Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it, presented by Disruption Now, I'm James Keys. And in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to discuss the recent flights in into suborbital space, first by billionaire Richard Branson, and then by the world's richest man, Jeff Bezos. And we'll consider the societal implications of this new phase of space flight that's driven not by governments, but by billionaires, at least primarily.
We'll also take a look at some of the exercise suggestions from Shape magazine's Health Healthy Body episode issue and consider how this advice on these types of things has evolved over the years and where it stands now.
Joining me today is a man who is no Jedi, but he knows the Force. Tunde. Ogon. Lana Tunde. Are you ready to show the people how to awaken that Force?
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Of course. But if I can't be a Jedi, you're alluding that I'm a Sith. So I'm not sure. I'm not sure where we're going with this, but okay, I'll have to accept my fate, sir.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: All right, now we're recording this on July 27, 2021. And this month, we've seen billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos both take flights right to the edge of space and rockets created by their companies.
And to start us right off, Tunde, after seeing them take these suborbital flights, them being Branson and then later Bezos in technology and equipment that was developed primarily by their own companies, what's your reaction to seeing private individuals now, as opposed to, again, NASA government organizations, but just private individuals, their businesses traveling into space or making that type of travel?
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Well, as a True Force user, I would say it's cool.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: I think that's a good first reaction.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: Since this Sith only deals in absolutes, as Obi Wan says, say. Absolutely, it's cool, but no, I think. Yeah, my overall feeling is it's great. It shows progress in our society and the ability now for private companies to do what was only the realm of governments.
And I think that's what we'll get into today.
This shows, I think, the positive side of when public and private sector projects and endeavors over, let's say, a decade or so really work out. Let's just put it that way. So I think it's a good thing in the long run for society.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Actually, I take a similar expansive view from the standpoint that things that were once just the realm of governments, once they become more accessible to People and therefore more ideas, more approaches can kind of be tried, more ideas can be tested and so forth. It seems like that is how we drive things forward. In some instances, not all instances, but in some instances, governments will be the only thing that can kind of pool resources together initially when there's no immediate financial payoff. There's no. Nobody got rich going to the moon, you know, so it wasn't something that from a private standpoint, they would have made sense for a business person to do from a commerc venture standpoint. So that now we've gone to the point where. Well, I guess. And if you want to bridge the time between that.
But you know, private companies and so forth, with the help of NASA, whatever, they put satellites into space and they're using those for commercial purposes. I mean, our cell phones, you know, our Internet uses that to some degree.
Television, you know, all types of things that we're communicating through satellites all the time. And so there have been commercial ventures that utilize outer. Utilize things going into outer space, but now it's actually people that's the big thing. Because SpaceX, even private company, a private company that works a lot with government contracts and so forth, but a private company nonetheless. Elon Musk's company, they've been shooting things in the space for a few years now. And so. But not people. Well, not just, you know, the just people who. Just, just guys. Not, you know, people obviously astronauts, but not just guys like say civilian passengers. Civilians.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: There you go, there you go.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: And so I think it represents progress from that standpoint in the arc of how technology is developed. And then once as it's developed, you hit a critical mass stage where a lot of people start development at the same time. And that when a lot of people start developing at the same time, that's when you really get the key advancements a lot of times in these types of things.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: Yeah, man. And I think it's interesting, you know, in preparing for today, obviously this is the great thing about doing a podcast with you, man, is every week I gotta learn something new.
So I learned about the Contract airmail Act of 1925, otherwise known as the Kelly act, which authorized the Postmaster General to contract for domestic airmail service with commercial air carriers. And I quoted from, from the article from there. So what that means is basically, if you. It's another example. Cause what it got me thinking is it's been roughly right, a hundred years since the beginning of also passenger air travel. Because if you look at the history of flight in terms of airplanes, right we had the Wright brothers in Kitty Hawk.
I think that was 1906 somewhere. Definitely the first decade of the 20th century.
And then within less than a decade, you had World War I.
So what happened, similar to the space kind of journey, in the First World War, the only deep pockets that could fund aviation was the government. And it contracted a bunch of private companies and there was a need for this race to have the best flight around because they wanted to win a war. Right.
War often brings this rapid advances in technology out of necessity.
And so after the war you had this flood of planes, but then you didn't have the government contracting anymore. And they were worried that the industry, the aircraft industry actually might fail because there was a lack of investment. Because to your point, early in these type of technologies, there's not really much commercial or civilian use yet because people.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Haven'T figured it out yet. People haven't figured out what to do yet.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: Exactly. So what happened is in 1925, I guess the Postmaster General realized, you know, it might be quicker to get mail and whether, you know, business mail or residential mail, that kind of thing through the country, quicker by air than trying to do it by rail or horseback or whatever.
And so they had this, this, this act of Congress passed that allowed that.
And slowly what happened was they contracted private aircraft manufacturers and companies in that industry.
And then within a very short period of time, the entrepreneurial side of those private companies then began to offer tickets to passengers who, you know, just wanted to experience flying. And, and then it became not just the experience, but I'd like to get from New York to LA quicker, not take a week on, on land, but maybe I can get there in a day or two days if we have to stop overnight back then somewhere. And then, and then the, the. So what happens is then by the 30s, you actually have an airline industry which generally could ferry passengers across the country, so on and so forth. And at the time, and I know we're going to get into this, the only people that could afford to fly in, let's say the 20s into the 30s were actually only the wealthy people.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: And if you look at old videos, like now if you go back and look at videos of air travel back then, everybody like men were in business suits, women were in dresses. That was actually like you dressed up to go on a plane versus now people are in sweats and women have rollers in their ears going to the airport.
So what I think may happen here is we're seeing the beginnings of this and I know we're going to go into some of the criticism that have been lobbied at this kind of moment in time as well.
But just like other heavy investment opportunities of the past, at first only the wealthy can afford these things, but first.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Only the government and then, yeah, and.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: Then the wealthy, and then that's what I was going to get at. As costs go down over time, as technology improves and productivity improves and manufacturing these things, then eventually the masses have the ability to afford it. And I think that's the consideration with this air travel that I think they're planning that within a decade or so, the cost can go from maybe a quarter million to make one of these trips down to $2,500. So similar trajectory.
[00:09:19] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what we're counting on, basically. That's, I think, why you and I both look at this similarly is we are looking at not just what it means at this exact moment, but what it means if you look at a typical or common trajectory on how things like this go.
And you know, I want to just mention one other thing, and that is that you noted that war oftentimes drives the type of innovation. But another thing, kind of what we use in a market system, in a market economic system to substitute the need for war to drive innovation is competition. So I also find it notable in this instance that Bezos and Branson were kind of competing, and Branson kind of won that initial competition to see who could get which billionaire could get into space as a civilian first.
And so that type of competition drives innovation as well. So what we're now the next competition is going to be which of these companies is going to start offering flights to people first, to regular, you know, to other people that are buying. They both have wait lists and so forth. But who's going to actually put regular people, regular, you know, rich people in?
And then that competition will again, it'll still drive things forward because what they're going to do, once they're going to try to get people, then they're going to try to be do better flights, more comfortable flights, more everything that competition. And hopefully, you know, SpaceX will get involved as well. And then we have three people competing because the competition is the substitute, like I said, that we intentionally use. This is why we don't want monopolies, because we want to utilize competition in order to make things drive forward from an innovation standpoint and drive costs down. You know, like, that's the two things that the competition does for us in that sense. So, like I said, I find it notable and good. A good thing that it's not just one company doing this and they're the only ones, and that's it.
So I wanted to ask you, and we can go into the piece that you referenced as far as just that you referenced, that this has gotten some criticisms. Criticism we've seen, you know, a good number of people object to. To these trips as being essentially like a reflection of our society's wealth inequality. You know, where they. They basically look at this as with Branson and Bezos taking these frivolous trips, you know, just joyrides into space with spending all this money because they just. What else they gonna do with all the money? They have all this money and you know, and also where they did this type of focus takes away from our ability to deal with society's more urgent problems at the moment, you know, whether it be climate change or a global pandemic that's ongoing.
What's your take on this or where you come down on this type of criticism?
[00:11:58] Speaker B: I disagree with it, but I would say I'm glad to know that it's out there because it's just another example that everyone has something to bitch about. And look, I get it. For some people, I can see the optics, oh, these billionaires are going to space. But like I said, if you understand kind of the long arc of history, just like we just alluded to with 100 years ago, usually it's the wealth class that enjoys the first uses of certain technologies throughout history just because they can afford it. And they are the ones funding a lot of the new innovations.
So it's not a surprise. I think that. And then the next thing that you mentioned, which is a valid concern, which is how come they're not putting their resources maybe to use on more immediate issues like climate change and all that. And we'll get into this a little bit deeper into the show, but number one, people should realize that all of this massive investment into scientific research, in this case space exploration and space travel, naturally spins off other technologies that can be used on Earth to promote better situations, let's say, for humanity and hopefully the planet. The second thing is, you know, I think this is where the kind of celebrity of wealth has, you know, not jaded, but caused people to not look at the right target. It's not Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson or Elon Musk's job to save the planet or to deal with climate change. That's the job of our elected officials.
So the reality is, because we just said it right, those guys are businessmen. They're not Governments, they don't by themselves have the resources to tackle all this and they can't make the policy decisions on their own. So I think, you know, we, we, that's, I think a little bit of the public just misdirecting some anger on that one. And I think all of the three men that I know of have, have openly embraced climate friendly, you know, kind of ideas and rhetoric and solutions. So they're not against trying to fix certain big problems. I just think that those who are angry should look at their elected officials first because they're the ones that actually can do something.
[00:14:04] Speaker A: That's an interesting point. You raise one of the things in particular, like for example, Elizabeth Warren, who is an elected official, was talked about, I believe it was her that raised that. These guys in various years that had been reported, and I may be crossing streams here, but it's been reported that these guys, a lot of these guys haven't paid income tax certain years over the years, like zero income tax. And to your point, the question of whose fault is that?
Actually, shouldn't we be turning it back around on Congress and say, well, hold on, if these guys are billionaires and they're not paying income tax, then what in the world are you doing with the tax code? How did the tax code get like this to where. Because you're not accusing them of breaking the law. We did a show about tax avoidance, which is not illegal, you know, a couple months ago, and it's like, well, hold on, shouldn't we then be. If a report comes out that someone can make a billion dollars or be worth $200 billion and not pay income tax, shouldn't we be looking at our elected officials like, you dopes, how is this possible? Like, what are you guys doing with the law?
[00:15:06] Speaker B: You're right. I mean, that's what I'm saying. I mean, I get it. People got to direct their anger somewhere, just like other people may direct their anger at immigrants for taking jobs. Right?
But last time I saw an American wanting to pick tomatoes for $2 an hour, you know, was never right. So my point is, is that whatever parts of political sides or parts of our society, there's certain there's always going to be someone with an opinion that doesn't like something. And so with this case of the space race and these billionaires, we see that there's people that are looking at them saying, hey, you guys shouldn't be doing that. You should be doing something else with your money.
Well, you know, I guess that's their right to complain But I just don't see it as valid.
[00:15:44] Speaker A: I'll see. I'll say that I hear you on that point, but I would disagree 100%. And this is why the criticism is good faith criticism. I don't look at this criticism as being criticism that's unfair.
I mean, like, yes, why aren't you doing. You're doing this, and why aren't you devoting resources if you're doing this and making a show about it? Now, if they weren't making a show about it, then, you know, you do whatever you want to in your labs on your own, but you're doing this and making a show about it, then you open yourself up to criticism. That's it. Period. You put this on television, you open yourself to criticism. They're big boys. And so if this was unfair criticism, now, I would say this where I would distinguish good faith versus bad faith criticism. They're not the people who are saying Jeff Bezos is a jerk or a bad guy. It's like, well, yeah, get out of here. You're just angry. But people will say, hey, why are you spending all this money on this when our Earth may be irreparably damaged in five years and, or 10 years and your company is one of the biggest polluters? Why don't you put some of this energy and resource towards making your company less of a polluter? Sure. Good faith criticism. Jeff Bezos is a big boy. He can take that. I'm not here to put on a cat. I don't need to put on a cake for that. And so also, I think this kind of criticism keeps them honest. So while just because somebody criticizes you for doing something doesn't mean that I'm saying you shouldn't do it, I think Bezos should continue doing what he's doing. But the people who offer good faith criticism to it, I think that's. I think he should hear that. He should have to hear that coming in, because I think that will.
Nobody's infallible. If everybody is just saying, oh, you're so amazing. Oh, this is great. We're so happy you did this. Then he could conceivably get in his head like, oh, yeah, I am just infallible and I should just do whatever I want. And so I think this type of stuff is good. This is part of the yin and the yang, you know, like, where it's just like, okay, you reach for the stars, 60% of the people will be fine with it. You'll have 20% that are. That are your Biggest cheerleaders. And you have 20% say, hold up, hold up, hold up. And when the 20% that are saying hold up, when they make good points, as long as, you know, they're, they're approaching it from a standpoint of let's try from a societal standpoint, can we do better? Then you hear them out and you may adjust what you're doing, you may not, and that's fine. So I think, I mean, while I support the people who are offering good faith criticism, I don't necessarily think that Bezos has to listen to them and do what they say. But I'm happy that they're there to scrutinize. You can call it criticism, you can call it additional scrutiny, and you open yourself up for scrutiny when you do things publicly like this.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, look, I got nothing to disagree about that. I'll just add to this meaning the idea that I think that criticism of anything is most likely good in the long run because like you said, it allows people to look at something and tweak and have to respond. And like you said, hold those in the position that are being criticized, at least they know they're being watched and hold them to account. So I recognize all that's good. But what I would say is this is where again, I think just from a public standpoint, there's a little bit of misdirection and misguidance, you know, over the past 20 years. Remember 20 years ago, literally in 2001, Amazon was a book online bookstore, right?
So here's a guy that went from that and took a company and built it into what it is today, one of the leading companies in the world that has changed all our lives. You know, when I realized, when I was at home really, really sick with COVID a few months ago, I was getting chicken soup delivered to my house every day from Whole Foods because of my prime membership. I just realized, this is amazing, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, this didn't happen. And so it's kind of cool. And at the end of the day, he's been financially rewarded through, you know, people buying his stock and all that and his net worth growing up. So long story short, what I'm saying is Jeff Bezos, whether you want to say it was because of tax benefits or whatever, has donated about 17 billion of his net worth to nonprofits and charities over the last 20 years. And my point is, is that a lot of those have been climate related charities and other good charities that help promote, you know, the good stuff that everybody wants to see happen and fix in society. And you're right, because it's not a rocket going to space and the first non NASA astronaut to go to space. No one had press conferences about that and all that because when he writes a check for 500 million to a nonprofit, that doesn't make the news.
So all I'm saying is that.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Well, it does, though. I mean, he just did a donation. I think Van Jones just got like a hundred million.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: A hundred million. But that's my point.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: It's news, too.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: But what I'm saying is it doesn't make, you know, it wasn't on every news channel all morning for that, like the day he went to space. I'm just making the point that for those that are criticizing, it's just like other people that criticize in the media sphere and all that general things all the time. That's why I make immigration a certain.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: But it's not, though. I mean, like, sometimes there's specific criticism that is in good faith, and other times there's just. You attack the person or you attack.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: No, I get that. But there's a lot of, well, let me tell you, immigration debates that are in good faith that I might not agree with, but the people making them are in good faith, like they believe.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: But you don't have to agree with the criticism to say whether it's something that should or shouldn't be there. Like, that's all I'm saying. The criticism should be there. I don't necessarily agree with it, but.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: I think it's coming into my comment.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: That should be there.
[00:20:56] Speaker B: Yes, scrutiny is fair. I'm just saying that I'm making a particular comment that this is again, the other side of kind of the class warfare discussion. Right. We have class warfare from both angles. You've got the wealth class.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: Does it a Warren Buffett. If there's class warfare, his class already won.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: No, I know. We know that. Listen, they always win. That's my whole point. Tell me a time in human history you think the pharaohs were poor and the people building the 80,000 people building the pyramid were all wealthy. No, I mean, there's never been a time when the wealthy people were at the bottom. Right.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: Well, I'll say this, though, to your point with the Amazon point. Now again, Bezos getting you your soup while you were sick, he's still not above criticism on that because the person.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: Whoever said he was. That's my point.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: I'm just making a person delivered that soup, though. If we understand Amazon's labor practices, the Person who delivered that soup probably had to keep an extra container of soup there that he could dump out and pee in. Cause he's not allowed to go to the bathroom during the day. So everybody can do better. And the only way oftentimes that we're able to do better is with again. And I think the big thing here that I want to make is just good. Whether it's good faith criticism or not, if it's just saying this person is evil, this person, they hate me, or stuff like that, that's not good faith. That's not like you're not talking about something specific, something concrete, something tangible that hey, this could be better or this is misguided for this reason or that reason.
And so that's all. And I don't think, I mean, we're arguing over like, we agree on like 99% of this, you know, like, so it's, it's probably, you know, we can probably move on from this because, you know, like, it's just, I think we've made the point. But now that space travel is not just reserved for governments, do you think, you know, from a forward looking standpoint this will improve like within like tangibly, like not 100 years, 300 years from now, but like something in that we could appreciate, or at least our kids could appreciate.
Appreciate, excuse me, improve the ability of our species to utilize outer space.
You know, beyond what we're like right now. We have space stations, we have satellites. Is probably the biggest use we're making of outer space right now is, you know, the satellites we have that are constant part of everything that we do with telecommunications particularly.
Or do you think that governments actually are better equipped to move us forward and advance us in our use of outer space?
[00:23:20] Speaker B: I think like we alluded to earlier, I think the aviation example over the last hundred years is a great example. I think it starts with governments like we talked about. They're the only ones that have the deep pockets when something is so new.
And the private sector and investors who want to make a return on their dollar aren't ready yet to make those investments because they're at the beginning, it's all losing, you know, these.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: And they don't know it never will work.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
So I think that just like the aircraft industry and then it starts slowly, just like it's starting slowly now that the private sector enters and it's a high cost, high barriers of entry to the average person.
But over time, you know, like we talked about that the prices come down through competition and productivity and and just the industry itself, then learning how to be more. More streamlined and cost efficient. So I do believe that, yes, if we live a full life, you and I, over the next 40, 50 years, hopefully, Lord willing, I think that definitely guys like us could potentially have the chance to do what these two men did in the past couple weeks. That's what I mean. I'm not saying go to the moon in our lifetime, maybe as a civilian, just tourist, but maybe just to be able to go to the stratosphere and kind of the edge of space, see the Earth, really see the curvature of the Earth and see that layer of the atmosphere. I think that'll be doable within 10 to 20 years, without a doubt. And I'd say, because here's the thing, I started thinking about all the financial spinoffs, too. You know, they're talking about within less than 10 years, bringing the price down to about 50,000 per person.
I was thinking about, you know, I.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: Could see that much in your couch cushions, man.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: Yeah, no, you're right.
It's all in quarters, too. So it's pretty. It's pretty noisy when you sit down at my house.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: So.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: But no, what I'm thinking, I started thinking about things like financing, right? Like, wow, what if. Because think about it, I could see myself not now, but later in life. Let's say I'm in my late 70s. You know, I've done well for myself. I've saved a bunch of money. I could see myself just saying, you know, let me spend 50,000, actually go to space. And even if it's for a couple hours, and that's it. Just experience weightlessness. Like, wow, what a cool treat. Or I could see, like, finance companies like Wall street get into it. All right, look, 10% down, you put a $5,000 check up, and then you finance over 10 years, the 45 grand, you're paying like 300amonth.
But you had a great experience and you got to go to space.
So I could definitely see this taken off and being something that the public definitely enjoys within our lifetime for sure.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Well. And yes, I definitely. I mean, I think those things are more foreseeable. The more interesting pieces, I think are going to be what happens that we cannot yet foresee. Like the next. The other shoe, so to speak, as far as. Are they going to, like, Bezos and Branson and Musk. I mean, these guys talk about putting workers in outer space.
[00:26:12] Speaker B: Yeah, that's where I was gonna go.
[00:26:14] Speaker A: Yeah, but like, workers and so forth. And so now governments have done that. But they haven't really developed it out because the government, the governments have done it more so to study doing it.
But so I want to know, and I wonder, and I'd say for the purposes of this discussion, I think it will happen, are we going to put somebody in space for a six month shift to work, to do work that otherwise they would not be able to do or it would be much more expensive or much less efficient to do it on Earth? And so go ahead.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think yes and no. Like meaning. So we know for a fact that long exposure, human exposure in space is detrimental for the human health and body.
You know, there's, there's, everyone can go.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: Look that evolved to operate under this graph at 1G, you know, on Earth's surface. That's how we evolved to operate.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: You know, for, you know, the astronauts in the International Space station, you know, 100% of them within the first few months of being there experienced like bone density decrease. And after about a year, about 30% of the bone density has decreased. So when they come back to Earth.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: By the way, that's because when you're at zero G or something less than the normal gravity that we're used to experiencing, your body's like, oh well, I don't need these thick bones, I'm going to start jettison this stuff.
[00:27:39] Speaker B: And there's also more kind of long term factors as well because your body can replenish that bone cells and density over time back on Earth. But there's also exposure to radiation, which is a huge one because without the Earth's atmosphere and the magnetic field really protecting you and you're sitting there out in space, you've got all this radiation from the sun hitting you directly.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: So all astronauts are hostile?
[00:28:01] Speaker B: Yeah, very hostile. All astronauts have a 100% chance risk, increased risk of cancer just from their exposure to space and the people on the space station. So those are all things that at some point, I'm sure that we can't see it now, but the technology and humanity will be able to create solutions to those things. Until that happens, I don't see the ability of, you know, long term exposure to space. That's why I still think, you know, the whole humans on Mars and all that is we're still pretty far away from that. However, the reason I say yes and no is I think the robots, what we're not seeing is robots will be the first ones because I do think one thing that Bezos, Jeff Bezos has said, which I agree with, is, you know, we should try and move some of the heavy pollution industries off of this planet. That would make sense. I think that would be a much more realistic way to protect the planet and protect humanity's long term potential of just existence. To give us the chance to maybe 1000 years from now we're really colonizing another galaxy or something.
Then let's say trying to look for another planet right now because of all, like we just mentioned a couple of the hurdles of humans in space.
But if you could take, let's say strip mining and just no longer blow the tops off mountains and damage rivers and ecosystems here on Earth, because you could do that, let's say on asteroids or other planets, that would be great. And so I think what we could look at is robots being the first. Because then what you could do is you could put humans on rotation, right? Send humans for 1, 2 month rotations to monitor the robots. But you have actually, the robots actually in the mines, you know, really getting this stuff and then putting it back for transport back to the Earth.
[00:29:44] Speaker A: I mean, yeah, like that's, I would.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: Say so I think it could be a combination of many things.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: This is where I think that the private sector is probably better equipped than the government.
Because what the private sector can do and does do to overcome these types of things a lot of times is to offer financial rewards to that incentivize someone to take those risks. And so now that's the good thing and a bad thing about this private sector also. But governments do this as well. Private sector also will, may cover up or minimize the risks to where people are signing up and don't really know what they're getting into. But there are people, I mean, people play like professional sports, People know you play football, you know, like there's a chance that your brain's going to not work in 30 years, you know, and people know that now, but people still play. And so because the rewards are great. So even with all of the issues that are you're susceptible to by going into space, like you said, if it's two months or the six months or whatever it would be, people could go up there for rotations. And if you're paid 200 grand for an unskilled labor to go up there for six months and you're paid to 200 grand a year, there'll be people that do it, like, sure, yeah, I'll do that. And you know, like that's better than.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll take the chance, 40 grand.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: To work in a coal mine, you know, and it's still coal Mine is dangerous, too. And so I think that. But that's where I think that the private sector would be able to, you know, that's their whole model is to incentivize people to do things that they wouldn't otherwise do for money. You know, a lot, a lot of times money or benefits or whatever. So I think that this is, I mean, and this is, this probably frames the way I look at this whole entire thing is just that I think that this is opening up a pathway to things that we don't yet. We don't yet conceive. If we could figure out what the next step was, then we'd be rich. You know, like, okay, yeah, if I hear the next step, I'm going to either do it myself or I'm going to put a lot of money into whoever's talking about it. But there's going to be also new challenges, new problems, as with any new opening of new opportunity. But it does appear to be pathways to advancement overall. And so that's exciting to me. It's exciting to be alive when something like that is going on where there is a new frontier being opened up to, to people in a way that wasn't there available before.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: Well, and you make a good point because of the unforeseen kind of the way that this will play out over time. Because when we talk, I'm thinking about back to the comments I made about 100 years ago. Right? Like you got the Wright brothers, the.
[00:32:17] Speaker A: Comments you made 100 years ago.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: So about 100 years ago. Yeah, I told you, you know, if you're going to call me a Sith Lord, you know, I've been around for a while. Come on.
But, but just, you know, looking back 100 years ago at the early aviation industry, I mean, who would have thought, literally we're talking about 1925, did the government of the United States creates an act to allow, you know, to promote mail carrying through flight.
But who would have thought, literally six, 43 years later, we literally put. Or 44 years later, we put a man on the moon.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:53] Speaker B: You know what I mean? And because 20 years later, by 1945, through the necessity of trying to win a war, the Germans created the V1 rocket and V2 rockets. And so what happens is then the rocket technology gets worked on another 20 years and we're going to space. So it's just like we talked about, like that, this new advancements in races to solve these early problems of space exploration and at the kind of ground level of commercial space travel 40 years from now. That's what I said.
We can't imagine what's going to happen. And that's why I do think in our lifetime we will see the ability of more, at least passenger space travel just to the edges of space. I'm not talking about to the moon or anything and whatever else from a.
[00:33:39] Speaker A: Commercial standpoint comes with that.
[00:33:41] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And one of the other things I want to discuss too is twofold. One is I just want to go back to the idea of mining in space because some of the audience might not recognize that.
And you've said this before about us as humans. Right. That we forget that we as humans are actually animals. Right. We're part of this ecosystem of the Earth and we develop from the Earth. Right.
And we share a lot of the same principles as other mammals. So that makes us somewhat of an animal, even though we're a conscious being. And I would say the same thing when it comes to the universe, the galaxy, and then let's say, our planet and the natural resources. If you think about, from minerals and metals standpoint, every single metal on this Earth, iron, copper, gold, and even certain rare Earth things like cobalt, uranium, were all formed in a supernova, the explosion of a star. The massive energy and the gases that come together create those molecules.
So just like we have the ability to go into mountains and mine these metals out of the Earth, on Earth, there's actually a much higher density of certain metals like nickel and aluminum in, like, meteors, because they actually might be like just a concentrated big ball of this stuff. So we've already landed, I think in 2014 was the first time we landed a, like a robot probe on an asteroid. It's pretty amazing. It was 10 million miles from Earth and it was traveling at 40,000 miles a second. And somehow from Earth, we were able to land this thing on there and take pictures and all that. So the idea would be the next step is to land some sort of robotic probe that could actually mine these things and then bring that stuff back. And so that's why I just wanted to go there. And I just want to say a couple interesting things I learned, like 75% of space travel right now is already handled by the private sector, primarily Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, at least here in the US Then you've got the Chinese, you got the Russians, a few other countries that have space exploration as well, pretty robust. And then the last is the amount of space debris. That's the big hurdle we have, is that we have thousands of satellites now in orbit. And I've heard some speculation that. Which I wouldn't put it past humans. Right. We've already polluted the Earth.
We're starting to leave so much trash in our orbit that they're saying in the next few decades it might be difficult for rockets to get out of Earth's orbit without getting. Because it might be too dangerous, because you've got all these bits of trash flying at like 40,000 miles a minute. And it's just like these basically like bullets just flying through the air. Be like a gauntlet.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: So it's just interesting.
[00:36:25] Speaker A: Which just constant, like orbiting the Earth means they encircle the Earth. So they're all. All of these things. So it's kind of like, you know, it's a shooting gallery to get past those things without something flying around and hitting you.
[00:36:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And what's happening is the more space debris, the more they're colliding with each other.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: And then they break apart. And there's. There's this. There's a certain formula. I don't know if it's. The Drake Equation was one of these formulas that every time a piece of space debris hits and breaks up, it creates like another 10,000 pieces of stuff.
[00:36:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: And it just gets smaller and smaller. So you just have all these micro bullets basically flying over our orbit. So at some point, there's a concern that all that, you know, could actually keep us trapped inside the Earth.
So who knows? But maybe there'll be a technology to deal with that at some point as well. So it's interesting. There's a need.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: It will develop.
[00:37:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: Well, so I wanted to move on from this topic and get to our second topic of the day where we're going to discuss now Shape magazine, which they discuss exercise stuff and all different angles and so forth. But you had sent something to me this week that found to be very interesting was they had a healthy body issue and went through kind of like. It was kind of like a rundown of advice from different fitness professionals as far as the best ways to exercise from this standpoint or that standpoint, weight training or all these different types of things. And you and I are both. I mean, I don't, you know, I don't know even though that you sent this to me in preparation for the show as much as just, oh, you know, check this out. This is interesting. And, you know, you and I both, you know, are into exercise and all that types of things. And I know, you know, just from that, that you. Will you get into all types of different weight and cardiovascular training in or that you get a lot of that in. So seeing that that issue, what piece of advice kind of stood out to you in, in there as far as, you know, things you already incorporate or that you may want to incorporate?
[00:38:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, there's a lot of things I knew of in there, but they were good kind of refreshers and, and good, you know, made me feel good that I at least felt like I was going, been going in the right direction. And those are things like muscle confusion, you know, not doing the same workout forever and being able to kind of trick your body into having to learn new ways, you know, of just dealing. So, like, for me, every probably six to eight weeks, I'm changing out my workout.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:44] Speaker B: And just doing something totally different. So I might do chill stuff for six to eight weeks, like yoga and stretching and all that. And then I'll go back to something intense just to kind of keep my body and my muscle memory on edge a bit.
And then the other thing that I learned a few years ago from a personal trainer, which made sense after they explained it to me, was that weight training burns more fat and calories than cardio because I played NCAA basketball when I was younger and that's a lot of cardiovascular. I mean, we lifted weights too. But you know, you're running sprints and suicide drills and all that well, you.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: Got to be able to run up.
[00:39:23] Speaker B: And down the court and be able to hit a jump shot with two minutes left when you're dead tired. Yeah, so. So I always had that idea. I was just conditioned to believe, like, all right, cardio and that kind of long term stamina is, is the best way to be in shape and all that. And it's funny, as I've gotten older and got more of this knowledge, I do much less cardio, especially intense cardio. You know, my cardio now is, you know me, I love walking the dog, walk my chocolate lab, you know, my boy Chewy, but, but, you know, and I walk them for an hour. So it is a good cardio workout, but it's not intense. Like when I was younger where I'm like running sprints and really killing my joints. But then I would say what, what I really feel the benefit of is the weight training. And I would say this as I've gotten older as well. You know, some of these things that I alluded to and some of the articles I read preparing for today, I was glad to see that what I naturally started doing was Also advised, which is as we get older, not to do as heavy workout because you are getting older and your body can't take it anymore. And I kind of felt that as I hit my 40s, we have friends that really lift hard weights, both of us. And I kind of realized that my shoulders were hurting more. I just was having more pains and then my back. And as I've gotten away from such heavy lifting and more of just the lower but more reps type of thing, actually I've begun to have less pains in my back and my other joints. So. Yeah, it's interesting.
[00:40:51] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean I think for me the biggest piece of actual. Because they laid out a few bullet points and the one that stuck out to me is there was one where they said between your different sessions in terms of weight training, this was speaking about weight training, which I enjoy weight training as well.
The doing alternating in session between sessions you're going some sessions you're doing high rep and then other sessions you do low rep. But not to keep that static. And it's a concept.
I'm very conscious of that. But I had historically, and this is when I was younger, this plays into your point. When I was younger, the thinking is, and I think this is still current information that higher weight and lower rep will give you more of a hormonal response. And the hormonal response, our body communicates with itself different parts of your body, different cells in your body, they communicate through hormones. That's their telecommunications basically.
Body parts release hormones, cells release hormones. That tells some other cell what to do or what's going on and so forth. And so you get a stronger hormonal response and that's what you want when you're trying to get stronger and so forth. That hormonal response, hey, this is the signal to grow muscle or this is the signal to fat, to, to burn and so forth. And but the. So I had always trended towards higher weight and lower rep for that reason. And but this was saying that you want to do both and that gives you a more well rounded strength growth because also not just being able to lift a lot once, but being able to lift a good, a substantial amount, but not a ton, 12 times has a lot of value as well. And that's a different. It does a different signaling though. And that signaling may not bulk you up, but that signaling does promote a healthy response, so to speak. And so it kind of just reframed my mind again. Like, hey, I'm not 25 anymore. I shouldn't be trying to Blow my muscles up as big as I possibly can by every time I work, try to get the maximum hormonal response. And to your point, Tunde, as far as I need to take care of, I need to be more aware of my joints and so forth now as well, so I can do a more moderate weight multiple times. And actually intentionally trying to incorporate that into my training. As far as, okay, this week I'm doing a high rep week, and then next week I'll do a low rep and high weight week. So just a lot of these things. What I find with the information is that there's so much information as far as how our bodies work, the things that we can do, the things we should do, shouldn't do, and so forth that it's really difficult to kind of put all that in your head and settle on a.
This, this incorporates all this advice. Like you kind of have to just pick something or pick a few things and stick with that.
But that being said, I always find it interesting to learn more. You, you can't necessarily. Just like with people, you can't make everybody happy. It almost seems like you can't solve every problem as far as training, as far as what you're doing. You kind of have to have a guiding principle or two and just work for that. And, and this, you know, this is, these are all potential guiding principles or supplementary principles that may go along with a guiding principle. So it was a good read. Basically when we'll have this on our show notes. It was good information, you know, just good information as far as what is being observed, what's been studied. And I'll say one other thing, I'll kick it back to you because the one thing about the weight training, just in my time exercising, I started exercising, you know, in high school. And so that goes back 20 years, you know, a little over 20 years at this point. And the advice has evolved over time. Things that you could, should do, shouldn't do, and so forth has been updated and evolved over time. And so it's important to check in on what the modern advice and science is saying because the things that we were learning when I was 18 are just not necessarily some of the same. You know, some things have been pretty static, were well understood, but everything's not the same.
[00:44:44] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great point. And I'll, and I'll pick up on that and I'll reverse back and add my thoughts on a few other things you just said. But you know, you know, and this actually ties back to the first section we Just did in today's show with the space stuff. You know, I'm amazed, like you're saying about the scientific technology and how that has helped us understand our bodies, just like the scientific technology has helped us understand like outer space and the stuff we were just talking about in the last section. Yeah, and so what I'm getting at is, you know, like we talked about, right, the government investment initially into space exploration gave us things like the Hubble telescope.
But then the heavy investment into the technology and improving the imagery of the Hubble telescope then was brought back to use on a commercial basis, actually by the hospital industry through MRIs and FMRI machines. And actually some of the direct technology has been used in helping women with things like breast cancer scans and the imaging that that takes. So then that leads us back down to the imaging ability of science with things like muscles and movements and just the human body and kinetic kind of energy that we use. And so it's a good example of how, like you're saying in the last, let's say two to three decades, the ability of this type of imaging to look inside of our bodies and understand how things relate to each other has helped us then understand how to work out better and how these things or how to better make use of our energy when doing these things. So it is fascinating how it's all connected in a sense.
And then I want to allude to something you talked about, how our muscles and our bodies, really, I should say, react to a lot of these different ways of exercise and ways of pressuring muscles and the body and the systems. And they have a term called cellular crosstalk. And that's what you're talking about is that when you lift or let's say, do sets of heavy weights at low reps, that. That sends different signals, your cells, and different hormonal signals and triggers than when you do, let's say a lot of cardio or heavier weight. So lighter weight. Yeah, lighter weight. Sorry. So what we're talking about is when you just do one the whole time, like if you only do one for years, you know, the signals and the cellular crosstalk also gets kind of static and stale. But if you're able to kind of.
[00:47:13] Speaker A: You know, or your body could just kind of max out, you're like, hey, I've heard this signal enough type of thing, and they're just like. But they. So they won't respond as substantially.
[00:47:22] Speaker B: So and so and different ways you said that. It made me realize it's a. It's a different version of how the immune system works, right?
[00:47:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:30] Speaker B: Whereas you get a virus entered or something new, it kind of turns it on. And it's got to be. It's got to, it's got to figure out how to battle that. But if you have a body, that's why it's good to expose babies and young children to kind of a lot of stuff in the first couple of years of life because their immune system develops a lot better versus if it gets used to one thing only then when something new enters, it can actually hurt it. And I think that's an interesting way to maybe look at how from exercise and that side of things, it's almost like a similar, but in the reverse. So it's just interesting. Like you're saying that the modern science has helped us understand ourselves and how we deal with it better. And then the one thing I know we want to finish out soon is I also realized, I think all of us need to be conscious about where we are in life. Because you're right. As we're talking, it makes me realize. Yeah.
Where I am in life, being middle aged almost necessitates that I need to be just, I would say smarter about how I work out and work out different than when I was 25. Just because my body.
I've got less testosterone. As much as I hate to admit it. Right. There's things. My body is different now than it was back then, so. And just like at 75, I probably won't be working out like I work out today. So I think that's part of.
[00:48:45] Speaker A: But you'd be working out in some other way though.
[00:48:47] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. But I think that's just something that.
Just like other certain, other areas of life. I would say this, and I'll joke, you know, like drinking somewhere around 41, 42, I couldn't do the same brown liquor anymore without waking up with a massive hangover. And you know, I left my whiskey and bourbon and I hurt me, like. But when I was 35, man, I could drink a whole bottle of Jack Daniels, wake up the next day and be fine. It's just my body is just now, now. And you know what? Now I gotta be bougie and drink red wine.
Which 10, 20 years ago, I would have laughed at myself saying, if you're gonna drink a glass of red wine, like that's for real.
So, you know, you gotta accept that you change.
[00:49:26] Speaker A: No, I mean, but that's the flexibility. I mean, if you. Well, if you want to. If you're listening to your body, that's kind of the, the takeaway there is that you, you should listen to your body. And this is, you know, looking at stuff like this are ways to actually be proactive. You know, part of listening to your body is when you do something, see how your body responds, and then make adjustments based on that. But then also part of that is, okay, well, if I want to create this outcome, let me do what's recommended to create this outcome. And then you listen to your body to confirm that that's actually what happened or you just pay attention. I mean, to me, these things, it is all about how you're taking care of yourself.
We know in society now there's a renewed emphasis on taking care of your mental health. Taking care of your physical health is still a part of it as well. And the two are interrelated, you know, maintaining both. For me, part of my mental health, taking care of my mental health is exercising and lifting weights, particularly, like, that's something that allows me to blow off steam and focus my energy in ways that are very soothing for me in the aftermath. And so knowing how to do so, in a way, my guiding principle, my number one guiding principle is do not injure myself. Like, that's going to be. So I actually gear my whole workouts as far as things that I'm not going to do. Things where I would love nothing more than to be doing tons of box jumps and sprints. I love that stuff. But I do that, it's very minimal with that stuff because that type of explosive movement I have to be very careful with. And so a lot of what I'm doing is more controlled these days than it would have been five or 10 years ago.
But it's still aimed at pushing my body in ways again that are just more controlled. So your guiding principle is going to be how you gear your things out. And certain things that I would love to do that I know, give me a great response and so forth, I just have to scale. Have had to scale back on because over time it's something I will. The risk involved is one that I'm no longer willing to take. So I'm willing to give up that reward as well. And so that's kind of what I meant earlier when I was saying how you, you can understand these things and some of the stuff you might say, oh, that's a great, that's great. But you know what? Right now, with my risk calculation or even my current health, where I am now in my journey, I don't think I can take that level of risk. And so forth so more information. As long as you can maintain your priorities or maintain your principles, you know, or I guess if you have those and then you can maintain them, then more information won't be intimidating for you. But honestly, on the flip side, if you don't have, don't come in with that, then a lot of times this type of stuff can be overwhelming. So everybody kind of has to find their own way in that sense.
Yeah.
[00:51:59] Speaker B: And I think one of the things that I think we all need to remember is it goes back to something I think I said in the first section about us, you know, being, you know, you're losing us being animals. Right. Nature, creatures of the earth. So I think one of the things that like you said about the mental health part of it, I think it's so accurate because we live. Most people in our modern world, not just America, but around the world, in modern societies, live a very sedentary lifestyle. Yeah, right. Whether it be, I mean, now we got the pandemic, most people have been stuck at home, but before that, and kind of now it's getting back into it.
[00:52:33] Speaker A: Right.
[00:52:34] Speaker B: People go to offices, they sit in a car on the highway, or they sit on the train or a bus.
[00:52:38] Speaker A: There's no. And they sit at a desk all day.
[00:52:40] Speaker B: Yeah. And then they sit at a desk. So what happens is there's not a lot of movement for most people unless they try like they actively go work out or do something like that. And I think that, you know, more and more as we talk about the recent decades of scientific improvement and the ability to understand what makes us tick as human beings, one of the biggest things that, that actually make people feel better generally is exercise, movement, release of endorphins through exactly like movement. And so, and just basic movement. It doesn't mean you got to go do a thousand push ups or lift a bunch of weights. Just walking for 30 minutes can really, really improve someone's mood and spirit. And I remember seeing a couple studies like in the last 10 years, very interesting stuff. One was 30 minutes of exercise per day. They did a study walking on a treadmill improved 90% of mild depression cases. Now they said severe depression, definitely meds. And certain things did help.
[00:53:35] Speaker A: But they said, just for reference, Tunde is not a doctor and he's not giving medical advice.
[00:53:39] Speaker B: That's what I said. I saw a study. This isn't my study. But no, the idea is that. Because what they were saying is most human beings will go through some period of depression in their life. All of us.
[00:53:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:50] Speaker B: Just because life Ebbs and flows and you're going to have a loss of a loved one or something happened as traumatic, a post traumatic stress incident in your life, you might have some mild depression. And they were saying how exercise improves that. Then other examples were things like, I saw a study that middle school kids in Kansas, this is like in 2015, I think they, after lunch did one like 30 minutes of exercise bike. And then they gave another test group of similar kids that all had similar grades that didn't do that. And the kids that were allowed to do the exercise bike, their grades like shot up tenfold. And the idea was that because they're young kids, like, you know, early teens, the ability to let off steam in the middle of the day allowed them to concentrate a lot better later in the day versus having all this pent up anxiety and energy. So just interesting stuff and good stuff, man.
[00:54:44] Speaker A: And then remember, you can compound this because we talked previously a couple months ago or a couple weeks ago, they all run together, man. But about being walking in nature even compounds that effect.
[00:54:56] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:54:57] Speaker A: So if you're able to get outdoors and do the exercise, you can get the effect from being in nature and the effect from the exercise. And yeah, I mean, it's again, it's all stuff you get in what you put out. You know, our body is. We talked about it before. Our bodies and our brains are not computers. You know, we are living, breathing organisms. And we have to maintain those in the same way that if you're growing, you know, a tomato plant, you have to maintain it. You have to do things to maintain.
[00:55:23] Speaker B: It, you know, or whatever.
[00:55:23] Speaker A: If you're raising a kid, you got to do things to maintain, you got to feed it. You got to do all that stuff. So now we appreciate.
[00:55:31] Speaker B: You mean I got to feed my kids?
I've been doing it all wrong?
[00:55:35] Speaker A: Been doing it all wrong.
Nobody ever explained that to you?
[00:55:38] Speaker B: Damn it.
No, don't tell anyone. I gotta go make breakfast.
[00:55:45] Speaker A: No, that's good. That's good. So. But we appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Color Like I See It. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:55:52] Speaker B: I'm the Sith Lord.
[00:55:55] Speaker A: All right. All right. And subscribe rate review and we'll talk to you next time.
