We're so weird like that. Germany is the craziest of all.

I mean, they are smart people. I thought they were mathematical geniuses. Well, explain what you're talking about because a lot of people probably don't even know that they shut down. They originally built 20-some reactors in the 70s, and they were doing very fine with it, and they had no problems. And now they've shut them all down because of the Green Party, which is a political party, Green Party, which is also pro-war, pro-NATO. You know, it's a very strange Green Party.

It's a hybrid. Anyway, they came into power and it's a democracy and they don't want any nuclear. So they destroyed, they shut down all their plants that were working. And we show that in the film. It's insane. And what did they go with? They replaced it with coal and gas. And as a result, and a lot of solar and a lot of turbines. In fact, if you think, look at the solar park that they built. They built a gigantic solar park in Germany, 495,000 panels. Can you imagine that?

500 acres, 495,000 panels. That's enormous. And that park, they took down a nuclear reactor in the area, that one was about a hundred acres. But it was producing about a hundred times more electricity than the than this. Five hundred acres on one fifth the land. Not only that, at what point in time does that become pollution? Not only that, at what point in time does that become pollution? Like, if you're talking about... If pollution factors... I mean, just whatever the panels are.

Like, whatever that area is, like, what have you done to that area? I know we don't think about... We just think about it as land. But that's part of Earth. So you've covered part of Earth with this... With these fucking panels. Yeah. It looks gross.

The turbines look gross too. I went down to, I was going down to South Texas and I drove past this turbine farm. And I'm like, how is that not bothering people? It's like eye pollution. You're looking at these things that are, these giant machines that are spinning instead of just the landscape.

It looks like we're tricking ourselves into thinking that this is like 100% clean. It's not clean if all you're looking at is turbines. If you're driving on the highway and you see hundreds of turbines with lights on them so planes don't fly into them, that's not clean. Like that's a part of the problem. Like that's polluting the environment. Well, it looks like shit. I understand. Each country's different.

So it depends what they want to do with their land. I mean, Denmark has had some success with it. Germany's had greater success with wind than they have with solar. That's for sure. But they're not dealing with it because we're still putting out shit in the air. It's also, yeah, I mean, it's certainly better than burning coal. It's certainly better than many alternatives, but still it's not perfect. Well, we should talk about methane because that is not better.

It's more damaging in the short term. Methane is. Methane is horrible, and it leaks all along the line, as we say in the film. That's gas. Natural gas. Natural gas. And we talk about it like it's some kind of savior. It's a perfect partner for renewables.

That's what they sell themselves as, and they advertise it. When they show the footage of how much gas gets released from those pipes, it's crazy. I showed it in the film. We showed the infrared camera. Yeah. How much gas is leaked. This is you turn your gas stove on and that's a leak. Yeah.

Right there. And that goes a long way towards destroying the atmosphere. A lot of people are upset that they're trying to ban gas stoves in future buildings in New York City. That's a big thing. But, you know, I was like, okay is are people overreacting who's overreacting and then you think about it like is it's just for the convenience of cooking that you enjoy cooking more with that is it a price thing because nuclear would solve the issue of the availability of power yeah but would it you know i think people just like to cook with gas which is

really weird. Like if it's really bad for you and really bad for the city and for the environment, that just the fact that you don't like cooking with electric. Well, I can't comment on that. I just know that methane has a short-term huge effect on the atmosphere, long-term less. But they did recently ban it in New York City, correct? I don't know. Didn't they, Jamie?

I think they banned it for new home construction. Yeah, I think that's right. And everybody went crazy. And I was like, wait a minute. I don't know about this. Maybe that's not the worst thing in the world. You know? First statewide ban on use of natural gas in new buildings.

Yeah, because if that stuff really does lower IQs, isn't that one of the things that they've discussed? I don't know why. See if you can find that. I've heard that, yeah. Yeah, see if you can find, because I remember there was something about it having an effect on cognitive function. Yeah. yeah which you know we found out we just talked about this the other day but we found out from leaded gas that there's a giant dip in iq points not a giant one but like a measurable dip in iq points amongst people that grew up uh in my generation with leaded gas

everywhere yeah well i i wonder about my own brain. I guess, you know, we've been around long enough. Well, we're getting old, Oliver, and that's part of the problem. Sometimes you forget. Childhood asthma. Childhood asthma. That's it?

Didn't say anything about cognitive function? I even typed an IQ here and it didn't bring up anything. Maybe I'm good for it. So much heat comes off nuclear that it really is not being used. Right. As the scientist says in the film, it could heat New York City. Yeah. So if it's caught, even if it's causing kids asthma, like it's not good for anybody then. Like if that's really what's going on with gas. But the amount of time that it would take to get the United States,

like what would that take to get rid of all of the things that are polluting the environment, all of the things that are putting out particulates, coal and all that stuff, replace it with nuclear? We give it that. We showed that graph from here to 2050 thinking backwards and trying. You have to get this thing going. You have to get the nuclear part going. It's going to go slower at the beginning because they take longer to build. But once they're up, maintenance is very, very easy to do on these things. So in 2030 to 2040, if you're built, this stuff is going to start to pay off.

From 2040 to 2050, it's going to be a huge run, a huge race, and we can do it. We may not get all the way to zero, but it's certainly doable. If Rickover were in charge of a program, he would push it through. But it's not just us. I mean, honestly, the Chinese are doing their part. They're trying. They're really trying because they see the problem. And for a president to say that Z when he said he's going to go down to zero by 2060, that's 10 years later, that's pretty good. That's amazing if they can stick to it. Russia, too, plays a huge role.

So does India, by the way. Well, they obviously have much more control over how things run. They don't really rely on the public's opinion or people voting. Exactly, exactly. But that's okay because we're talking about the earth here. But, you know, let's talk about France. France has been nuclear since 1975. They built 56 reactors in 15 years.

That's pretty fast. And they're all working. Some of them are getting very old now, and they have to be either renewed or replaced. But they still have those nuclear... A lot of their electricity in France, 70 percent, is nuclear. They have some hydropower and I think some gas but not much. Well, I genuinely think that it takes someone like you making a documentary about this to get the word out there to the point where people really start demanding this.

I really do. Because I think you're countering all those movies that you discuss, all the fictional movies. You're countering all those. You're countering all of the stuff that we had growing up, Godzilla and Spider-Man and all that. That's what it is. It's like we associate radiation with negativity and nuclear power with radiation.

We show images in Brazil of Brazilians going to black sand beaches to absorb the radiation that is good for the body. We show, you know, in cancer therapies, it's used, radiation, heavy radiation is used to kill off tumors in the body. is used to kill off tumors in the body. We show in Iran, Ramsar, Iran, which has got huge radioactive activity. It's very high, and it's tremendously— they're doing very well in Iran with Ramsar. No one's dying. So in other words, we can live with radiation much longer than we know because DNA,

as Crick and Watson found out, reduplicates. It has a double. So the body repairs itself as it's damaged. And that was a big argument in the old science because the Rockefeller Foundation,

of course, put out the scare and their oil people, they put out the scare to the public in 1957 where they said, you know, any amount of radiation to the body is dangerous. And that really worked. It put in New York Times, publisher put it in the front page, in a column, and it gets out, you know, that fear. So that's where, meanwhile, the counter comes later, but you don't hear about it. And the counterclaim is we repair our body as we move through life. That's what DNA does.

It's a wonderful system we have of DNA. Well, we just have scary stories about radiation. Well, we just have scary stories about radiation. And, you know, rightly so in some cases, like the radium girls, those, do you know about this? No, I don't know. They used to use radioactive paint for like indices on watches and things along those lines. You know, loom. Do you know loom? You know what that is? Like on watch face, there's these little dots, right?

Well, these little dots collect light. When it's light out, and then when it's dark, they glow. Well, people used to apply those things with paint, and they didn't realize the consequences of the radioactivity. So these girls would sometimes, like, lick the tip of their brush to wet it, to shape it, and they'd develop horrible cancers. And it's a very famous story, but these poor women, they'd develop these holes in their faces. It's really scary stuff, but it's from a very specific type of radiation,

and it's also from direct contact through it through the through this paint with no protection at all well i can't comment on what i don't know but yeah no i understand but so there are some consequences that are negative that are associated with radiation rightly yes and this is one of them high levels of radiation will hurt and kill exposure to radiation i mean there's a reason why they make you put a lead thing over your junk when you get into an x-ray machine. That's correct. And I went to a lot of that when I was visiting the plants in France, Russia, and here at

Idaho National Laboratory. We talked to a lot of scientists and people who handle it, those people who know, know. They don't freak out about it. Was this subject that, when you decided to make a documentary about this, people who know know they don't they don't uh they don't freak out about it was this something this this subject that you when you when you decided to make a documentary about this was it simply just because you had the information and you felt compelled that this is just not a story that's being told correctly no i i i read a book i read a review a book review in the New York Times, of all things, about Joshua Goldstein's book with Stephen Kvist, the Swedish nuclear scientist. And it was called Bright Future.

I bought the book, read it. It's very practical. It's simple. And it goes into the truth, which is this is all – there's been a lot of lies. And then I bought the book and made the movie with him. He gave me a lot of, I had to learn a lot. I had to travel. And it was difficult.

It was not an easy film to make. I wanted to make it understandable to a ninth grade level, you know. Yeah. Trying to make it simple. I think it works at that level. It absolutely does. Yeah. Definitely.

It's just very important to do. and I'm really glad you did it. Because I've talked to so many intelligent people that share your perspective on this. But it's just not being discussed publicly enough. That it might have been our solution the whole time. It was. Yeah. It was. Yeah, I shouldn't have said might have.

Eisenhower was on the right path. Yeah. And John Kennedy supported it completely. Yeah. Remember, we quote him in the film. It got derailed, obviously, in the 70s with Ralph Nader, who was very influential. And he's done great work, Nader, but, of course, on car safety. But, you know, he was wrong about, he exaggerated this

to a degree that was not necessary. Do you think people exaggerated it because they had their own heightened anxiety about it? And so it's not like they did it on purpose. They did it because they were genuinely misinformed. That's correct. Yeah. I do believe that. Nader is the good man. Yeah, That's correct. Yeah. I do believe that. Nader is the good man. Yeah, I believe so, too.

And he still believes in it, that he's right. But it's a question of degree, you know? Like, he said all Cleveland's going to blow up from one nuclear reactor. That's not true, you know? If it blew up, it's not going to blow up Cleveland. Right. And it's not a bomb. And unfortunately, that was original confusion. It's never been.

But there wasn't also no one to counter him. Like who would counter him back? William Buckley, scientist did. But someone publicly. That one I can't answer you because I don't remember. Well, frankly, do you remember the guy who started Greenpeace? Moore, Dr. Moore, he was the co-founder of Greenpeace. He came out and said, you know, we were right about a lot of things at Greenpeace, the whale, saving the whale. We were right about toxic waste. We were right about nuclear bombs, but we were wrong about nuclear energy. We got it wrong. He says that in the film. It's a wonderful statement. But again, people, I guess when you get, you hear the negative first, you don't go you don't listen to the positive. Yeah, that's the problem. We're slaves to our initial impressions.

Well, that's the point of maturity. Yes. That's where you have to get smarter. Yes. It's just very difficult for people to do. It's, it's a lesson that doesn't get taught enough that you are not your ideas. And once you start talking about a subject, particularly something that is a world changing subject like nuclear power or renewable energy, you, uh, you have to be, it's not you. What these arguments are not you. You have, you have to look at just the data. You have to look at just the data. You have to look at the data. And just because you had an initial idea about something,

don't look at it correctly. Exactly. Because people associate themselves with ideas. And if they've espoused an idea, they somehow or another think they have to defend it to the end. And it's a terrible trap to get into. And I've seen brilliant people get into that trap. It's a terrible trap. You're not your ideas. They're just ideas. Well said.

And you're certainly not something that is a very nuanced and complicated issue like nuclear power. You could be a person who was anti-nuclear power a few decades ago or even a few months ago and get new information, go, oh, okay, this is what I thought. And this is where I was wrong. And that's better for everybody. And if people learn how to do that, we can move past a lot of silly shit in this country. Yeah. I wish Jane Fonda would come out the other way. What is she on now? I admire her for her Vietnam stand. Oh, yeah.

But she could mean a lot if she understood this and came out against. But so was, you know, there's a lot of the people know this. Matt Tybee, Russell Brand. Yeah. They understand. They've done the reading. They're smart people. We got to get it out, and it's going to happen.

They're smart people, and they're courageous enough to just start talking about it. As I say in the film, you know, with Josh, I said nuclear has been around. It's been discredited constantly, but it won't die. It's like something that just sticks around because it's good. It's the truth. And that, I think, is going to be inevitable because there's no other alternative. I mean, we can talk about carbon capture. We can talk about all the things that they're doing. Fusion is a great solution. I love fusion. I was just up at MIT with Dr.

Dennis Swite. He's the head of the program there. He's fusion plasma. It's beautiful, amazing amount of work. And maybe it'll work in the second part of the century. It's beautiful, amazing amount of work. And maybe it'll work in the second part of the century. But right now we have from 2020 to 2050, we've got to deal with this hump. And fusion is not there yet. It hasn't delivered. Fission has.

There's also some research that's being done on utilizing the spent fuel cells and utilizing the waste and converting it into batteries, correct? Isn't that it? I didn't know about batteries, but I know in Russia they had the breeder reactor that I saw at Belyarsk, which we went out to in the middle of Russia. I forgot exactly where it is. It was designed, it's a 600. It was designed many years ago, and it does breed beautifully, it was designed, it's a 600. It was designed many years ago. And it does breed more than it, it eats up its own fuel. And it reuses the fuel over and over again.

That's why they call it a breeder reactor because it breeds more. And they're using it. It's expensive. That's the problem. Can they standardize it? That's the other problem. You know, these, you have to make it cheap too. But the Russians have done it. And now they're building an 800, which is a bigger one. So I have hopes for that. But on the

U.S. side, we have all these smaller... We have GE working with Hitachi, which is a Japanese company. They're building an SMR, a small modular reactor, with some capacity. It could make a radioactive diamond battery made from nuclear waste that could last up to 28,000 years. The nano diamond battery's power comes from radioactive isotopes used in nuclear reactors. Yeah, that's what I was talking about. So as technology advances, and obviously technology would, you know, whatever they're able to do now or even, have they actually done this or is this just theoretical? This article is 2020.

It unveiled a battery that uses nuclear waste. I don't know. They're saying that they actually have a functional product? Whoa. The article I had that got the pop-up

was a nuclear... Oh, I thought... I thought it was theoretical. I didn't know they were already making batteries out of it. But if they can do that, I mean, bingo. Now we have a problem with electric cars, right? That was the problem. Electric cars, the batteries. That's the giant issue is you're getting lithium out of the ground.

And most of it is sourced through unethical ways. You're getting cobalt. Most of that's sourced through unethical ways. But if they can make batteries out of fucking diamonds and to make I mean how crazy is that we're all running around on cars built on nuclear waste you still have the problem it has to be continent it has to be a country size dimension scalability you know if you can make an iphone you can make a car work for on an individual basis and here and there. But how do you make it so it works on a continent size?

You know, we're talking about it. Look at the world map. Well, I think we have to look in terms of a long period of time. If you go back to just the invention of electricity to the time where everybody's carrying around a battery powered cell phone in your pocket, you're not talking about that long. You're only talking about a couple of hundred years. We're looking at it like, oh my God, we've got to get it done tomorrow. I don't think you do get this thing done tomorrow. But I think a big step is what you're describing in your documentary. That's a big step. A big step is understanding that nuclear power is a fantastic way forward. understanding that nuclear power is a fantastic way forward.

And if they really can make batteries out of nuclear waste, well, now we have a – instead of a problem, now we've got a commodity. Now you've got something they can utilize. Although I remember what Bill Gates says in the film. Hold on a second. Yeah, I Googled it again. It said like 2017 they were saying this was still a hoax. They always say that.

It's a mixture, yeah. We have to keep optimistic about this. So are nuclear diamond batteries too good to be true? You're probably wondering what the catch is. There's a diamond battery out there that really uses nuclear waste, lasts thousands of years, and involves layers of only the most minuscule diamonds. It's slightly more complicated than that. Each battery cell will produce only a small amount of energy, for one thing,

so scientists must combine the cells in huge numbers in order to regularly power large devices, raising the cost a great deal, along with increasing the complexity. So I guess the battery would have to be big. Touts the tiny share of the nanobattery diamond cells as an advantage for scalability, though. Take the battery for a wristwatch, for instance. It consumes around two microwatts. A much smaller NDB cell would be sufficient. Okay. So that's smaller than the battery that's on your watch? That's pretty small. So if we need power a different application, the number of stacked cells can be increased to meet the demand. That sounds like every battery. Listen, Bill Gates in the film says, you know, he's put a billion dollars into the battery business.

He's really done a lot of exploration. And as well, he's doing great work on nuclear. But he says there's no battery that's going to – it would take a miracle. It's just not going to happen. He says we're going to need nuclear. Even he said that. And he's not proud of that. But I don't know why he's running away from it.

I think we should be very proud of using nuclear because it was a tremendous discovery by Marie Curie. I think a lot of people are skittish about the conversation. Yes. They just don't want to have the conversation. I've noticed that, yeah. Yeah. Why doesn't Al Gore in the film The Unconvenient Truth even mention nuclear energy? Yeah, it's true.

Good point. You know, it's nuts. It's nuts. Can we take a break? Yep. I can tell. You're ready to go. You got to pee. Yeah, I just true. Good point. You know, it's it's nuts. It's not so I can we take a break Yep, I could tell you're ready to go. You got a peak So tritium is the stuff that they make that that also lights up the watch hands They put that stuff inside watches. Yeah, it lasts for like 25 years Yeah, I have one of those i have a marathon watch

and it's uh like even if it's like pitch blackout all of the our indicators are all lit up permanently it's really cool yeah and that's radioactive too and it's totally safe that's what it looks like that's what that's what the fukushima that's what tritium looks like have you ever seen it on a watch hand it's really beautiful like look at click on that image again jamie that's what it looks like. That's what the Fukushima- That's what tritium looks like. Have you ever seen it on a watch hand? It's really beautiful. Click on that image again, Jamie. That's what it looks like. So it lights up permanently.

You have radiation on your wrist. Well, that's been the big issue in the Fukushima cleanup because they said that water is filled with tritium. And Josh, my co-author, was saying, you know, I could drink a gallon of tritium and it would be about the equivalent to one banana. So it's a lot of bullshit. Really? You could drink a gallon of tritium? Yeah. And it's about what negative aspect of a banana?

He says electrons in it just don't penetrate. They don't, you know, I'm not a scientist. I understand electrons in it just don't penetrate. They don't, you know, it's a sign. I'm not a scientist. I understand. I'm not either. So I buy it.

But I love the fact that my watch has these little indicators that are nuclear. Everyone's screaming, you know, you can't dump it in the Pacific.

That's what the environmentalists say. They're wrong. The water is safe because, by the way, the sea absorbs a lot of radiation.

Yeah, there's a company called Ball, and all of their watches use tritium. And they've been doing it forever. Like, they've been making these watches for a long time. And they're famous for the fact that all their indicators are little radioactive things. I'm terrible for the watch market. I never had a watch for years. You never had a watch? No, I don't like to keep track of the time.

I know the time in my head. I kind of have a sense of it. Good for you. Yeah, you don't want to be a slave to this thing. Exactly. I don't want something on my wrist telling me what to do. Do you still rock a smartphone, though? I use a smartphone as little as possible because it's essential now.

They've made it essential. That's basically a clock anyway. You're getting your time from your phone. Yeah, it's a clock. I can set an alarm to it, but I wake up on my, basically, earlier. So the phone is, I just, the only thing I don't like about the phone

is I'm always worried about losing it. I lose a lot of time looking for phones. Why don't they make a double of this, a DNA copy? Yeah, you can't have two because then someone else would copy your phone. Is that right? Yeah, and they would start using your phone. It's about copying. Yeah, it's about getting access to your – whatever you have, credit cards that are on it and all the data that they can sell.

Yeah. I mean, they're selling data no matter what anyway. It's the weirdest commodity that's ever existed, a thing that people didn't even know was worth anything. Are you worried about losing your phone? I mean, people know you. Yeah, I worry about losing my phone. Yeah, I try not to. Well, you probably have an automatic shutoff on your account, right?

So no one's gonna rip you off from American Express or credit card. Right, of course. But it's still, it's very inconvenient, obviously. It sucks. It's inconvenient. I use my phone to get in my car, too. It's inconvenient, but it's not dangerous. Right. It's not dangerous. My phone operates my Tesla.

I don't even have to have my key. Just have to have my phone. Your phone operates your Tesla. Yeah. How do you do that? It knows that it's me. So the app knows that it's me. So if it's in my phone, rather the phone is in my pocket, and I walk towards the Tesla, the door's open.

It lets me in. It knows it's me. I don't even have to have a key on me. It's like, hey, dude. I go, I don't have my key. Don't worry about it. We know it's you. But also someone could take your phone, and without even unlocking it, they could just start driving your Tesla.

That's true, too. Because, you know, when you walk towards the car, it just goes off, even if your phone's not even unlocked. And that's not good. Because then if somebody gets your phone, then they get your car. What made you so smart, Joe? I'm not that smart. Come on. Give me a break.

I am not. Where'd you go to school? I'm curious. Oh, I barely made it through high school. And then I went to UMass Boston. I was in Newton, Newton South High School, Massachusetts. Yeah. Suburb outside of Boston. Yeah. I think the thing that's helped me more than anything is being on this show and having conversations with people. It's like when you think of education as being something, obviously when you sit in a classroom, you're absorbing a lot. You're getting a lot of education. And the kids today that are going through the work load that they have to go through

to put in to get a bachelor's degree and then a master's or a PhD, it's an insane amount of work. Right. But you're absorbing information. That's the key. The key is that you're learning about all these different subjects and absorbing all absorbing information. That's the key. The key is that you're learning about all these different subjects and absorbing all that information.

You prove it with your degree. That's the beauty of also making films because you get that opportunity to spend time to luxuriate in this. You get to talk to people too. You mean you get to talk to like... Scientists, this and that. I was so grateful for this.

I've done 20 fiction films, feature films and 10 documentaries. And you want to get out in the field. You want to talk to real people who are doing things. Yeah. Well, I think it's so important, especially to do the work that you're doing. How else could you relate? How else can you, you have to get out there. Well, find the quick thing that's bothering you. You know, what, What really is bothering you? And in

this matter, it was, of course, what do they mean? This is confusing climate bullshit. They go back and forth. Even if you don't believe in climate change, what I found out is that I would still go nuclear because it is the cleanest of all, no battery, no storage. Absolutely. I think there's two schools of thought when it comes to climate change. There's the school of thought that it's not an issue, it's a natural cycle. And there's a school of thought that human beings are pushing the world to the brink of demise. Right.

I think human beings are doing a lot. Whenever people try to come up with excuses for things i was like like well it's always been this way but how much impact are we having instead of looking at it like the climate's always going to change which it always does that's the thing about the climate if you look at the climate models of when they do ice core samples when they try to figure out like how warm it used to be and what the atmosphere was like, it's always changed. I mean, it's changed radically.

But how much are we fucking it up? Forget about it. It's never static. It's never like the climate is like this. If human beings never existed, internal combustion engines never existed, you still have volcanoes. You've got chaos. You've got asteroids. You've got all kinds of shit. You still have volcanoes. You got chaos. You got Asteroids you got all kinds of shit. There's no stable. There's no flat safe. We get to this. We're on our life vest We're on a life raft. We're gonna make it out. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, even if I lived in

That's all not a nice small town in a country town That's it. That's what we want, right? We want this idea. But the reality is ice ages. The reality is super volcanoes. The reality is asteroid impacts. That's the reality. Those are the horrific things that radically change the temperature of Earth and the environment and all kinds of things. What about that lady somewhere in Missouri? The tornado came out of nowhere and just blew the house away.

Yeah, Jesus Christ. That's crazy, too. Those are things that are— Tornado. Yeah, those are things that are absolutely real and terrifying. I saw those in the Midwest when I was shooting, especially in Louisiana and Texas, Panhandle, that area. Yeah. They have a lot of whirlwinds, a lot of wind shifts.

Oh, it's incredible. There's an amazing video of this guy driving at night. Yeah. And the tornado is in the distance, and you only see it when the lightning strikes. Oh, God. And it's huge. I mean, it's like city blocks, and it's in the sky. This is just a massive funnel, and these people are in a car

and they're just driving down the road watching this it's fucking wild do you find it watch this look at this look at that look at the size of that thing yeah i mean how terrifying is Terrifying is that. Terrifying. Terrifying. Oh, that's scarier than King Kong, Godzilla, all the above. Real things. Yeah. Real things. Not nuclear power. The angry sky monster that comes down and destroys cities. There is nuclear power in that electricity.

Oh, yeah. Good point. This all came from the beginning. The supernova that exploded. Yeah. Supernova's exploding all the time. Where does it all start? I mean, the beginning of the world.

We don't really know. There's no beginning. No, we don't really know. I think we have these biological limitations that we put on the universe. Well, what are the first explosions? There's a birth and a death. Where does this explosion come from? Right. And before that, was there another the first explosions? There's a birth and a death. Where does this explosion come from? Right.

And before that, was there another explosion? Right. There was a great piece, there was a great documentary on hypernovas that I watched once. And, you know, when they first started discovering hypernovas, they thought that there was aliens having war in the sky. Right. Because there was explosions that were taking place in far distant portions of the universe and they were like what is happening these are happening on a regular basis and then

they realized that these are hypernovas i never heard of that yeah they're they they destroy solar systems they destroy everything like there's it's such it's an immense explosion of power that's beyond our comprehension and they have it's happening all the time. Do you believe in extraterrestrial life? Yes. Yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent.

Yeah. I just don't know if it's here. I don't know if it's visited, but just the vastness of the universe itself. And if you believe in the concept of infinity, that means the possibilities of this happening exactly the way we are are also infinite. It's not – infinity, it's really hard to put it in your head because it doesn't make sense. But the true infinity would mean that everything that you've ever done and everything that I've ever done and everything we've ever said and every piece of paper you ever put down, all that has happened an infinite number of times in the universe, in some other place. That's how crazy, and every other variable in between. That's how

crazy infinity is. So I think that if we imagine that we're the only ones, that seems silly. It just doesn't even make sense. It's just too, it's kind of like nuclear power. Because you talk about nuclear power to people, you go, wait, nuclear bombs, nuclear bad. Nuclear is dangerous. Nuclear is dangerous. I think we think that way about aliens. Because I think there's been so many kooks

that have had so many fake stories and so many doctored photos and everything's blurry and just weird people that probably lied. And then compelling stories that are really confusing, like really intelligent people, like Commander David Fravor, who was a fighter jet pilot in 2004 and encountered this thing that they track going from 50,000 feet above sea level to 50 in a second. I think I saw, was there a clip? There's video of this. Yeah, I think I saw. Yeah. There's a video of this thing. They, they tracked it. They think it was interacting with something that was submerged there as closed. And then this thing, when it jetted off at this insane rate of speed, first of of all it blocked their tracking it blocked their um whatever the radar or whatever whatever sensors that they were using and then

it shot off at an insane rate of speed and stopped at their cat point which is the point where they had the predetermined point where they were going to meet up and this exercise that they were doing and this thing went to that spot and it was 20 feet long and looked like a tic-tac And it was just hovering like a tic-tac like a candy like a little white tic-tac candy So they called the tic-tac UFO when I talked to guys like that When I talk to guys like that ago well if it's not a UFO if that's not from another planet That it's maybe more scary than if that's not from another planet that it's maybe more scary than if the chinese have something that's that advanced that can move like that is this some new type of

technology that might be available to the the probably just like the high-end military applications that they're using for drones and all these different propulsion methods, if they've figured something that crazy out, it's kind of game over. If they can go 50,000 feet above sea level to 50 in a second, like what is that? Well, if they wanted to use it, they would have done it by now. Perhaps. Or perhaps it's an alien. Or a probe from some alien planet or something non-biological.

Maybe they've gotten past the necessity of biological life. If you're an alien, wouldn't you want to visit this place and share with the culture? No, definitely not. Why not? The same reason why, did you watch Chimp Empire? Who? Chimp Empire. It's this amazing documentary series that's on Netflix right now. And it's about these embedded journalists who document chimpanzee life in this part of the very deep in the jungle called a place called Ngogo.

And it's incredible because the scientists that laid the groundwork for this documentary, they've been studying this particular group of chimpanzees for 30 years. So the chimpanzees have become completely fine with them being around. They have like rules of interaction. They have to stay within, I think, 20 yards of the chimpanzees at all time. And as long as they do that, the chimpanzees behave as if they don't exist.

And they enact in war. They kill monkeys. They hunt. They defend their territory. They take over new territory. They do all this stuff in front of people. But they don't interact with the chimpanzees and they don't interrupt their life. I think that's what the aliens do with us. Because that's what we do with intelligent

primates. Why would you do any different if you were an alien? I think if I was an alien life form, I would make sure that the chimps don't blow themselves up. Like if chimpanzees and Ngogo if all of a sudden they've developed TNT and they start soldering and they're building bombs and they're planting bombs

Okay, hold on fellas, you can't blow yourselves up you can't you can't just be blowing the jungle up and starting fires let's stop if i was an alien life form i would treat human beings the same way that i as a human being would treat chimpanzees if they started developing bombs i feel like we didn't get the bombs away from the chimps. If chimpanzees developed missiles and they started shooting missiles at each other through the jungle, don't you think we'd be like, hey, hey, hey, cut the shit. You're not even people. Only people are allowed to kill people like that.

I think if alien life forms do exist, I think the most likely strategy is the one that we use on higher primates on lower primates rather We don't interfere We observe but the true scientists they just sort of stand back and watch and the chimpanzees don't seem to have any problem with these people being around that's Occasionally they get curious and when they start walking towards the person the person just keeps backing up and as long as they stay a certain Distance the chimp loses interest. It's really weird. You just can't eat in front of them ever And when they start walking towards the person the person just keeps backing up and as long as they stay a certain distance The chimp loses interest. It's really weird. You just can't eat in front of them ever and you you know

Just can't ever like raise your voice You can't behave in a threatening way and they just interact with the chimps and this documentary is coming up It's out right now. It's out on Netflix It's fantastic. It's really fantastic, but learning too much much too my point is like I think that if there are aliens I think they would do the same. I Think they would just watch just make sure we don't blow ourselves up watch and maybe Maybe you know

Let us know occasionally that we're not alone That's what I would do. I would I would like just like the scientists had to slowly habituate themselves to the chimpanzees They had to slowly do it. They did it over there was the first the chimpanzees ran and then they had to figure out some sort of Way that they can just be around them enough The chimpanzees relaxed and as soon as they realized they were never a threat, and then generations of them realized they were never a threat, then they could do the work that they're doing. Pretty wild stuff.

I think I would do that if I was an alien. I would just sit around and watch. Well, that's why people have dogs and cats. I love cats. Cats are great. They watch us, you know? Yeah, sure. It is an alien form, isn't it, a cat?

Oh, yeah, sure. So are dogs. Wolves. Wolves are, I mean, what a bizarre alien life form. Depends on the degree. A goldfish, for that matter, is an alien form. Oh, my God. Some of the most alien-looking stuff is in the ocean, for sure.

Oh, yeah. I mean, octopuses are the most bizarre. They're smart, I hear. They're so smart. They figure out jars. They know how to unscrew jars. Jesus. And they also,

they can camouflage themselves to look exactly like the floor. Have you ever seen octopuses do that? No. Oh my God, you have to see this. My friend Remy Warren,

he used to have a show called Apex Predator and it was a, what he would do was like study all of the different methods that different apex predators used and see like

is there anything you could emulate as a human being but this shows some footage of octopuses camouflaging themselves to their environment it's insane it's alien and this is what remy said he goes dude they're aliens he goes you've never seen anything like it. And he had no idea until he filmed this show, I don't think, of how complex their ability to blend in is. But that's an octopus. Which one? Right there. That thing you're looking at. They make themselves look like plants.

They make themselves look like coral. They make themselves look like rock. Watch when they get over it. Look. Look how he changes color depending on what he's on. Is that the fish? Yes. That's an octopus. Look at that. Watch what he does. He blends in with the plant.

That's pretty wild. And he blends in with the texture of the soil underneath the plant. Is that because there's a predator around? No, because he's a predator. Oh, I see. So as these fish swim in looking to eat, this octopus is hiding. Like, they have octopuses that kill sharks.

There's a video of a—they had this—see, Google octopus kills shark in aquarium. Jesus Christ. Yeah, they camouflage themselves to look like anything. Look at this. Watch how it does this. Wow. Just get some good footage of what they do when they get over things. But when they get over it, they've done it like cuttlefish,

which are also similar. I think they're called encephalopods. They do it where they've done them where they try to emulate a chessboard. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. How bizarre is this? Very. So, you know, I wouldn't want toboard. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. How bizarre is this? Very. So, you know, I wouldn't want to be-

But they changed their texture. I don't want to be an innocent fish around here. I mean, what a crazy little thing that's moving around at the bottom of the ocean, changing its texture, changing its colors to look exactly like its environment. Like, look at this thing. It's fucking bonkers. That's an alien. I mean, if we found that on another planet,

we would be like, what the fuck is that thing? Sure, the DOD's studying it, trying to make octopus weapons. Yeah, they probably definitely have studied these things. Figure out, how are they doing this? Instead, they're sushi.

We turn them into sushi. That's right. We turn them into – we just grill them. That's scary. That's an insanely fascinating animal that we just eat. You know, we just don't – we think of them as being so far removed from us that they're okay to eat. Well, if you think about it, no. I mean, I stopped eating eels and octopus.

I don't know why. And I stopped eating meat about a few years ago. How do you feel? I feel great. Do you eat eggs? Once in a while. Yeah? Yeah.

Chicken, I don't eat at all, but eggs is different. I think they're earlier chickens. Well, they're not even earlier chickens. They never become chickens because there's no rooster. They're just non-fertilized eggs. They're totally, it's like karma free. Like as long as the chickens live in a good life, the only karma that you have is you're keeping the chicken from getting laid.

That's the only karma, right? Well, I don't want it to be Well, I don't want to be chickens. I don't want to eat at all. I mean, I saw that Netflix documentary years ago, Game Changer, was it called? You ever seen it? Yes, I have. Yeah. Turned me off.

Turned you off to what? Meat. Yeah? Yeah. That's a complex conversation. Yeah. Human beings have been eating meat since the beginning of time. And a lot of the problems with these studies that are associated with whether or not meat is bad for

you yeah a lot of these things are what they're doing is basically they're asking you to take a survey and if you say you ate meat four times a week or five times a week and then they make some sort of a correlation they say well the people that ate meat more consistently had more cancer, more this, more diabetes, all these things, which may be true. But also what else did they eat? Because if they ate meat five times a week, I guarantee you they were drinking Coca-Cola. I guarantee you they're eating bread. I guarantee you they're eating spaghetti. I guarantee you they were eating candy.

I guarantee you monster energy drinks. I want to know what the fuck they ate. Don't tell me that because the people that ate meat more. Because people that eat meat more generally, if you go by the narrative, the same kind of narrative that you have about nuclear power, that it's bad for you. If you go by that narrative, the people that shuck it off and don't give a shit, those are the same people that smoke cigarettes and drink whiskey. They't care if it's bad for you they're gonna eat meat right but that doesn't mean meat's bad for you because if they did a real study on like what

happens when people eat nothing but grass-fed meat from and fruit and vegetables from an organic farm let's monitor that right and i i bet they would do a lot fucking better than the standard American right that's the problem the problem isn't meat the problem is what kind of meat what are you eating with meat people have been eating meat since the beginning of time sure it's not that's not the problem and if you look at human beings look at photos of people on the beach in 1970 right yeah you ever see that or 1950 1960 and then look of people on the beach in 1970, right? You ever see that? Or 1950, 1960? And then look at people on the beach today.

Yeah. That's not meat. That's not meat. That's sugar. That's sugar. You're talking about obesity. Yes, an abundance of complex carbohydrates, an abundance of simple carbohydrates,

an abundance of food, just too much food. I noticed that. Way more food than your body is burning off. You get bigger and bigger and bigger. And the food is addictive. It's addictive. Especially during the depression, 1930s.

Oh, my God. In those photographs. It's quite shocking. Yeah, they didn't. Well, also, preservatives have allowed us to store things on shelves. People binge eat in the middle of the night. On the other hand, we did muscle up a lot, didn't we? Oh, yeah, we got more jacked.

Yeah, I think people also learned, too. They ate more protein, got larger, learned how to exercise better. It became more of a thing like, actually, you really should just do it. Whereas before, it was probably seen as a luxury. People had to work all the time. It was harder lives. They didn't think of getting fit and muscular as being important. What about women?

Yeah. Do you ever talk about that with them? I mean, should they work out? Oh, yeah. Everyone should work out. I think just to maintain your body. You just want to do it in a way where you're not going to get hurt. That's the most important thing. Do it in a really smart way. If you can, do it with a trainer. But everyone should do something, whether it's yoga or push-ups or sit-ups and chin-ups and bodyweight stuff. You can get an amazing workout done with a chin-up bar and just your body, just your physical body weight. You don't really need to go to a gym, but you really should get someone to show you how to do stuff if you don't know how to do it. And it helps if someone can help you write out a program that's like a good program for someone who's, if they assess like your physical ability, they don't, you don't want to get like a person who just started to go run

like David Goggins. That would be ridiculous, but you want them to be able to build up and can, and, and build up in a way where their body's recovering and they continue to push themselves, but they're not getting hurt. That's what you got to do. And I say that to everybody. I think everybody should do that. It's just my suggestion.

I know people that are very happy that they don't exercise at all. It is possible. It's just not possible for me. And I don't know what it's like for everybody else because I'm not you, but I can only tell you how it feels for me. And for me, you know,

I believe the people that say they don't need to exercise. Maybe everyone's different. It seems like we are anyway with everything else. But for most people, if you just want to maintain your physical frame, if you want to maintain your functionality of your body, I really think it's imperative. I don't, I don't, I don't, you know, I don't know what makes less sense. If you just, if you don't use your body, it breaks down and then you can't

get around and that sucks. And when you can't get around, then you would be willing to do anything to get it motion again. Well, you can mitigate a lot of that by exercise. A lot of it. Just keep your body fit and strong and you don't have to worry as much about all the things that plague people. You don't have to worry. We're getting old. But you worry less. You worry less if your body works well.

Much less. Well, we got onto this with climate change yeah i was saying to you that you know climate change if it didn't exist which i believe it does but if it didn't exist i'd still i'd still advocate nuclear energy because it's clean yeah i think i think that's absolutely a great point. And the IPCC, when they did their, you know, I believe them. Their body of scientists, there's a lot of them. I mean, it's, I think, 200 of them. No, I believe in them. And the IPCC says 2050 is a marking point.

And you go back and you check their charts from 1980s, and you find that from 1980 to 2000, they were accurate. And then you go from 2000 to 2020 and they're accurate, very close to accurate. In fact, they were a little bit more optimistic. But now this – so you have to believe it as a 40-year span. Now we're looking at this. What doesn't make sense to me is the illogic of pursuing this path of CO2, considering these charts and saying what they're saying. I mean, you see the hurricanes, you see the wind, you see that the storms are bigger, it seems to me. Well, I don't know if they're bigger. if they're bigger.

I think the new argument is that, what is the actual stats on, because people say that all the time, like storms are bigger than they've ever been before. I don't think that's true. I think the storms have actually lessened in intensity but increased in the amount of them. I think that's the data. But all of it's not good.

Whatever we're doing, see, the problem with me with climate change is that I always get wary when things become ideological. When people start talking about it like, you know, like, listen, you've got to act now. And if you don't, I'm like, hold on. How much do you know about this? And how much are you just saying a narrative? Right. Because a lot of people want to argue ferociously about a narrative that they didn't even

really looked into that much. And it's, that's the thing about on both sides, even the Republican side, the people that want to dismiss it. I was having a conversation

with a guy at Jiu Jitsu once of all places. Like, it's a natural cycle. No matter what, it's a natural cycle. The earth warms. I go,

how much work have you done on this? Do you know how crazy it is to like be that sure when no one's sure? That's the whole reason why they're having this debate. It's because no one can definitively prove how much of an impact we're going to have on us in 100 years, 150 years. What's going to happen?

No one can. How can you be so confident that it's just a natural cycle? But it's a right-wing perspective. Like, he had bought into this. It's all bullshit. It's a natural cycle. Like, bro, how do you know? But you know, because you don't like the people that think that we have to ban cars that use internal combustion engines. You don't like the people that think we have to

stop and close coal plants. You don't like those people. You think those people are annoying. So you've decided to be annoying in the opposite way. And that's what it is. You know, when you go to a city with horrible air, like Los Angeles used to be, like India, how do you feel? Terrible. Well, there's also an issue with brake dust. You know, when you're in a very crowded urban environment, you know, brake dust, that stuff that you get on your wheels? No. You don't know what brake dust is?

No. When you're using the brakes in your car, what's happening is there's this hydraulic pad that presses against a disc, and the friction of that is what stops your car from moving forward. Right? Okay. So when that happens, it makes powder. And this powder goes in the air. And the powder gets all around your wheels.

If you've ever cleaned your wheels, if you ever have like a nice car and you want to clean your wheels, there's all this black shit in there. That black shit is brake dust. And that black shit's everywhere. It's all over the place. Brake dust contributes to 20% of the fine particulate matter pollution compared to just 7% contributed by exhaust fumes. Phew. As all cars give off brake dust, there is no such thing as a truly zero emission vehicle. An electric car, same thing?

Yep, same thing. Same method of slowing the car down. Yeah, of slowing the car down. It's the most effective method we know of and that's that's what happens yeah does it happen less in carbon fiber brakes is it the same effect on carbon fiber brakes Google that well you have they don't encyclopedia here yeah because they don't show up what's what's interesting is when you have carbon fiber brakes it doesn't leave that dust all over your wheels.

At least I don't think it does. I don't think it leaves the same amount. Does it say anything? Yeah, carbon fiber brakes break dust. Yeah, here it goes. They're quieter than organic or metallic pads and produce less dust. There it is. They also last significantly longer, can tolerate a greater range of temperatures,

and fade less as they heat up. Track report says. I have a car that has those. Well, I'm learning a lot here. Yeah. Carbon ceramic brakes produce virtually zero brake dust. I mean, like, they literally do not dust at all. That does not sound scientific. Like, I mean, like, they literally do not dust at all that does not sound scientific like I mean like they literally do not dust at all what's on the wheels will be what's on your

paint normal road dirt from driving around yeah that's what that's what I've found just from driving around with my car let me ask you this question then because you make me very curious uh I'm I'm that's the pessimism in the air that you feel the dystopia and movies you constantly see it hate those movies you know there's always about negative the sensational stuff and the news is awful the media is just thrives on sensational bad news i mean it's wars this that so uh they make you afraid do you think this is like we should be afraid do you want to live afraid what are you afraid of those questions i don't think we should be afraid but i think we should be aware and i don't think that um the look this this demise fear, it exists because it happens.

Like civilizations collapse. You can go visit ancient Rome. You can look around. You can see the Colosseum. They're not there anymore. Those people are gone. The people that built that, that's just going to happen. It's going to happen to us too.

And it's going to happen to us biologically too. So there's this constant fear of so many different things that we have that we carry around with us all the time as you hold a day of the dead skull so you know okay i don't think it's healthy i don't think it's healthy to live your life embracing that i think you got to be aware of it but um you got to live in the moment as stupid and corny as that sounds that's the only Otherwise, you're going to be freaking out from anxiety. Yeah. If you don't, if you can't just live in the moment, you're always going to have too much

anxiety, in my experience, with me, at least. That's what these people who talk about radioactive waste, they're thinking like, yeah, 10,000 years ahead, and even then, it's the radioactive isotope just decays and decays. Well, not only that, like if they really do have technology currently available where they can convert that into batteries. Oh, that's great. This is 99% it decays. Yeah. You can swallow the 1%. Right.

You can. You can swallow it? Yeah. not a lot though right don't swallow it all the time well you know there is a certain amount of radioactive material in our bodies sure the banana is very is the most radioactive of the foods i mean the weed i mean you probably can find you'll probably find some other foods that are i don't know what foods are radioactive i know uh airplane travel is banana yeah you want to check that out james i bet rocks are aren't they like rocks yeah sure yeah uh banana contains about 450 milligrams of potassium and when eaten, exposes the consumer to about 0.01 mrem

due to its K40 content. Wow. A chest x-ray delivers 10 mrem. Mm-hmm. So there you go. Yeah. Interesting. So it's the tiniest amount.

Yeah. Interesting. You need 100 bananas to get there. You need 100 bananas to get there. You need 100 bananas to get to that one? Maybe just one. Oh, 0.1? Okay. What about air travel?

Isn't that like getting an x-ray? They say stewardesses and pilots, absolutely. Three times the level. Yeah, are they in danger? No, they just absorb it over time. So their body gets... Some people will tell you... We're exposed to low levels of radiation when we fly.

You'd be exposed to about 0.035... Millisieverts. Okay. Of cosmic radiation if you were to fly in the United States from the East Coast to the West Coast. This amount of radiation is less than the amount of radiation we receive from a chest X-ray. Okay. Less. Okay. Less. Interesting. Well, those are the most severe things, the x-rays, the dental

and MRIs. When did doctors start leaving the room when the x-ray happened? I don't know. Like, when did they get hip to the... Get the fuck out of here. I'm doing this every day. I don't know. Well, I want to know that. Because they must have stayed in the room for a while. Like, I want to see this thing up close.

At the dentist's office, they get really nervous. They're like, I'm going to go around the corner, and you stay here. Bro, it's like they're setting a bomb. Hold this curtain over you. It's like they're setting a bomb. Yeah. When did they start doing that? I'm checking.

I don't know how to. When you think about things like the Iridium girls, you know, the horrible... Yeah. Iridium girls, rather, the horrible... Well, now he died eventually from handling Iridium. Ah, right, right, right. Remember? Gee, look what the...

They started using shields in 76. How many years of it did she do it? Okay, the shields... Okay. They have to be around then, right? They were wearing a shield like a fucking Like a jouster Well I mean that's what they give you at the dentist office

I'm trying to figure out like how to It's not giving me a great answer on when they started doing Can you go to Ramsar M-A-R-A-M-S-A-R Iran There was something interesting here Ramsar Yeah that's the radioactive

The springs that they go to. Oh, right. The Iranians. Where you were saying in this area is? Here. Okay. HBRAs of Ramsar, gamma radiation levels are up to about 20 msvhr at waste level, and a population of about 2 000 lives in this area annual exposure

levels range from about 20 to 260 mgy for people in hot areas so and they don't seem to suffer any sort of health complications from this the radioactivity is due to local geology. Underground water dissolves radium in uraniferous indigenous rock and carries it to the surface through at least nine known hot springs. These are used as spas by locals and tourists. Yeah. Wow. So they're getting a radioactive bath. And the black beaches of Brazil.

Yeah. You can ask for that? Yeah, sure. That's another one. Similar sort of situation, right? Yeah. Less radio. Can you run black beaches?

Yeah, he's doing it. Brazil. He's just trying to find some good footage of it so people can see what it looks like. It's half. I don't know. Half-ish of what the other one just was's half i don't know halfish of what the other one just was but i don't know the comparison okay so halfish so 170 msv every year hmm interesting it's a radioactive beach that's a movie isn't that a movie yeah it is older

old older older it's an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Yeah, I just watched it. Pretty good. It's one of them movies, you know? What's called Old? Yeah. That's what it's about. Yeah. But in that movie, it's not so good. I mean, I don't want to give a spoiler alert away, but... Yeah. So the concern that people have about radiation, about... Overblown and exaggerated. Overblown and exaggerated. And now that you've put together this documentary, what's next? Like, how else do you kind of get this message out?

Oh, we're going everywhere. I mean, we went to all the Harvard. We went to MIT. We're going to special. How is it being received? Very well by people who know. Yeah. You know, I can't tell you.

We're going June 6th, which is next week. June 6th, we're going wide with the digital. We'll be on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play. Netflix wouldn't take it. Really? That's why we have to struggle on this thing. We have to get the word out.

And we have a great foreign, in Korea, I think I just contributed to a sale. I was just there. Why do you think Netflix wouldn't take this? Because it's controversial. But they have a lot of

controversial stuff on Netflix. Why are they scared of that? Even Game Because it's controversial. But they have a lot of controversial stuff on Netflix. Why are they scared of that? Even Game Changers is controversial. Well, okay. Why do you think? I have to ask you. I don't know. That's why I'm asking you.

Well, that's the problem. It just doesn't seem like... You never know why they turned down. The documentary's brilliant. And I can't imagine why anybody would not want this to get out. Well, they turned down Untold History. They turned down Putin interviews. You know, it's just every time I go into an area.

Is it a business decision? I mean, what is that decision? It can't be. Untold History is also fantastic. Like, what is that decision based on? Is it controversy? Are they trying to avoid a certain kind of political controversy? It's my fate.

Is that what it is? Yeah, I don't know. It's a bummer though, isn't it? Yeah, it's a bummer. But anyway, we'll get out this way and we'll go. We just keep going around the world. I'm going to England to address the Royal Institution of something or other, and scientists. It's going to be available on iTunes. It's also going to be available on Amazon Prime Video.

Google Play. Google Play. And really, ladies and gentlemen, I can't urge you enough, go watch it. Watch it and take in the information because it's pretty stunning, and it's really well put together. And the fact that it's a difficult message to get out there is kind of disheartening because really it does have hope. It's a hopeful film. It's a film that's like, hey, wake up.

We've got a real solution. I wanted to make it hopeful at the end. And it has, I think, a very uplifting ending because it can be done. And why we behave like we can't hide from this. Right. We have to be like Hyman Rickover, that kind of attitude. Go forward. Can do.

Can do. What kind of resistance have you received from people when you're bringing this film out? Have there been any? I'll tell you exactly. I mean, we went to Venice Film Festival and, you know, I could feel that there was fear about it, you know, fear about it, screening it. Then, you know, you send it to the US festivals that are like Telluride and Sundance and those ones. And one lady who runs one of these festivals told my agent, she says, you know, it's a great movie and I hate it.

I don't want to run it. That sort of kind of strange attitude. It's just crazy. I know it's going to create controversy, but I just don't want to have anything to do with it. So she might be from the 70s, that generation. She's, you know, listened to Ralph Nader. She's terrified. I don't know. Well well it's one of those

things i i in growing up with the fear of three mile island and chernobyl i i was terrified of nuclear power i was glad when they stopped using it when i heard they were still using i was like that's terrible why would they use nuclear power because i didn't know because we i had no politically correct right well it was just this message and. It's a great plot line for film Yeah, so I wish I could do it as a fiction, but I don't know how Maybe I can come someone one of your customers. How could you do it as a fiction I? Feel like you you could sure

Be it's true. It would happen. Hmm That you'd have to figure out some way where it's significant that it happens in a two-hour film Yeah, something that's gonna take place over the next like five ten years of construction The problem is you get into a female scientist saves the world kind of scenario, you know, it doesn't it gets to be yeah You know the lone scientist. Wokeism and shit. Yeah. That's what happens today, right?

Yeah. Yeah, it's very strange. The guy who made Big Short, he was very talented, Adam McKay. He did that film with Starcast about he thinks the world is going to end in six years, he told me. Really, he thinks there's a definite date.

There are a lot of strange theories out there. You saw the film that I'm talking about? No. DiCaprio, Streep was in it. What movie is this? What is it called? I don't think I saw it. Adam McKay, last film?

Yes, you saw it. I bet I didn't I have terrible taste but it was bogus in the sense that it was about an asteroid or something don't look up don't look up

is what it's called don't look up oh I didn't I didn't watch that I heard it was good though is it about an asteroid yeah yeah

it's not an impending let me see I mean problem coming I heard it was great well but I didn't watch it why not Yeah. It's not an independent problem coming. I heard it was great. Well. But I didn't watch it.

Why not? I just didn't have the time. I just, other things were more interesting to me. There's water in this thing too, if you'd like. Oh, yeah. And there's coffee as well, if you'd like some of that. Not that it wasn't interesting. I just never, you know, it's like there's so much, it's really just an abundance of choices. There's so much to watch.

I definitely want to watch it and I was going to get around to it eventually but I don't watch that much stuff. I'm too busy. So I don't have the time to like,

if I'm going to do that it's like once a week, twice a week so it's really hard to catch up. Did you see the last six games? I did not, no. You did not?

I generally don't watch basketball. But it gets exciting when you get to the competition. No, when I do watch it, I love basketball. I love any athletic events. I love watching people compete. It's exciting. Yeah.

It's fun. I enjoy it a lot. It's just I can only watch, for the amount of time that I have and the interest that I have, I can only really watch one sport. Which is jiu-jitsu or something? Martial arts. Martial arts. Yeah, so that's really, it's combat sports.

It's the only sport that I really watch on a regular basis. Which one is that? UFC. UFC. That's UFC, but combat sports, that's boxing, wrestling, that's everything. I concentrate on combat sports. Are you going to watch the seventh game, which is on Monday night, tonight? I do not know.

You should. I may force myself to watch it now. It's a great story. Is it a great story? Tell me the story. Because whatchamacallit. Jamie thinks it's so funny. I know how much we have to catch you up, Joe, to find out what's going on tonight in game seven.

There's a whole lot of story. It's impossible. One team was up 3-0. Which team? Miami Heat. Miami Heat. team was up 3-0. Which team? Miami Heat. Miami Heat. They were up 3-0? 3-0.

And the other team, Boston Celtics, they've been around forever. They came back. They won the last three games by the skin of the teeth. And now here we are. 150 teams have tried. Really? So this is the first time anybody's got to 3-0 and 1-up coming back? It's happened that they've gotten back to the seventh game four times, but only one time in the last 30 years.

Wow. So the question to a sports fan would be, what's the outcome? Is it going to work for the underdog now? No, I'm excited. Or does the one who was the original underdog was Miami? I wasn't excited until now. You see, Celtics have been a terrific team team and they have great experience and here they were down and they've come back. So what is the, what is the outcome? Will the gods intervene?

The Trojans or the, or the, uh, the Trojans or the, uh, Greeks. I mean, you kind of have to know it's a battle, you know? Well, that's why things of chance are so fascinating. That's why boxing is so fascinating. So I i did you watch the uh devin haney uh vasyl lomachenko fight no i missed it it was uh this insane fight and lomachenko who is the older guy he's about 35 years old just served in ukraine he's a ukrainian and he served protecting his country for like a year, took a year off of boxing and then came back and had this insane fight with Devin Haney. It was insane. It was so good. It was just this crazy back and forth fight that most people thought, or a lot of people rather

thought Lomachenko should have got the decision and he didn't get the decision. It's very unfortunate when stuff like that happens too, because then people don't appreciate how good devin haney's performance was because they're all they're thinking about is lomachenko should have won but devin haney fought amazing too it was a very good fight it was a really really top high-end fight like the consequences of that going into a fight like that when you're watching something like that like anything can happen any it's such a wild risk that you're going to do this for a living. And then you get to the pinnacle of the world champion, the greatest two 135-pound fighters alive. And they go to war in front of the world.

And watching something like that, to me, it's so overwhelming. There's so much. I'm so interested in it that I don't have really time for the sports. What about dating? Do you date? No, I'm married. Oh, you're married. I didn't know that.

Do you have time for it? Yes, I have plenty of time. I have time for stuff, man. But I have to be smart about what I do. And I can't get too involved in too many different things because I get obsessed with them. I don't want to be watching all the basketball games. If you think about how many hours a week it is, if you have basketball, football, baseball, all these different things you're watching as well, there's no time left.

Where's your time coming from? There's no way. So even though I think it's very enjoyable, I would enjoy it very much. I just stay away because I just can't get involved in too many different things. Well, I relax sometimes with idle time. I let myself, okay, I'm off duty. That's a good move. And I just enjoy watching old movies, which have nothing to do with the world today,

which is more like a fantasy life. I love that. I love fantasy. I spend a lot of time in it, I guess. Yeah, it's good to do. It's good to be bored, too. It's good to just sit around. It's good to be idle.

It's good to sit around and just be alone with your thoughts sometimes. I know. I think we're so constantly being inundated with other people's thoughts. Too much. This is part of the thing that happens with social media as well. I think it's also just the way people behave on social media is an after effect of it. You're just constantly inundated with people's opinions and thoughts on things because you're always looking at something.

You're always looking at a television. You're always looking at a phone. You're always listening to music. You're always listening to people talk. There're always looking at a phone. You're always listening to music. You're always listening to people talk. There's always someone giving you input. Always. All the time. Except when you're asleep.

Except when you're asleep. Do you sleep? Yes. Normal hours? Yeah, I get seven a night. I like seven a night, eight a night if I'm working out really hard. But seven a night is good. Yeah.

Seven a night seems to be functional. Eight is ideal, right? But seven is like I can perform pretty well at seven Very good But if I'm under seven I get dumber by the hour like whatever the hour is like if they're like five hours I'm dumber than six four hours. I'm dumber than five Like it's really haven't been dumb today. You've been pretty sharp. Thank you very much. I got some sleep. On that note, I think I should get out of here. Oliver, you're a brilliant person, and I appreciate you very much,

and it's always a pleasure to talk to you. And I think your work is amazing, both your fiction films and these documentaries. And this one that you have right now, Nuclear Now, I think is one of the most important ones that I've ever watched because I think you and this film and just the conversations about it can counter this sort of destructive narrative that people have about that. I hope so. Thank you. I appreciate it very much.

Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you. All right. Bye, everybody. Bye.