The Science Guy is here! Bill Nye joins Dial the Gate to discuss current topics in the science community, his work at the Planetary Society and share memories of playing a version of himself in Stargate Atlantis Season Five’s “Brain Storm!”

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Episode 389 of Dial the Gate: The Stargate Oral History Project. I’m David Read. Thank you for joining me in my parents’ living room. We had to make a few holiday plan adjustments. They usually come to me, but I came to them this year. I knew I was planning on finishing with Martin Gero for Season Five, and then we recorded the Christmas Carol Special with Tom and Jacqueline and Garwin, along with a number of other projects that we’re going to be releasing early next year in Season Six for Dial the Gate. But I put out a number of requests once the Stargate announcements came through for SG-4, the fourth series that’s coming out. And Bill Nye responded “yes”, just around the time that we were finishing with Martin. So, there was no way that I was going to keep this over for Season Six. We were going to bring Bill in, the Science Guy, for crying out… I was raised with this guy, for this season. So, this is a coda onto our season, and I really hope that you enjoy it. We only had him for about 50 minutes, but we ran the gamut of topics, all kinds of science topics. And thanks so much to everyone who submitted a question in the comments from the announcement for this episode. It took a little bit longer for this episode to get out than I would have wished because of spending so much time in Vancouver, but thanks so much to Bill for making this one possible. He and Neil deGrasse Tyson guest starred in Season Five’s “Brainstorm”, which was the last episode that Martin Gero wrote, and actually directed, for Stargate Atlantis before the end of that series. It’s special that we have him along as well because he actually featured in Blindspot. He’s worked with Martin since. And we touch on a little bit of all of that, and we get into a little bit of the Wraith, and the nature of the freeze lightning, and a few other things in addition to answering some of your questions as well. I’m going stop prattling along here, and I’m just going bring in Bill Nye, the Science Guy, who played himself in Stargate Atlantis’ “Brainstorm”. Let’s go ahead and see it.

David Read:
First of all, I really want to thank you for the privilege of being back with you again. It’s not often that twice in your life you get a chance to meet someone who helped shape who you are as an adult in terms of how you view the world, but not only that, but how you enabled curiosity and a deeper concentration of your surroundings to be fun. You brought us in that show that I watched all those years ago on PBS a sense of freedom to go, “Yeah, being goofy is fine, and all right, and just be you, and be curious about your surroundings.” Do you ever stop being surprised by the success of that show?

Bill Nye:
No. That is a great question. As I tell people all the time, we were messing around in a warehouse in Seattle. And the show is… it’s the fourth generation of people are watching it, you know? It’s really surprising and wonderful. So, you’re right, I never stop being amazed.

David Read:
What is happening in science today that you think that everyone should be paying attention to?

Bill Nye:

Two things at least. Everyone’s talking about, “Artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence, most important thing that’s ever happened in the history of humankind.” And it’s a big deal, but I think the real, ultimate effect of artificial intelligence is gonna be in two areas, at least. It will not be in writing scripts automatically for automatic soap operas or whatever it is, which there may be a limited amount of that. I think it will be in designing genes for crops, for agriculture, for farm crops. With artificial intelligence, we’ll be able to dial in characteristics of grains so that they are tolerant to droughts, tolerant to floods, tolerant to temperatures, tolerant to temperature swings, and so on. And the other thing I’m very excited about is fusion. Instead of knocking apart large atoms and releasing the so-called energy of the weak atomic force, you’d be smashing together protons, for example, and overcoming the strong atomic force and releasing that heat and light the way we do in a star. The thing about artificial intelligence, it may enable a system, a gizmo, a fusion energy reactor to not just react to how the plasma is moving. So, everybody — Solid, liquid, gas, the fourth state of matter is plasma, and I don’t have very much direct experience with it, but the old saying is it’s like trying to handle Jell-O with chopsticks. The stuff, it just has these strange properties that are not random but difficult to predict. But with an artificial intelligence system, perhaps, we will be able to anticipate where the plasma would go and then design a magnetic field or rather a system to control a magnetic field to control it. If we had fusion energy, it would, dare I say it, change the world.

David Read:
I remember growing up reading that within each of us is the potential to unlock an almost unlimited amount of power. We’re all like little nuclear reactors. It’s extraordinary how much power is locked away if we just found the correct combination to release it.

Bill Nye:
Well, we’re talking about… In fusion, we’re talking about actual smashing of protons together, and that is, in stars, that’s done with a tremendous amount of gravity. On Earth, if we ever pull this off, it’ll be done with a magnetic field. And smashing stuff, so you’d have… For example, you’d have a beam of protons that runs into a plasma of dissociated protons and electrons, and they would fuse. Then you’d contain it with a magnetic field. But getting a beam of protons sounds extraordinary and exotic, but it’s not that hard. It’s hydrogen gas, and you’d accelerate it with an electric grid, like a window screen all charged up, and the electron would stay on the screen and the proton keeps going. This is, if I may, an old trick, but getting fusion to work is not an old trick.

David Read:
We have a lot to learn. I think the importance of good science fiction stories, so much of it is to help keep us grounded in our tech-transforming world. I love Isaac Asimov’s quote that “good science fiction is the key for us as a species if we are to survive”. If I may borrow from Bill Adama and Galactica, “be worthy of survival”. How critical do you think it is today for good science fiction stories, like Martin Gero’s upcoming show, to be told?

Bill Nye:
To me, it’s changed my life. I’m looking for a copy of… Here’s one. Here’s another. Hang on. It’s gonna be worth it.

David Read:
Sure.

Bill Nye:
Here it is, and what’s this clutter? This is awful. But here we are. US Constitution, now available in paperback. The US Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, is, “Congress is to promote the progress of science and useful arts.” The word science is in the Constitution. Anyway, science fiction changed my life. I watched Star Trek, the original Star Trek. I’m of a certain age. And the same people who are interested in that sort of science fiction are interested in the real science of, for example, rocketry, or governance, or the social interactions of people, and people that literally don’t look like you, people of different ancestry or whatever. Star Trek was inspirational in that regard. Not just with the human crew, but the Vulcan crew and then all these other entities that you would encounter, many of whom were fluent in English. It was surprising. That sort of science fiction makes me very hopeful about the future. And then, in Stargate, we had climate change going on. People are talking these days about climate change just doesn’t have the traction that it did in the public eye that it did a few years ago. People are realizing that affordability is more important than climate change. OK. It’s going catch up with us, everybody. You might be putting it off right now, but climate change is coming, whether or not you choose to fund electric vehicle chargers or not.

David Read:
Speaking to that episode, “Brainstorm”, was the first time you worked with Martin Gero. Who is that man to you? And what was that episode mean to you?

Bill Nye:
Well, he’s this charming guy, and it was real acting. And I got to tie everybody’s bow tie. Not the point, but it was, for me, it was a thrill. It was… Because it was shot in Vancouver, British Columbia, and the crew is just competent. They’re excellent crew, working hard all day, and I felt very taken care of, and I also felt like an important part of the team. “Come prepared, be on time. Be on time, come prepared. The rest? Ha! Anybody can do it.” Just being included with that was fun, and Martin’s direction was just excellent. He had me playing myself, and I pitched… I keep calling him David. What’s the character–

David Read:
David Hewlett? McKay!

Bill Nye:
McKay.

David Read:
It’s OK.

Bill Nye:
David Hewlett is cool. He’s great. He’s an actor, everybody. I guess your listeners all know him.

David Read:
Yes.

Bill Nye:
McKay. It’s been over 10 years. “My degrees aren’t honorary,” that’s his line. And I felt really bad. I go, “God, I suck.” And Martin allowed me to add something. It was very nice. In other words, he’s supportive of me as a person as well as an actor, which was very nice.

David Read:
That’s the thing. When you’re playing a version of yourself… In the script, he literally has an exchange. “I wonder if this gal that he’s with is available,” you know? That, “Neil, you’re not available, you’re married, but I am.” And it’s like, “I’m gonna see if I can take her away from him.” And you’re playing a version of yourself. Do you kind of just have to let that part of yourself go? It’s like, “there are parts of this person that I’m playing are a caricature of me. I wouldn’t do this in this situation.” You just trust the material?

Bill Nye:
Yeah. Plus, it’s Martin… In this case, it’s Martin Gero’s perception of me, and that’s valid. No matter what I think I am, it’s his, or viewer’s, perception of me. That was great. I just went with it. But you do have to… to your point, you have to concentrate. You can’t come out and go, “Oh, I’d never say that.” You can’t do that. You gotta perform, man. And so, since then, just not changing the subject, Martin’s had me back in Blindspot, and I think it’s because he was pleased enough with my… You can ask him. I think he was pleased enough with me in Stargate.

David Read:
No, we did. He considers you a friend. Iblackfeathers wrote in and said that you have a crossover line in Blindspot where your character there mentioned Rodney McKay is your real-life nemesis. Do you think that the two universes are actually one?

Bill Nye:
Yes, I do think that the two universes are one, but we all know my real nemesis is Neil.
I’m fooling around, you guys. That’s irony. Lighten up.

David Read:
I have tried to have him on the show. And we have yet to get him.

Bill Nye:
I’m serious, man. He is running all over the place.

David Read:
He sure is. Yeah, for sure.

Bill Nye:
He’ll find you after a while.

David Read:
I grew up with a father who, if we were heading towards somewhere where he knew that there was going to be a garbage can, and he had room in his pockets, and there was something laying on the ground in front of him, he would pick it up and put it in his pocket. And we would get to wherever we were going and he would deposit the garbage in the can. And I do that as an adult, and even my friends give me… They mention it to me later, they’re like, “Why do you do that?” “Well, because it’s the right thing to do.”

Bill Nye:
Wanna leave the world better than you found it.

David Read:
That’s it. And it’s on my way, and I can clean this street up a little bit and I get a dopamine hit. I feel that there is so much to championing great causes, but also environmental stewardship starts with you, in the simplest act. And it is a contagion that, if you demonstrate, can be shared with others.

Bill Nye:
So, this gets back a little bit to the broken window idea. You know, if there are broken windows in a neighborhood, then people throw rocks at the unbroken windows and make them all broken, whereas if they’re taken care of and maintained, people are less likely to abuse the space, the building. That’s a very reasonable idea. And so, picking up trash is part of that. How many of us have seen the overflowing trash can at the rock concert or what have you? When there might be an unfilled trash can not far away, and this and that? Of course, in the case of trash cans, good engineering invites right use. You want the trash cans to be where you need them, and so on.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Bill Nye:
Not changing the subject. No, we’re talking about leaving the world better than you found it.

David Read:
That’s it. What do you think of the concept of freeze lightning after all these years? Is it one of those where it’s, “This is one of those where I’m just gonna…?”

Bill Nye:
You guys, something that is really cool, and I did talk to Martin about this many years ago. One of the way cool scientists on the Science Guy show, John Horack, was a principal investigator on spacecraft — I guess they’re still flying — that were designed to measure cosmic rays. These are high-energy particles and waves that come from deep space, presumed from scraping and friction of cosmic material, dust and hydrogen gas, or hydrogen atoms, deep in space. This spacecraft was designed… and it’s flat with detectors on it, and detectors on both sides, top and bottom. What does it look like? Let’s see, it looks like this. It has detectors on top and detectors on the bottom, and it goes around the earth in so-called inertial space. In other words, the spacecraft isn’t doing this as it goes around the earth, it’s just doing this. Do you follow me, everybody? “Sure, Bill.” Anyway, he detected sprites… cosmic rays produced in thunderstorms, the equivalent of cosmic rays produced in thunderstorms. And sprites are a meteorology word for lightning, cloud within a cloud, cloud to cloud. So, they did all this meteorological research while trying to study cosmic rays. So, the stuff that goes on with lightning and clouds in science fiction, I’m on board. Let’s go, man. Turn it up loud.

David Read:
The thing that I absolutely love about so much of our science fiction, and not talking about the fact that Bill Shatner is holding a communicator in one day, and one half to a couple decades later, we can hold the exact same thing.

Bill Nye:
Our communicator also has cameras and stores access to virtually all of human knowledge throughout the cosmos. [inaudible]

David Read:
It’s ridiculous. The thing that I find extraordinary is that these writers, and I’ll cite an example from Stargate, posit something about the universe. They’re going out on a limb, but it’s possible, and it turns out to be true. In Stargate Universe, the end of Season One, Destiny gets trapped in the range of a pulsar that turns every 22 minutes or whatever it was. I don’t remember the exact number. And at the time, no one had seen a pulsar behave this way in space. It’s like, no, no, no, this is not a thing that moves that fast or slow.

Bill Nye:
It’s that slow.

David Read:
That slow. Years later, we detect a pulsar that behaves like the one in Stargate Universe, and they were right.

David Read:
I’m sorry, but that’s the coolest thing.

Bill Nye:
It’s a reasonable guess. You can bust my chops on this.

David Read:
No, no.

Bill Nye:
But I don’t think there was any astronomer 25 years ago who was saying, “That’s absolutely impossible.”

Bill Nye:
I think he or she would’ve said, “Well, we’ve never seen one.” I don’t think anybody would’ve said that was impossible. When you have spinning things, there’s all kinds of modes. You have the fundamental spin, then you have nutation, and then you have precession. There’re all kinds of stuff going on. And so, it’s reasonable to me that as a star or pulsar loses its energy, this magnetic field, which has developed in a karate chop shape, also ends up going around pretty slowly. A feature of the sun, just our sun, is different latitudes on the sun spin at different rates, very much out of your everyday experience. Imagine if the equator was going a different speed from London. It’d be crazy. In a tangential velocity, they are going different speeds, but in a radial velocity, they’re going same speed. London and the equator are moving at the same time. But imagine they weren’t. Whoa! That’s what goes on in a star. So, to me, a pulsar that’s got a period of only 22 minutes, I don’t know, it could be. It’s great. It’s cool. But a lot of science fiction doesn’t work out, everybody. There’s a lot of telepathy in science fiction. So far not proven.
There’s a lot of, “Take the other guy’s wound and make empathy,” in physical… injury empathy, maybe. OK. Vampirism. We all love vampires, cannibals, we’re crazy for that. So …

David Read:
I guess there’s some things that stay affixed to the genre. And it’s interesting that you bring that up because Harvey and Todd the Wraith wanted to know, “How much of Stargate have you seen? And what do you think that the show really gets right? And conversely, what do you find yourself squinting past to enjoy in the story?”

Bill Nye:
I didn’t watch that much Stargate, but I watched enough. I noticed everybody’s running around in the Pacific Northwest. There’s a lot of evergreen trees.

David Read:
It’s true.

Bill Nye:
And we love fangs. Who doesn’t love fangs? But this idea that you go between star systems to feed, that’s a lot. But what are you gonna do? It’s a metaphor. I was amazed or very surprised to learn that there were prayers by families who lived in what would now be Scotland or Northern England praying that the raiders from the north would not come this month. This would be, I guess, Vikings, who just, like any good parasite, thought it’d be easier to take somebody else’s stuff than make stuff for yourself. I think looking at it metaphorically, Stargate is unlimited.
It’s a story. These are stories about everybody. Stories in science fiction with humanoids running around are stories about humans, everybody. Don’t kid yourself, these are human storytellers. And the thing that just amazes me and charms me and delights me, is Martin Gero is just a master storyteller. He’s just amazing. Thinks these things through. He’s got this major league plan. It’s just cool. I love working with that guy.

David Read:
He was creating such extraordinary, extraordinary stuff at 26 years old.

Bill Nye:
I know. I suck.

David Read:
I suck by comparison.

Bill Nye:
I know. It’s amazing.

Bill Nye:
And he’s, you guys, respectfully, what you see is what you get. He’s just a charming guy who loves what he does. He works hard, man.

David Read:
No one deserves to helm this new show more than he does.

Bill Nye:
It’s gonna be… It’s gonna work out for everybody. It’s gonna work out for the network or the streaming service. It’s gonna work out great for them, too. It’s gonna be win, win, win. Let’s go.

David Read:
That’s exactly right.

Bill Nye:
I am hopeful. I’m not just sucking up, David. I’m hopeful he’ll have me on an episode or two.

Bill Nye:
I’ll wear all the rubber stuff you want. You want fangs, you want ears? I’ll go bald cap if you think that’s gonna help.

David Read:
They’re borrowing from when Star Wars came out, when the new one came out 2015.

Bill Nye:
Now, was that Rogue, was that the Rogue thing?

David Read:
I’m talking about The Force Awakens in 2015.

Bill Nye:
Force Awakens, and you gotta… respectfully, how many have there been? Seven?

David Read:
Of the main course series that they have nine, and then you have two movies underneath it.

Bill Nye:
OK. I lose track, respectfully.

David Read:
But the number of people who… Simon Pegg went under heavy prosthetics just to be a part of this thing. And even George Lucas will tell you that either, that Star Wars is not strictly speaking science fiction. It’s more of a space opera. But the people who get invested in these stories and want to contribute, to be a part of it in some way, because it meant something to them, is extraordinary.

Bill Nye:
That’s great. It’s inspirational.

David Read:
I’m curious, Urias Tosh wanted to know, “How willing would you be to have yourself demolecularized inside of a wormhole? And if you would be, what type of world would you like to discover?”

Bill Nye:
Everybody had been asked a form of this. It would depend how well it worked. For example, I get on airplanes all the time. Solid technology, works very well, much safer than driving. I get in cars, safer than driving. There’s things I wouldn’t get on. I get on roller coasters, but there’s some of ’em, I’m reticent. I think I harken…this may seem like a digression to me. Anyway, there was this… I spent a lot of time on bicycles. This inventor came up with a pedal, a bicycle pedal that puts your foot below the axle. The pedal you’re familiar with probably does this, right? Well, this was an invention where the pedal, the platform was below the axle, and the claim was, as your ankle, as it’s called, as you take advantage of a little more than the circle, that this would be a great advantage. I looked at the thing and it’s made of plastic. It’s made of carbon fiber and carbon [polymer]. It might be called “glass-filled poly cellphone.” That might be what it was made of. Anyway, I looked at it as an engineer, or as a guy who’s ridden bikes, it just didn’t look like it would work. And sure enough, a guy I know pretty well got injured pretty badly when that pedal failed. You “bam!” Your boy parts come down on the top bar and you’re on a curve and it’s sandy and you just lose control of the bike and… So, that I wouldn’t do. That seemed like a digression. If the streaming molecularizer worked, OK, then I’m on board. And where would I wanna go? I’ve said this many times, Hawaii. Hawaii is pretty good. Hawaii, they got these beautiful beaches. The food is outstanding. They got cash machines. Everyone or nearly everyone speaks English. And that’s a big-time saver, and it’s very relaxing. So, that is one of my first destinations with the molecular beamerizer.

David Read:
You said everyone speaks English. I remember what you said earlier in that conversation about all the aliens speaking English in Trek. And Roddenberry is on record saying that, “Well, we have to understand is that within every home television set is a small universal translator.”

Bill Nye:
That’s right. Sure. It’s very well documented. Now we have smart TVs, finally caught up with Star Trek technology. Furthermore, you guys, the world is changing in the coolest way. Talking about the Star Trek communicator. I’m not joking, you guys. I went to a conference, it’s called the Astronautical Congress in Paris, the year before this. And got in a taxi. The taxi driver was Romanian. And he spoke very good French, but once in a while, he would reach for a word. I hardly speak any French, I dream of it. Oh, Martin Gero speaks French if you need to, he’s a good Canadian. He was brought up in Canadian high school. Anyway, the driver pointed at his phone, “Download this app.” This was two years ago, you guys. Now every phone has this. But I could speak English, it would come out in French and he could read it, and once in a while he’d put it in Romanian, into French, into English. And we could carry on, man. We were–
The whole town was under construction for the Olympics. I was in traffic for over an hour, hour and a half. And we had a cool conversation by phone. It was cool, because the universal translator just almost exists.

David Read:
It did the same several years ago when I was rerouted from Moscow of all places heading back to the United States, and while I was on the ground in Moscow and in L.A., I sat next to this wonderful Russian lady, and we had a conversation through my phone. And we’re Facebook friends to this day. That’s the thing that I love about how science fiction has influenced our technology to where we now have… There are, they’re developing at full speed these wearables that allow you to connect with someone and speak, and it translates in your ear.

Bill Nye:
And I think also you’ll be able to see text in your glasses, focused and infinite. Now I gotta stop you on this claim. For you to consider, I’m not sure in this case, science fiction induced this technology to be developed. In other words, this is a dream of everybody, a universal translator, if we could just communicate. However, the Star Trek flip top communicator definitely led to the early Motorola flip phone. I mean, that is going the other way. So, the answer, once again, it depends.

David Read:
For sure. I also think that science fiction will often illustrate ideas that mankind has in such a way as to further inspire people to push that thing forward.

Bill Nye:
The get-go everybody wants to fly. That’s everybody’s dream, is to fly. And wouldn’t it be cool to fly to these other planets, now that these other planets have been discovered? The big deal right now, in public interest in space, right now, is not in “What happened on Mars, was there life on Mars?” which utterly fascinates me. “Are there living things on Europa, the moon of Jupiter, twice as much ocean water as Earth?” The thing everybody’s into is exoplanets. Everybody wants to know what’s going on on these distant, distant worlds which we are proving to exist. And that is, to your point, exactly what science fiction, or much of Stargate, Star Trek, Star Wars, entails, is these other worlds, literally other worlds. Not just other countries, other worlds. And they’re real. And our tax dollars are enabling us to prove that.

David Read:
I remember growing up learning their names in elementary school.

Bill Nye:
The names of actual planets?

David Read:
I don’t remember them now. There were only a couple that were discovered…

Bill Nye:
286C and stuff.

David Read:
Like that. And today I can’t keep track of all of them–There are so many that we’re learning now.

Bill Nye:
No, no, there’s tens of thousands now.

David Read:
That we’re aware of, and it’s just extraordinary.

Bill Nye:
What everybody’s fascinated with would be finding or showing to exist an atmosphere that almost certainly couldn’t be there without what we think of as living things. This is where everybody got all excitedly bent out of shape about phosphine gas in the atmosphere of Venus, and what seemed to be organic molecules, carbon-bearing molecules in distant, distant, distant worlds, 30 light years away, where this crazy telescope can detect the atmosphere just above the surface of the planet as it passes between us and the star. And everybody, you gotta have it… it’s gotta work out dumb luckily enough that it’s in the plane that we could see it. If the planet’s going around the star like this, getting that occultation and the transit is just much, much less likely. There’s other tricks I’m sure these guys and gals have, but the first one is to see it go between us and the star.

David Read:
Bill, how true is the statement, “Where there’s water there’s life?”

Bill Nye:
It seems to be everywhere we go on Earth, that seems to be the case. So, everybody, let’s talk about what’s actually really actually happening actually out there in the actual world. Some of you, some of the viewers may remember ALH001, this pattern of what looked like microscopic beads in a rock found in Antarctica, 1994? Yeah, must have been. Gee whiz, if I got that wrong, I’m sorry. I’m talking too fast. All right. I should be flowing in this… when you’re walking around on the ice in Antarctica and you find a string of rocks, the only way they got there is from space. There’s nobody running around on Antarctica throwing rocks on the ice waiting for somebody to come along. So, this pattern in this rock revealed with a microscope, or a scanning electron microscope, looked like it might have been poop of an ancient microbe. Everybody freaked out, totally running in circles screaming. And the Mars program at NASA got a huge boost from the public interest in this pattern in this rock. Well, everybody decided later, almost certainly not a living thing. It’s something probably from a nearby magnetic field that enabled or induced these iron-bearing atoms to line up… molecules to line up. And it’s enchanting. Well, everyone, this business of the leopard spots found in a rock by scientists on Earth using the Perseverance rover, these leopard spots resemble in every way the spots we find of fossilized microbes here on Earth. And if I were king of the forest, I would be going crazy over this. I am going crazy over this, but I’m not running the show at NASA or ESA or JAXA, Japanese Aerospace, European Space. But it is to be hoped that in the coming months, everyone will be reminded of the potential significance of this. If we found life on another world, it would change this one. It would change the way everybody here feels about being a living thing in the cosmos.

David Read:
It doesn’t have to be sentient.

Bill Nye:
Oh, no, no. Not yet.

David Read:
It just has to be–

David Read:
Not yet.

Bill Nye:
And what about my old boss? Was he sentient? Am I right? OK. So, everyone, if — Keep in mind the hypothesis, what’s back of all this, and we’ll get back to Stargate, but Mars is smaller than Earth. It cooled off faster than the Earth ’cause it has more surface area for the mass. And it got an ocean a billion years before Earth did. It got an atmosphere a billion years before Earth did. In the same way, ALH001, this meteorite found in Antarctic ice, got here, Mars is hit with impactors all the time. And so, stuff gets knocked into space. And you can go online, you guys, and buy a Mars rock ’cause they woo, woo, woo, as I like to say, it’s in space, there’s no sound- and they land here on Earth. But those rocks have survived getting smashed by a meteorite on Mars, a marsiorite on Mars, knocked into space, made it through the icy blackness of space and landed here on Earth, burning up in the atmosphere or bleeding, whatever’s going on, and what’s left of it ends up on the ice in Antarctica. By the way, most of the Mars rocks that fall here fall in the ocean. You never see ’em. Three quarters of the world’s covered, 71% is covered with water, saltwater. So, the hypothesis is that life started on Mars, got knocked into space, and you and I are descendants of Martians. This is an extraordinary hypothesis. And these rocks are sitting on Mars, they’ve been collected by diligent engineers and scientists using this extraordinary vehicle, the Perseverance rover, and there is no plan right now to bring ’em back to Earth. There is no plan. And what are you doing? Your tax dollar’s not at work. They’re in happy little tubes, happy little sample tubes on Mars. And the sample tubes are on my desk at the Planetary Society. What am I supposed to do? How can there not be one on my desk? Anyway, I’m quite troubled. All that–

David Read:
We’ll get a photo.

Bill Nye:
And you can buy plastic replicas online. They’re this big… the tubes are. And you can imagine how it would change the world if we brought these things back and there’s no plan. And the current administration, you were talking about science in our society, and we’re this anti-science movement, this distrust of authority, this anti-intellectualism, it will not last. That’s not how the United States got here, got to where we are in the world. And the pendulum will swing. I mean, the faster, the better. Everybody, I’m not digressing. We’re talking about life on another world. We’re talking about evolution. We’re talking about how you and I all got here. While living things like us were coming along, living things that take advantage of us, like the…

David Read:
The Wraith.

Bill Nye:
Yes, like the Wraith, come to be parasitic on humans. So, germs and parasites are parasitic on living things like you and me. I went to elementary school with a guy who has polio. You do not want polio. I do not have polio because I got vaccinated against it. This anti-vax movement, there have always been vax-hesitant people… always been people afraid of needles. I got it. But vaccines work. Science, the discoveries scientists have made about living things are true. And so, I digress only a little bit. It’s science fiction that leads to all this. And how many science fiction stories are there involving infections?

David Read:
A lot.

Bill Nye:
Countless. Countless. Did you enjoy Hail Mary?

David Read:
I’ve not read it yet.

Bill Nye:
Read it.

David Read:
I have not read it.

Bill Nye:
Anyway, infections are a big science fiction theme. And when you are a parasite, you not only carry infection, but you’re subject to countermeasures, immune systems and so on. All that stuff of science fiction. Back to you.

David Read:
A friend of the show, Bob Picardo, works with you at The Planetary Society. Any quick updates from The Planetary Society?

Bill Nye:
We have a new five-year framework. It’s not a strategic plan, it’s a framework. There’s a few big events coming up. Now, understand everybody, Bob Picardo was here for The Planetary Society board meeting. He stayed at my house. He left yesterday morning. He’s a dear friend. He was the officiant on my wedding. I’m not objective about — I love that guy. In the next five years, there are big things. There’s gonna be more mission spacecraft launched to remote destinations. The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope will be launched, built with a surplus military mirror, brought in on budget, on time, cheaper than the presumed cost. It’s ready to fly. Do you know about Apophis?

David Read:
I’m very aware of Apophis. He was our big bad guy. And this asteroid- Peter’s all over this.

Bill Nye:
Apophis, everyone, is an asteroid that will miss the Earth, named for the Egyptian god of, depending on the translation, the Egyptian god of anxiety, of chaos. That’ll be 2029. And there’s finally a consortium of rocket companies and universities and NASA to catch up with the thing using essentially surplus spacecraft that, as I like to say, are sitting in Colorado clean room not gathering dust. Anyway, there’ll be another eclipse in Spain. A very cool place to watch it will be in Spain. All these astronomical events and space exploration events are coming up. And The Planetary Society is gonna be very involved in all that. It’s gonna be yowch! We’re hiring two more people to get more done. If for some reason those of you listening and watching to this broadcast are not members of The Planetary Society, first of all, that’s just weird, but check us out at planetary.org. And David, thank you for mentioning it. Thank you for letting me go on about it.

David Read:
Bill, thank you for coming on. Science fiction is a metaphor. And metaphor[s], they permit us to consider alternate points of view, to open our hearts, and to be curious with one another.

Bill Nye:
Storytelling. It’s an appreciation for how much human ingenuity, or tool making, or our tendency to try to understand the world around us, manifests itself with our imagination. And I’ll claim, our ancestors who were not curious, who did not wonder about the worlds around them are not actually our ancestors. They got out-competed by our ancestors who were curious, who did innovate, who did look for new ideas, and did dream in a science fiction fashion. One more thing. Is it time to go?

David Read:
I have as much time as you’ll give me. I wanna be respectful of you.

Bill Nye:
Thanks. Something I had not really thought much about until — Do you know Brannon Braga?

David Read:
I love Brannon Braga’s work.

Bill Nye:
Yeah. Anyway, he remarked one time, and they’re almost always science fiction stories, “Any story that’s about time travel is ultimately about our race with death.” Is there a do-over? Could you go into the past and change it, so you didn’t exist? And all these wonderful questions. What is the nature of time? And these are cool questions that science fiction addresses. Even Portrait of Dorian Gray, which some would say is great literature, this and that, is in some sense a science fiction story. And I remember being in English class and this gal remarked that, “Kurt Vonnegut, he uses science fiction as a device. I mean, it’s not really science fic–” “What do you mean? Yes! It’s a device, yes, for storytelling about humans. Yes! Come on!” But I admit, some science fiction is not as product of as much deep thought as other science fiction.

David Read:
You have to open your door to all kinds of people to have a place to play. So, some of this is, “This one wasn’t really for me as much, but this one…”

Bill Nye:
No, there you go.

David Read:
“… over here, this one. Annihilation, Arrival, those are for me.”

Bill Nye:
So, by the way, we’ll close with this, I guess. Something Martin Gero says to the cast, he says, “Come on, let’s all… I’m so glad, you guys, we have a chance to play together.” As hard as he works and as serious as he takes the whole thing, at some level it’s play for him. It’s fun for him, and he brings that to all of us on the cast. It was really a great thing to be included in Stargate, and I hope that it comes around.

David Read:
Thank you for continuing to inspire. And like on Stargate, you weren’t curing cancer, but they were creating stories for the people who are curing cancer. And there’s a whole process there that feeds back into itself. You have to create the next series of dreamers.

Bill Nye:
When the next series of dreamers comes around, gets jobs and stuff, it’s very reasonable that this messenger RNA technology will be applied. I was corresponding with a guy, I remember he and I used to shoot rockets together. Now he’s one of these MD, PhD people, overachieving. This messenger RNA may be used to cure cancer, and I’m not… It’s not pie in the sky. It’s where you’d use your own immune system to reprogram your immune system, so it doesn’t produce cancer cells. It’s really an extraordinary idea.

David Read:
Bill, thank you.

Bill Nye:
Thank you, David. Let’s change the world.

David Read:
My tremendous thanks to Bill Nye for making this episode possible. I said it before and I will continue to say it; science fiction is our dream phase. I think that Brannon Braga said that, or someone very similar to him. I think it was Brannon who brought that up at some point. Where it allows us to share ideas with one another in allegory and metaphor, in a way that makes us less guarded and protected. And it’s the real reason why it’s my favorite vehicle for storytelling and for sharing ideas. Because we’re not like “I must think this way because I am over here.” We aren’t combative with each other as we normally would be. We certainly have our priors in terms of our beliefs and everything else, but they’re not so sacred to us. They enable us to think and enjoy. And as Brad and Jonathan and Rob and all the other… Martin would tell you, chiefly first it’s to entertain. They’re not creating these things to make us think per se, so a lot of what we draw from it is stuff that we internalize ourselves. But you take a look at that episode like Brad writes “The Other Side”, that’s laced with delicious metaphor. And “Brainstorm” was an episode that certainly, by the end of it, Rodney says himself, “We’ve all got to do our part.” That was the mandate for that episode. I think NBCUniversal, the parent company of Syfy Channel, that episode was released during a week where they were doing a block of entertainment that spoke to ecological stewardship that was the kernel for why that episode exists. But man, Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson, bringing those guys in, that was an extraordinary coup. And it was cool, as Bill would say. Thanks again, Tam, for making this episode possible. Thanks so much to my moderators over this past season. I don’t have my script in front of me, guys. There’s a number of… They’re 10 strong now. Thank you all so much for making this season possible. My producers, you guys have done a tremendous amount of work to pull this off. My webmaster, Frederick Marcoux at Concepts Web. My graphics designer, Brice, and Eagle SG, Matt Wilson, this has been a tremendous honor to be able to carry this show as long as I have. And we’ve got a lot more to do now that SG-4 is gonna be on the horizon in the next couple of years here. So, there’s going to be a lot of buildup to this and anticipation. And Bill is, I think, one of the early folks that we’ve had on to reignite this interest in Stargate in the online fandom. Because there’s going to be a lot more brand-new Stargate fans who are going to find this show very… They’re already starting. I’ve been getting comments from people who, “I just heard about this thing. I’m going and watching it and I love it.” Let’s expand that tent. And not just in the English-speaking world. Let’s expand it globally because there’s gonna be a lot of fun engagement that’s going to come because of it. Thanks again to Bill Nye and thank you to my entire team for making our episodes possible. Ian Bernardo, thank you, my software developer. You guys are all doing tremendous work. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. Thanks for joining us for Season Five, and I’ll see you on the other side.