The Jordan Harbinger Show - 366: Bill Nye | Radical Curiosity Saves the World

Episode Date: June 18, 2020

Bill Nye (@billnye) is a lifelong champion of science who is determined to teach you something today that you didn't know yesterday -- whether it's from a television screen, the pages of a book, or next to you at a dinner party. What We Discuss with Bill Nye: Why denying proven science -- like climate change and the efficacy of vaccination -- is in nobody's best interest. On reinvention and pivoting: How Bill Nye went from Boeing engineer to television personality. Why episodes of Bill Nye The Science Guy are still being used to teach kids science two decades after they first aired. How to look at the world with radical curiosity. Why it's key to internalize our fears in order to move forward. And so much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/366 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, if you're a flat earther, if you're out there, go to the edge and take a picture and send it to us. Well, they won't let you see the edge. Who's they? No, you think you'll find that you're living on a big ball, and you can travel any direction and never leave. Whoa. Dude, that's impossible. How could it be something that you could go anywhere and never get off? Because it's a ball. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world. sharpest minds and most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice you can use to impact your own life and those around you. I want to help you see the matrix when it comes to how these amazing people think and behave. Our mission is to help you become a better-informed,

more critical thinker so you can get a much deeper understanding of how the world works and make sense of what's really happening, even inside your own brain. If you're new to the show, we've got episodes with spies and CEOs, athletes and authors, thinkers and performers, as well as toolboxes for skills like negotiation, body language, persuasion, and more. So if you're smart and you like to learn and improve, you're going to be right at home here with us. And for a selection of featured episodes to get you started with some of our favorite guests and popular topics, go to Jordan Harbinger.com, and we'll hook you right up.

Today, one from the vault with Bill Nye Science Guy. We actually met a few years ago at a party. We were washing dishes after dinner. And we hadn't introduced ourselves to one another. That was part of the dinner party, the rules. You can't introduce yourself. You're just supposed to interact, and then, like, later on, people do it, and your mind-blown. Like, you found out you made brownies with the guy from public enemy or something like that.

Or, like, made guacamole with Regina Spector, was something that happened to me at this party. Anyway, this guy, of course, I didn't know who he was, but, of course, he looks familiar. He starts explaining how the soap works, which is so Bill Nye somehow, right? Talking about, like, ions and the bonding of the soap molecule on the stuff on the pan. Now he's pushing against the mountain of ignorance present in today's anti-science culture. And today on the show, we discuss reinventing yourself both in your identity as well as in your career and how Bill went from Boeing engineer to the science guy we all know today. We'll also explore the idea of looking at the world with radical curiosity and why that's important.

This and a whole lot more, including some bow tie talk here with Bill Nye, the Science Guy, right here on the Jordan Harbinger show. And if you want to know how I managed to get all these folks on the show, it's always about the network. And I'm teaching you how to create your own network, whether it's just keeping in touch with family and friends or networking for your own business or in your professional career, check out our six-minute networking course, which is free over at jordanharbinger.com slash course. And by the way, most of the guests on the show

actually subscribe to the course in the newsletter. So come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now here we go with Bill Nye, Science Guy. So we met first at John Levy's party. The influencers. That's right. And we weren't allowed to say who we were.

And I thought, this guy looks really familiar, but I don't know where would I have met this, before. I have no idea. And then we were washing dishes because the whole thing is you cook dinner for everyone else. And we were doing that. We were washing dishes and you said, you know how soap gets grease off of a pan? It's the hydrophilic and hydrophobic ends of the soap molecule, or something like that. And I went, all right, now I know who you are. But before that I had, it was just, you know, it burns. It grates at the end of your consciousness because you don't know what you do. Greats at the end of your consciousness. Yeah. That's very troublesome. It's a little

dramatized. Yeah, but that's the whole point. You're supposed to kind of figure out who the person is on your own or not care or something like that. Because we're just so cool. Yeah, we're all influencing. That's all we're doing at that dinner. Seven honorary doctoral degrees. So does that mean I have to call you doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor,

no, no. If I'm on the phone and somebody calls me doctor and we're in a hurry, I don't correct them. That's what it means. Okay. Yeah, it's not worth your breath. But if they want to write doctor on some documents, I have to correct them. because it's not a legal title or because it's just a little bit like, okay, I can't let that one fly. Well, I mean, I don't have a Ph.D.

Actually, a lot of people have brought that up lately. Well, you don't have an PhD. Why should I listen to you? Well, what do you want to know about heat transfer, fluid mechanics? Only a doctor is qualified to tell me about that, apparently. Or metallurgy or mechanical components. I mean, who didn't love mechanical components? That's something you do in mechanical engineering school.

There are a million plus fasteners on a typical airplane. You better count on them. Yeah, I would hope that they're all in good shape. Yes. You're an advocate for science literacy. Is that a fair statement? That's a fair statement. That is my life's mission.

Yes. Doesn't require a PhD. Mostly requires what? A lot of people are like, oh, why not just interview a real scientist? And I thought, well, because I'm not looking for the latest in quantum whatever. Which we love. We do love quantum mechanics. The double-slid experiment remains a great mystery.

I took a lot of physics, and climate change is a great concern to me. That was what your talk was about after the dinner. Still concerned. Yeah, since then, it hasn't really changed for the better, I don't think. It's gotten worse for humankind, for sure. Why do you think so many people are obsessed with kind of shooting the messenger? Oh, he doesn't have a PhD. This is a fraud.

He's not a real scientist. What's going on there? Keep in mind, it is fascinating. I mean, you're a podcaster. It is fascinating. The energy people have, the haters have to hate. Once in a while, look at the comment section on almost any page. Wow, people have time to complain.

Oh, yeah. But meanwhile, the climate is changing, even if you hate me. There are 7.3 billion people in the world going on 7.4, going on 9 billion people by 2050. And everybody wants to live the way we live in the developed world. And this takes a lot of energy. And right now, our energy is mostly produced. our electricity is mostly produced from burning stuff, coal and oil and gas. We can't keep doing that anymore.

Shoot the messenger, if you like, we still can't keep doing it. So you mean my anger towards the things that you say is not positively affecting the climate? No. Oh, it's weird. I got to change strategies, man. I just think that the pendulum's going to swing back pretty quickly. And by that, I mean, people will realize that it's in nobody's best interest to deny science, to not accept the facts discovered through the process of science.

Climate change being among them, also the efficacy of vaccinations. You don't want people running around unvaccinated. And keep in mind out there, if you're out there and you're not vaccinated, the reason I want you to get vaccinated is really not that I care about you. It's me, me, me, me. Because when you are unvaccinated, you are an incubator for, mutating viruses, mutating bacteria. You just don't want that.

You're going to introduce, your body is going to introduce diseases into our herd, into our species that we can't fight with the conventional antibiotics. And the one that's emerging now, if you like to worry about things, I don't know about your lifestyle. But gonorrhea is the one that used to be penicillin, just knocked it right out. But it is mutated because so many people have contracted it. Geez. If you don't really want to eat lunch, you can Google that and find out exactly what that involves. It's not good. No, it's not good. Even the former cure when there was one was not good, and now there isn't one, it's even worse.

But penicillin was amazing, you know, it was a miracle drug, as they say. Now it's not effective against gonorrhea. Wow. For me, it's a nightmare scenario. Yes. I was in Australia, and they had recently just outlawed being anti-vax. Probably required vaccinations. It was something like that. And there were a lot of protesters, small number relative to the population, thankfully, but vocal protesters, you can't force me to do this. You shouldn't force me to do this. It's my choice. It's my choice for my kid. But it's not, right? It's public safety. Nope, not your choice. It's kind of like saying, I can douse myself in gasoline. I'm the only one who's going to get hurt. It depends where you're standing. In Australia, there's probably plenty of room out west in Australia. That's true. But that's in a special case. If you are a vaccine denier, think what you're denying.

You're denying the discoveries made by diligent scientists over the last three centuries. You're objectively wrong about it. Few things can be said that are 100% chance that you're wrong about this. That's right. Yeah. So I kind of enjoy that. Oh, it's great. What a great feeling.

But I think the anti-vaxers are losing sway. They're not as effective as they were 10 years ago. Well, especially some of their chief spokespeople, Jenny McCarthy, and things like that are saying, oh, you know, I was wrong about that. Yeah, well, when I was on the view a couple years ago, Ms. McCarthy would not look me in the eye. She was anxious. Really? Well, things change. Yeah.

You invented a hydraulic resonance suppression, too? Well, I didn't invent it. You didn't? I did the basic engineering on it. It's an old trick is all. It's not a new invention. Okay. I thought, wow, that's something that didn't exist before? No, no, no. It's incredible.

No, it's something that didn't exist, but the extra tubing on the 747 horizontal stabilizer system did not exist before, but the trick I used was not extraordinary. Oh, okay. You make the pressure wave destructively interfere with itself. So there was a vibration in the yoke. It's called the steering wheel of 747. And most pilots, it didn't bother them. You know, there's a great many test pilots at Boeing. We made a tube that had the pressure of a certain length to have the pressure wave cancel itself out, the quiescent conditions. When you're putting in a big steering input, the vibration was overwhelmed.

But anyway, this is a detail. But it's what you do when you're an engineer. Use science to solve problems. And then suddenly you shift to comedy and joke writing? What's going on there? Well, the word sudden isn't maybe exactly right. I started doing stand-up comedy after I won the Steve Martin look-like contest. in Seattle. I did not win the national one. First of all, he kind of looked like Steve Martin, which...

Yeah, helps. Well, the other thing is from Nashville. You play the banjo. Anyway, I started doing stand-up comedy. I met these guys who were working on a comedy show called Almost Live. You'd meet them at Open Mike Nights. I started writing jokes for that show, and then I met Jim and McKenna and Aaron Gottlieb, these producers who wanted to do educational videos about science. They started their own production company. And then it took us another one. four years to get anybody to believe it was really worth doing. Did you know right away? This is something that's going to take out. Well, the word right away, I did one bit about liquid nitrogen because the household uses of liquid nitrogen.

We all have liquid nitrogen around. You'd make celery that was limp, turn rigid again. Then you smash onions and it sounds like breaking glass, which is hilarious. But the payoff is chewing frozen marshmallow. so steam comes out of your nose. That's hilarious. And so after that, as I was walking off the stage at the NBC affiliate in Seattle, I went, this is it, man.

I want to be the next Mr. Wizard. That worked out. But it took a long time. That was 1987. And we got funding to do the pilot of the show in 1992. 25 years to an overnight success, something like that. Yeah. Well, you're proof that you can reinvent yourself.

A lot of people think they can't do that. Well, they're just wrong. Objectively wrong. No, whatever. You think I've reinvented myself? Maybe, yeah. Well, here's what happened, you guys. The first thing I wrote about climate change was in 1993 in a kid's book called Bill Nye's Big Blast of Science.

Nothing's been done about it since 1993. It's you guys out there denying climate change that have made me political. I didn't want to be. You started it, man. If you weren't denying science, none of us would have this problem. What advice would you have for somebody who wants to make that shift and says, I'm an engineer, I can't do the things I want to do? I'm so far away from the career that I really want from what I'm doing now. I've got to pay the bill somehow because just do it is really easy to say, but harder, I think, for people to step into.

I took the precaution of being single and young. I really did think in October 3, 1986, if I don't do it now, I ain't never going to do it. employing a double negative for a commuting effect. So I took a chance, and I realized even at that time, if I went away from engineering for six months, I would lose my currency. I wouldn't be able to compete with other guys because computer software was taken over my branch of engineering really fast. There's a thing that's very common now called finite element analysis, where you have a

mechanical part of physical object and you mathematically break it into rectangles into boxes. And then each vertex, each corner of the box is mathematically tied to the next corner of the next box. And then if you have enough computer power, you can simulate the bending, flexing stresses of this object. Well, that software was just coming on and the company Katia is still around. And if I went away from it for a year, I would be out of date. But I figured if I didn't do it now, it wasn't going to happen.

Did you do all that by hand on graph paper before? Don't mess with me. You know, you have a copy of formulas for stress and strain. Of course, somewhere around. Yeah, yeah. So you used to have a textbook that would be mostly grad students who would solve a specific problem. Flat plates with a hole in the center. Square plates, rectangular plates, circular plates, curved beams, curved beams of square cross-sections.

Curved beams of Ike beam cross-section. If you could identify the thing that was flexing or being stressed, you could plug it into these formulae, but it was not trivial. I mean, it had to recognize what you were doing. Anyway, that was the good old days. And then find an element analysis does not always give you the right answer. When I quit, that's what was coming on really fast. When I quit full time, I worked another 10 years part time. I had a niche.

I was one of the last guys that I knew that worked on a drawing board, you know, with lead holders. We don't call them pencils. Lead holders on a drawing board, you know, with the drawing engine, the big right angle thing on the on a six-foot-long drawing board, you'd have special tools or tooling, it's called, making fixtures to spin things for testing and stuff. One-of-a-kind objects. Wow. I did that for 10 years.

A young guy coming out of school now does Matt Lab, this program that solves many equations at one time, multivariable equations at one time, stuff that barely existed when I was in school. I started with a slide rule, man. It's how long ago it was. When we were in middle school and shop class, they gave us one of those things. They gave you a slide rule? Yeah, and you had a T-square at a big desk that was this big. You had a slide rule?

Yeah, I can't remember what it was for, but I remember having one. My dad was a mechanical engineer, so maybe he showed me how to use it finally. Something like that. Well, it's not for everybody. No, definitely not. You used to speak to kids. Now would you say you're speaking more to adults? Yeah, but kids still watch the old show.

Oh, yeah. You know, I was at a book signing last night here. at Onion Square in New York, New York. The town's so nice, they named it twice. And there's a lot of very young people who are watching the old shows, either online or in school. Many teachers still use the shows, which are over 20 years old. And I'm very proud of that. When it comes to science, you want to make videos that are about fundamental ideas in science that will stand the test of time.

Pluto was a planet. Yeah, so that's a man. Whoops. Oh, that's all right. There's a great lesson there. By the way, young people have no problem with that. And by young people, I mean, people in fifth grade can grasp that Pluto is smaller than the Earth's moon. Unknown in 1930.

And the reason it was believed to be bigger is because it's so shiny, because it's covered with ice, which is an amazing thing, with nitrogen volcanoes and all this. Seven geologic regions. It's the coolest thing. We say eight traditional planets. if you want to call everything else a planet, knock yourself out. Is the moon, Earth's moon a planet? Okay. Is Europa a moon of Jupiter a planet?

Okay. Did it have the misfortune of playing in a tough league? Yeah. By having to orbit this enormous planet. I don't know, man, but I still have no problem with the word Plutoid. So Pluto, instead of being the last of the traditional planets, would now be the first of a new class of celestial orbit. How cool would that be?

It sounds like a promotion. But if there's a couple guys that want it to be a planet, I'll let the International Astronautical Union figure that out. I don't really have a dog in this fight. This is the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Bill Nye. We'll be right back. And now, back to Bill Nye on the Jordan Harbinger Show. I've got to say, I admire you because you stand in front of this colossal mountain of ignorance,

and you're pushing hard. And that mountain does not like to be pushed. It pushes back. You're talking about the climate change deniers. The deniers of a lot of things, specifically climate change nowadays, yeah. Well, climate change is the biggest problem facing humankind, everybody. I mean, there's nothing bigger. What about health care?

That's important. But climate change is the biggest deal. If we were talking about climate change, the way we talk about health care or the racial issues that we have here in the U.S., we would be getting her done. Yeah. So we're hoping to raise awareness. Yeah. The new show, you're not just sharing facts. You're sort of trying to rescue humanity from this anti-science center. Yes. Trying to rescue all of humanity. Yeah. Big mission. A show on Netflix. Big mission.

How hard could it be? No, but, I mean, that is the goal, is to change the world to get people to take a scientific view of many issues facing society. We're going to do a couple of fun ones as well as we have a couple ones about drugs this year. We have a couple about the environment, and we have a couple that are just kind of cool. Yeah. So far, season one is highly entertaining. But where do you think the anti-science sentiment really comes from? I could just be missing this, but when I was a kid, you had science, you believed it, and a lot of people around you believed it.

And if you found somebody who thought that a certain scientific principle was not true, like, oh, the earth is flat, those people were insane. Now it seems like, well, there's this little shred of validity they think even people will agree that they have and it's just crazy to me. Well, I think social media has made that possible where anybody has a voice. Everybody can be an authority. So I think that'll blow over, really. If, hey, if you're a flat earther, if you're out there, go to the edge and take a picture

and send it to us. Yeah. Go out there to the edge. Well, they won't let you see the edge. Who's they? Yeah. You think you'll find that you're living on a big ball and you can travel any direction and never leave. Whoa. Dude, that's impossible. How could it be something that you could go anywhere and never

get off? Because it's a ball. It's a sphere. It's a sphere. This goes way back. Ancient Greeks realized that the Earth was a sphere because they saw the Earth's shadow cast on the moon during lunar eclipses. And they thought deeply about this. They didn't freak out. They just thought about it and realized that the Earth had to sphere. That's the only shape that will always cast a round shadow. And in medieval times, they did not think the world was flat. Columbus may have sold the queen on the earth being somewhat smaller than it is. The big thing is she bought it. And here we all are in North America. Check us out. That's right. If you're a First Nations person, here we all are, man. We got to roll with it. We got to move forward. Yeah. No kidding. The new show is part Bill and I, the science guy,

of our childhood but for grown-ups, I would say, part Mythbusters, maybe? Oh, yeah. Part Bill Maher? Part Bill Maher, sure. He is doing good work. I have to say, because he's just getting people talking. People hate him. People love him, but he's getting people talking, and that's his business.

And it's good. It's just a very important thing in our society that we're able to do that. I like the panels. I like Steve Aoki testing an acid. He's a good guy. He had fun. We're going to do an album. We're going to do a song.

Are you really? Yeah, sure. He's really into it. But, God, he's so successful right now. Yeah. You think I'm busy, man, oh, man. He's done a great job with branding. Like, he's the DJ guy now.

He's the DJ. Well, it's good. Yeah, yeah. And he's, by all accounts, very good. Speaking of branding, you got the bow tie still rocking. Those are like the Larry King suspenders of science. Yeah, getting the Larry King suspenders is a big step. I'm not going there.

But the bow tie, I recommend to all. It does not slip into the soup. Does not flop into the flask. And dressed up. When you wear a tuxedo, once in a while there'd be some Hwood guy, some Hollywood actor wearing a straight tie or just buttons or black with black buttons on black with a black carnation. Okay. But when you're dressed up, you wear a tuxedo with a white shirt and a bow tie. That's what it is.

It's part of your brand, but it also seems like it's part of your mindset, the bow tie. Well, I guess. Yeah. Now I'm stuck with it. You devoted significant real estate to that in the book. So here's the thing. when you tie your shoe, you want it to be a symmetrical bow because then it doesn't come untied.

Did not know that. Think of the loss of productivity. In our societies, people have to bend down and retie their shoes. Ten seconds a day, 30 seconds a day, times 300 million? Oh, the number of seconds a day we lose to mistide shoes. Oh, the humanity. Billions of dollars every decade. Yes.

You want the U.S. to be competitive? we got to tie square bows on our shoelaces. Being a little ironic, everybody, if I'm going too fast for you. No, yeah, of course. When I was in kindergarten, we had to learn how to tie our shoes using the two bows method. Two bows is good, rabbit ears. Yeah, but there was the easy way, which required one bow, or one loop, sorry. Well, you wrap one loop with the other and poke through, or do you make two loops and tie the loops together?

The first way is whatever. You get the same answer. Yeah, this is something I'd love to solve right now. I got in trouble and I was the last kid to get the sticker that says I can tie my shoes because I wanted to do it the easy way. And there was the original way with two loops. But my question was always, if there's an easy way and a hard way and they both yield the same result, why would you do it the hard way? Plus, many people would reverse what you consider easy and hard. You had some intuition that your teacher suppressed. The humanity, man, you're a mess. It all led to this, too. Yes. Look at you now. Could have made something on myself. Yeah. Well, hey, we're in downtown New York, everybody. We're in man. Manhattan. We're in Times Square. We got it going up. That's right. Well, the book, Everything All at Once, you mentioned there are certain strategies that always get results. One of those was looking at the world with radical curiosity.

What is that? Well, here's the thing. It's very easy to not go to the trouble to investigate things, but no matter what the thing is, how to tie your shoe, how to best write a letter, how to best send an email, whatever it is. A lot of things we can tune out because it's just we feel it's too much to take in. However, my claim is, if you're always curious, the world's always exciting. And every day you will learn something. And big idea behind that is everybody knows something you don't. And this is quite an insight. It is. I loved that idea as well. I want to stick with the radical curiosity. Radical curiosity. How do we develop that? How do you nurture that? What if we find whether the type of person who just accepts things at face value or doesn't

bother to investigate. How do we develop it in ourselves, nurture it if we don't necessarily have it? Well, the main thing is to get a copy of my book. Of course. There's 20 in a carton. They make great gifts. The eclipse is coming up. I encourage everybody to get out and under the eclipse because you'll see something that you just probably will never see again. Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about keeping your natural childlike curiosity, radical curiosity something else? Oh, no. It's really the same thing? Yeah. There's an expression everybody throws around these days, thinking outside the box? Yes. It's radical.

So outside the box, do you know the puzzle where you have nine dots? Nine dots? And then you have to draw four lines to connect all nine. I do know it, and I can't think of the solution. Well, the solution is you go beyond the box of dots. Oh, right. I think that's where the expression came from. It's like a giant

open triangle on one side. It looks like a delta kite. Right. Yeah, I think that's where the expression came from. Oh, really? Okay. But as I tell people, you don't always have to be outside the box about everything. I get these emails from NASA, and so many of them have disruptive, out-of-the-box game-changing seminar. No, it isn't. We've got a better rivet, which is important. I've mentioned fasteners earlier. Right. You want better rivets, but they are probably not radically game-changing outside the box things. They're just a little better. It's a small game.

Incremental improvements. It's a small game that's being changed by that game-changing invention. I think the other strategy that gets results you mentioned was being driven by a desire for a better future. But isn't everyone driven by this in some way? I'm not sure. I meet a lot of people. Well, for example, in the example of Pluto, you meet a lot of people that want Pluto to be a planet because it was. Right.

That's true. It affects their childhood somehow. So you grew up, it was one thing. Now it's something else. It's okay. Isn't that cool? Isn't that exciting? My grandfather rode a horse into World War I.

You don't want to ride a horse into a modern battle? No. Generally. I prefer an up-armored vehicle, yeah. Things change. That's not a bad thing. It's a thing. As the human population increases, you could argue that your quality of life is going to go down

because there'll be less for everybody. But, oh, no. Look at the modern mobile phone. This thing tells me which side of the street I'm on. I can watch the front porch of my house from your studio on the camera. We all talk about Wi-Fi like it's nothing, like it's a day at the office. It's extraordinary. This all, by the way, comes from engineers.

Yes. It comes from electrical engineers sitting there thinking deep thoughts, having meetings agreeing on international standards that we all take for granted. This idea that regulations are bad, I just think is just absolutely wrong. It's like a machine. You want a machine to have all the parts it needs, but no extra parts. You want all the regulations you need, but no extra ones. True. Yeah, I can see that.

I think the trick is in the balance, of course. We're going to eliminate one out of every two regulations. Where did you get that number? Yeah, that figures. Where did you get one half? What? You drive either side of the street. You pay taxes on the whole road.

You drive either side. That's fine, man. I think you have rights. Yeah, you go out there and drive on the left. in the U.S. Party on. Yeah, yeah, what could go wrong? Well, you'll see. How do we encourage people to be more willing to take the actions needed to make change in a lot?

You listen to your podcast. That's the key. There you go. I think that's really the key to the future is this podcast. I just want to get people excited about this process. I mean, we are living at a time. It is very reasonable that we will discover life on another world. We know, we have spacecraft roving on the planet Mars right now, The Curiosity rover and Opportunity, this rover called Opportunity, is still roving.

On Mars, it is reasonable that, if not the next spacecraft, the one after that and the one after that will lead us to where there is liquid water. Everywhere on Earth that we have even dampness, we have something alive, bacteria of some sort. Is there something alive on Mars? Does it have DNA? Is it like us or is it a whole other thing? that discovery would change the course of human history. I'm not saying we would all start driving on the left in the U.S. Let's not get crazy.

Yeah, but it would be profound, like Copernicus, proving that if you want the right answer, you show that the earth goes around the sun, not the other way around. It changed everything. We have international commerce because we discovered that we live on a ball orbiting another ball. It's fantastic. Just think what it could mean for medicine if we found a new type of life. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Bill Nye.

We'll be right back. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us going and to learn more and get links to all the great discount you just heard so you can go check out those amazing sponsors for yourself. Visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget that worksheet for today's episode. The link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. And now for the conclusion of our episode here with Bill Nye. What about Elon colonizing Mars?

What do you think about that? All right, so a couple things. First of all, we don't like the word colony. Let's go with... Oh, yeah. Well, as Americans, we're kind of averse. Well, and also, if you're an African, you know, there was a lot of trouble with colonialism in South America.

These people who had extraordinary germs and weapons showed up from Europe, showed up in these places, and took over because when you have technology that far and advanced, when you have rifles versus spears, rifles versus bow and arrows, things happen to way humans are. Yeah. We don't want to colonize. We want to settle.

But I don't think you want to settle on Mars. If you think you do, go to Antarctica for a couple years. And don't go to the shore, the edge of the ice sheet where there's penguins jumping around and krill and whales and big birds and stuff. Penguins. No, you go to the dry valley. It hasn't snowed or rained in over a century. There's no water. and don't breathe.

You have to take your own air. Just see what you think. Mars, there's no air. You will notice that immediately. What are you thinking? You're not thinking. Yeah. In this romantic notion

that will go settle on Mars and have a two planet species, dude, really. A scientific outpost akin to McMurdo Station, I get it, but I was in Greenland last summer on the ice sheet.

There is nothing. It's not like, I'm going to take my rifle, live off the land up there on the ice sheet. No, there is nothing to shoot. It's just sunlight and ice more than a mile thick. And in every direction you look, the horizon is more ice. However, having a science base on Mars would be very cool. That would be a whole other very cool thing. The Internet is going to be faster on Antarctica as well.

While you're worrying, our assets, as they're called at Mars, the orbiting spacecraft will use to relay data from the surface to Earth, goes up to Martian orbit, then from there to Earth. Those spacecraft are getting old. They're getting warred out. So we've got to replace them. And the cost of planetary science, you guys, it's 9% of the NASA budget, which is in turn 0.4% of the federal budget.

It's 0.036% of the federal budget. It's not very much money. And with it, we make these extraordinary discoveries. So it's a worthy use of our intellect and treasure, my fellow citizens of the earth. A lot of what you've done your whole life has been geared towards kids, but you don't have any kids of your own. I think for two reasons. My parents stop getting along. When your parents get separated, you think it's your fault as a kid. I didn't make this up. I'm not a professional psychiatrist. Then the other thing is my family has this genetic condition called ataxia. It contributed to my parents separating. My dad became very stubborn because you lose your balance.

This is before there were ADA access ramps everywhere. This is back in the old days. So he would fall down and insist everything was fine. It was a way of dealing with this condition. Plus, he had been a prisoner of war. There's some speculation that exacerbated the deterioration of his nerves. But I just equated being married with misery, the possibility of passing on this condition that led to misery seemed more than I could bear.

You don't have that or you do have that and it's not that bad? Well, as far as anybody can tell, I don't have it. And do you know why I don't have it? Nope, nobody knows. Nobody knows. So we're in a study by we, I mean, my immediate family and my extended family, cousins and everybody. We're in a study at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, which is part of Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. We are trying to sort this out.

Tell us about cognitive dissonance. This was really interesting. You wrote, when you have a worldview and you're confronted with evidence that contradicts it, you got to do something. You have dissonance, conflict in your mind. You either change your whole worldview, which is quite difficult the older you get, or you dismiss the evidence. Along with that, you dismiss the authority. That sounds pretty dangerous. Right now, it's the best explanation I have for why people are doubling down on climate change denial.

So here are the evidence. Here's the data. Here's our gas samples. 2016 will be the hottest year on record. 2010, 2020 will be the hottest decade on record. This is consistent with our computer models. This is clearly human-caused climate change. No, it isn't. No, it isn't.

And the more evidence you present, the more the deniers double down. And along with cognitive dissonance, there's an expression, the backfire effect. That seems to be what it is. Unfortunately, now we have climate deniers in positions of power in our government. I don't know how long that's going to last. For those of you listening, every day there's some new revelation about the current administration that's very troubling. I looked at, of course, reviews of the book, which came out this morning.

Is that right? Yes. Yeah. Out this morning. Can you feel the excitement? Of course. Who can't? A lot of folks on the websites where people review books, Amazon and such, wrote,

now I feel even more insignificant about all the things going wrong. I think that's probably the opposite effect you were hoping for with the book. Well, keep in mind, one review is... course. It's not really the whole story. I'm bringing this up to put needles into the conversation. You're welcome. You're welcome.

So one of the things about astronomy, especially, is it's humbling. The more you learn about the cosmos, the less significant you are. However, isn't it amazing that we can know that? How cool is that? That we can know that we are insignificant. I hope it gives everybody pause. Now, as far as being insignificant, as far as being helpless goes, Keep in mind that humans now move more earth and rock than nature does.

We're talking about the movement of tectonic plates and volcanoes and erosion is not as much of an effect as you and me. Wow. You and I are. That's a hell of a thing. Yeah. With this comes responsibility. We are in charge of the planet. And if you have science fiction buffs out there, we now are running the show here.

You know, in science fiction stories, they go, that's the cold planet, that's the warm planet, that's the planet where they play the bagpipes or whatever they do. Well, it's like that now. We are running the whole planet for better or for worse. And so this is a responsibility that we have to take. Imposter syndrome is what we call this, where people feel like, I can't do this. They're going to figure out I'm a fraud. Which, do you ever feel that? Of course.

Yes. Yes. You're your broadcasting on your potting of cast. You're an interviewer and you go to the influencer dinner and you go, who am I? Do the dishes with Bill Nye and I'm just so insignificant. But I think it makes a lot of us afraid to even try to solve big problems. We just think, what the hell am I going to do? You got to get out there.

You got to believe you can do something that you have to be optimistic or you won't do anything. If you don't think you can accomplish something, you will not accomplish it. That's my claim. That for sure is true. Does it help to learn about the fear, the authenticity and that kind of thing? No, no, no, no. Stick your head in the sand, ignore it. No, of course.

The more self-awareness you have, the better. I encourage you all to just go out there and try it. You wrote about internalizing fears with respect to this, and the example you gave was James Cameron building a submarine so he can go and do some exploring on his own. He's the real deal. Yeah? He's a very successful movie maker because he, as far as I can tell,

is an extraordinary storyteller. But along with that, he is deeply curious about the world. our world. I went with him to Barbara McCulski's office. Barbara McCulski was a senator from Maryland. She just retired. And she was a big supporter of New Horizons, the missions to Pluto. I went with James Cameron, Lou Friedman, who was the head of the Planetary Society at that time, longtime colleague of Carl Sagan's. The three of us went to Barbara McCulski's office. We had 10,000 postcards from members of the Planetary Society who supported a mission to Pluto. That was in the year 2000.

He really wanted a mission to Pluto, and he wanted to put a binocular camera, a zoom camera, on the Martian rover, curiosity. And the claim would add $600,000, $.6 million to the budget, and they decided not to do it. I'm not sure that was the best decision. But he wanted to go to the bottom of the ocean again. You know, he got really into the Titanic, and he made, I don't know, dozens of trips to the Titanic in a Russian submarine.

that's made for that purpose, really deep, deep. Well, I mean, that's how he made that movie. He went down there and looked at the whole thing and studied it inside out. But on the same token, he wanted to go to the deepest part of the ocean, which had only been visited once in 1960 by these Navy officers, U.S. naval officers who were assigned to go there and see what was down there. And they had so much turbulence created by their little motors, their little propellers. They really didn't discover much.

But Cameron spent his own money, in my recollection, is $23 million, which doesn't go as far as it used to. I don't have to tell you, to go to the bottom of the ocean to very, very deepest part. And he made a whole bunch of remarkable discoveries. One of them that really fascinated me is just a kilometer away, a mile away from the very, very, very deepest part. There's a whole bunch of living things, these crazy tunicates and these weird rat-tail fish swimming around. but then you go to the very deepest part and there's nothing. It's a dead zone by human standards. I'm sure there's all sorts of bacteria and viruses that he brought samples back.

But it indicates something about ocean currents that is really fundamental. You know, it's easier to explore the surface of the moon than the bottom of the ocean. It's got a pair of binoculars. You can look at the moon. That's true. Bottom of the ocean, no, the three seas. It's cold, crushing, and corrosive. It's hard to get down there.

Everything rusts when you're on a ship. and you go down even a little ways, it's freaking cold. And you go down a little bit more, and it'll just, it'll crush you like an empty soda can. That's terrifying. But not for James Cameron, apparently. Well, he was, I'm sure he was very respectful of the dangers, and he pulled it off.

I mean, he did it. It's very cool. Everybody knows something you don't. You mentioned that earlier. We're all in silos. Why is this important? How do we break the habit? I just try to be aware of it all the time.

I mean, there are people that know things. I don't. Everybody listening knows something I don't. And I got to appreciate that. I was in a car this morning with a guy driving. He knows Manhattan traffic better than I do. Guarantee you, he knows the tricks to getting around. I'll never know that stuff. It's okay. That's his business. It's good. It's cool. We're wearing textiles. What do we know about textile weaving? Hardly anything, but there are experts. Thank goodness. What do you think is the top bias that keeps people from thinking critically. What can we teach people to help them become better thinkers? You've got to be open-minded. I fight it. We all fight it. There's a term right now,

mansplaining. Yes. Where you just presume that you know stuff that you really don't, and it's annoying. With that said, we're constantly making judgments, constantly deciding what's good or bad or what the best course of action is continually all day. We're doing that. But we want to be open-minded. We want to look for new ways of doing things, not just because the danger being set in your ways, but because of the experience of new things. You're going to make discovery. Every time you explore, two things are going to happen. No matter what it is, your backyard or Mars, you're going to make discoveries about the traffic in New York, but you're also going to

have an adventure. You're going to have an adventure. And that's what drives us is that love of adventure, of novel experiences. By the way, I meant to tell you guys, when we recorded this show, this episode, Bill and I had met a few years prior, but I didn't expect him to remember that. Of course, washing dishes with some random guy in New York City

and now I'm back in New York City. We did this, right at a studio in Times Square. The entire recording studio, Jen and I walked in there with our camera crew, we walked in the studio, and the whole thing just reeks of marijuana. Someone had just gotten done. I mean, within the,

hour smoking a whole lot of joints, at least two, and just left him in the ashtray. And when I got there, I was like, oh, great. I've got Bill Nye, the science guy coming in here who spent his entire life trying to teach kids to become these upstanding, educated citizens when they get older. And he's going to come in here and think that we burned a joint, Jen and I, at 6.30 in the freaking morning on a Tuesday, right before an interview. And at this point, I want to say Jen was pregnant when we did this? Like, you know, it wasn't a good look. It was not a good look. And of course, we had to immediately explain to Bill Knight, like, just so you know, that's not our marijuana smell that you're smelling. No, there's anything wrong with that, but, you know, she's three months

pregnant or four months pregnant. Great big thank you to Bill Nye, the science guy, for coming on the show here. We'll link to his show and his stuff in the show notes on the website. Please do use our website links. If you buy any books from any guests on the show, it does help support us here and to create and do good work. Worksheets for this episode to review what you learned from Bill Nye, that's in the show notes, transcript of this episode, also in the show notes. And there's going to be a video of this interview on our YouTube channel. It's not up yet, but it will be soon, over at jordanharbinger.com slash YouTube.

I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems and tiny habits so that it's all about consistency. That's over at our six-minute networking course, which is free, over at jordanharbinger.com slash course. Don't do it later. Do it now. Dig the well before you get thirsty. Build your network before you need it, even if you feel like it's starting from scratch. The drills just take a few minutes per day. I wish I knew this stuff decades ago. This has been game changing for me. Find it all for free at jordanharbinger.com slash course. By the way, most of the guests on the show actually subscribe to the course and the newsletter. So come join us. You'll be in smart company. Speaking of building

relationships, you can always reach out and or follow me on social. I'm at Jordan Harbinger. I'm both Twitter and Instagram. You can also add me on LinkedIn. I'm posting there all the time. This show is created in association with Podcast One. The episode is produced by Jen Harbinger, engineered by Jace Sanderson. The ads were fun because of Peter Oldring, show notes and worksheets by Robert Fogarty, music by Evan Viola. And I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Our advice and opinions and those of our guests are their own, and I'm a lawyer, but not your lawyer, so do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. And remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is that you're

You share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who's into science or just loves Bill Nye, please do share this with him. Hopefully you find something great in every episode. So please share the show with those you love. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen. And we'll see you next time. I went to L.A. and needed to get the first job that I could and got hired by this guy who was a pretty demanding boss. I was his personal assistant.

And then he said, I need you to serve drinks at my poker game. So I'm like, okay, great. And I bring my playlist and my cheese plate. And I'm thinking, you know, the players are going to be these overgrown frat boys. But then Affleck walks in the room and Lear DiCaprio and a politician that was very well recognized. And heads of studios, heads of banks. And all of a sudden I had this light bulb moment that poker is my Trojan horse. I just need the control and have power over this game because it has this.

incredible hold over these people. Why do these guys, with their access to anyone and anything, come to this dingy basement to play this game? What is the most money you've seen someone lose in one night? $100 million. How did the mob get involved? Around Christmas, door opened and this guy that I'd never seen before pushed his way in, and stuck a gun in my mouth.

Then he beat the hell out of me, and he kind of gave me this speech about how, if I told anyone about this or if I didn't comply, then they would take a trip to Colorado to see my family. Then the feds got involved, and the first thing they did was they took all my money. I moved back to L.A. I'd gotten a pretty decent job. Ten days later, I got a call in the middle of the night. This is agent so-and-so from the FBI. You need to come out with your hands up. I walk into my hallway. When my eyes adjusted to the high beam flashlights, I saw 17 FBI agents, semi-automatic weapons pointed at me.

If you want to learn more about building rapport and generating the type of trust that Molly Bloom needed to run her multi-million dollar operation and hear about how it all came to an end, check out episode 120 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like something you should know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format.

Mike brings on top experts and asks the... exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not. The through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work itch, search for

something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.